Recently in Apocalypse Watch Category

I've been meaning to read Wastelands since it was first released. It inspired my Apocalypse Watch reading list, but unfortunately failed to materialise into my hands due to Amazon UK selling out repeatedly at inopportune moments (birthday and Christmas) and unfortunately ordering from Nightshade books directly in the UK is three times as expensive as Amazon. However it finally arrived a few months ago, and it was worth the wait. It's a truly excellent collection of apocalyptic stories, with a handful I really loved a lot, only a few I disliked, and everything else being quality stories that I liked a lot.

I highly recommended it. Here's a bit more detail on the individual stories.

 

Introduction - John Joseph Adams

A page and a bit setting the scene.

 

The End Of The Whole Mess - Stephen King

I haven't read any Stephen King, not being a fan of horror (although The Stand is sitting on my shelf). This story has a great readable style, with an interesting SF idea about changing the human mindset and some really touching moments. I tore through it an wanted more. Loved it.

Salvage - Orson Scott Card

A flooded Salt Lake City and a young man searching for something more. It has a nice apocalyptic setting and an easy style, with a surprisingly thoughtful ending. Liked it.

The People Of Sand And Slag - Paolo Bacigalupi

A crazy future with new style people who can fix themselves. Or something. They find a dog. It's bonkers and yucky. Liked it, but gross.

Bread And Bombs - M. Rickert

A touching, thoughtful, sad and very clever tale of what life could be like living in the shadow of constant fear of terrorism. It's a generational rift tale and great Science Fiction. Loved it.

How We Got Into Town and Out Again - Jonathan Lethem

Probably the most Mad Max setting of any of the stories, except with Virtual Reality. And no fighting. It's a bit of a rant against VR, but the apocalypticness raises it above the standard anti-tech rant. Liked it.

Dark, Dark Were The Tunnels - George R.R. Martin

This story was written in 1973, and it feels like. To me it seemed old fashioned, predictable and I felt like I'd seen it all before. I can't even imagine it being cutting edge three decades ago. Disliked it.

Waiting for the Zephyr - Tobias S. Buckell

A lovely atmospheric story set in a remote town. It's really the standard story of teenage rebellion and escape, but the setting is great and the story left me wanting more. Wind turbines, desert, teenage angst. Liked it.

Never Despair - Jack McDevitt

A couple of post apocalyptic explorers find an old Hologram in a dead city. Moody and atmospheric. Liked it.

When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth - Cory Doctorow

The end of the world viewed from Sysadmins in a locked in a data centre. The story gets better as it progresses and I  loved the ending which is touching and hopeful. Liked it.

The Last of the O-Forms - James Van Pelt

A weird mutant circus in a world of increasing mutants. Oddly uncomfortable. Liked it.

Still Life with Apocalypse - Richard Kadrey

A nice description of apocalypse, but just a vignette. Liked it.

 

Artie's Angels - Catherine Wells

The story of Kid biker courier gang in dome that’s fending off an apocalyptic outside and losing population to a better offworld. Loved it.

 

Judgement Passed - Jerry Oltion

Religion, apocalypse, cliché. Space travellers return to find that the rapture has happened. Disliked it.

Mute - Gene Wolfe

A random dream like haze. Didn’t feel like there was any story. Hated it.

Inertia - Nancy Kress

A disfiguring disease results in ghettos and isolation. Touching with an interesting intellectual idea. Liked it.

 

And the Deep Blue Sea - Elizabeth Bear

Starts off as a cool cyberpunky take and turned into bad Crossroads story. Disliked it.

 

Speech Sounds - Octavia E. Butler

Probably the best SF idea in the collection: people have lost the power to speak or understand.Very clever with plenty of emotion. Liked it.

 

Killers - Carol Emshwiller

The story of hiding away from a terrorist style apocalypse in a mountain village. Discussing what it means to be the enemy. Liked it.

Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus - Neal Barrett, Jr.

A Robot butler and woman selling fake sex in a Mad Max-ish future. Witty. Liked it.

The End Of The World As We Know It - Dale Bailey

A deconstruction of apocalypse stories. Clever, relevant and depressing. Loved it.

 

A Song Before Sunset - David Grigg

The story of a musician in a post-apocalyptic world. Sad piano man story. Liked it.

 

Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers - John Lanagan

A response to Dale Bailey’s story. Two people flee for their lives across a dead city. Clever, exciting, touching, hopeful. Loved it.

 

For Further Reading - Big list of books. Of which I am working my way through!

Oryx And Crake by Margaret Attwood (UK / US)  is another book from my Apocalypse Watch reading list (which I am still, irregularly, inching through). I have previously only read The Handmaid’s Tale by Attwood, which I thought was excellent Science Fiction (despite (in)famously Attwood saying she doesn’t write SF). Oryx And Crake is most definitely Science Fiction as well, with one plot set in a post-apocalyptic future and the other thread telling the story of getting to that point.

The future plot follows the story of Snowman, the sole human living after some unspecified disaster. Although he’s not alone, he’s living with a collection of post-human creations and fighting off genetically engineered animal concoctions. It’s genetic engineering that is at the centre of the books science, from humble beginnings of tweaking a few animals, upwards to changing humans. It’s very pessimistic in its view, taking the opinion that once the genie is out of the bottle we are all doomed. The future plot thread mirrors this view in its bleakness.

Much more interesting is the back story which is revealed as the other plot thread, it follows Jimmy (aka Snowman) in his life from school to disaster, including his complicated relationship with his friend Crake. It’s nicely done, nothing is black or white, and Jimmy’s life feels messily real. Also at the core of the story is Jimmy’s obsession with Oryx, I guess it’s a love story, but it’s not quite as simple as that.

I thought the second half of the book was much better than the first, the story taking too long to get going. At the end I wanted more of the apocalypse, rather than just the before and after. It was also uncomfortable reading at times: bleak and nasty, not a book to read to lighten your mood, because there’s not much hope. Which is what I’ve come to believe makes a good apocalyptic book: there must be hope, enough to overcome the darkness.

In summary, an interesting book, nicely written, but dark and too long and slow.

A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. is one of the few remaining classics that I hadn't read from my Apocalypse Watch reading list. I heard it talked about so much that I approached it with a lot of anticipation.

There will be spoilers in this review! I can't hold back I'm afraid.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (UK, US), is part of my Apocalypse Watch reading. (I'd already read The Day Of The Triffids). And once again Wyndham has surprised me. I'm not sure why, it's becoming clear that I have a completely invalid view of what Wyndhams novels are like.

The Chrysalids is set a thousand or so years in the future, it's not precisely clear, after a nuclear apocalypse. The plot follows David Storm from when he is a young boy. He lives in a religious agricultural community where deviation from God's true forms is vigorously attacked. The true form is spelt out in complimentary book to the bible, that has been passed down through generations. So, mutated crops are burnt, mutated cattle are killed and mutated people are banished to the Fringes, where life is hard and feral.

The style threw me at first in a good way, it wasn't what I was expecting, but soon the story of David's life grabbed me in a nice low key way. The events which drive the story grow in impact slowly. It's one of the great strengths of the book, it starts at a very local, focussed point of view and slowly opens up and up until the events have a much larger impact.

The idealogical battle is not as subtle as a modern novel would handle it: take for example how Black Man deals with genetic variance, much less in your face, whereas The Chrysalids has pages of infodump monologue arguing. Still, it's such a big, interesting topic, that I wasn't put off by open arguments. In many ways it's a good old big idea book. What's the true form of man? The current form of man not being the pinnacle, just the current state, and evolution is continuing. What's the difference between mutation and evolution? And so on...

Another topic nicely handled is the idea that those who have exterior deviations, such as an extra finger, are the same inside as "pure" humans. The minor physical aberration is punished because it's visible despite it having negligible effect on how they behave. And yet the biggest deviation in the novel cannot be seen at all, so those who look the same are in fact, very different. Enduring themes, but still worth thinking about.
 
Oh, and being a book written in the fifties it's nice and succinct, less than a couple of hundred pages. Focussed, thought-provoking and still relevant. I like it a lot.

At the start of the year I said I was going to read a selection of apocalyptic books this year. It's turned out to be a highly enjoyable task, with a good mix of horrible despair and joyous hope. Here's an update on how I'm doing:

Few who have read the winner of the 1961 Hugo award, A Canticle For Leibowitz, will have failed to recognise its influence on Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Yet when that latter book was garnering its ecstatic reviews back in 2006, the fact that it clearly fitted into a long science fiction tradition of post-apocalyptic speculation seemed to cause some discomfort. Rare and brave were the mainstream critics who recognised its SF antecedents without coughing and spluttering about how it somehow transcended the genre.

I still haven't read A Canticle For Leibowitz, it's on my Christmas list. The Road however was stomach knottingly brilliant.

I haven't read everything PKD has written (I'm working on it), but everything I have read I've thoroughly enjoyed. Somehow he has the knack of making his stories feel futuristic even though that future has so obviously been passed by and never happened. It's near future Science Fiction that never dates.

And it's normally always quite weird, in a crazy loopy hallucinogenic kind of way.

Dr. Bloodmoney (UK / US) does not disappoint on all counts. It starts before the apocalypse, and continues after it, with one stray chapter that leapt forward with no warning and completely confused me. But that's why I read PKD. The apocalypse is nuclear, the rebuilding after is successful in the countryside, but life in the city is hard. The man responsible for the apocalypse, or rather assumed to be responsible, is hidden away. Some people are exhibiting mutations...

It's a wonderful journey. At the end I was left guessing as to what really happened in parts, doubt and confusion evident as always. Also interesting to me is how it's the self contained sustainable communities that are happy and succeeding, something that feels pressingly relevant to today.

If you like PKD then read it, if you don't you won't like it, if you have never read PKD it's a good place to start.

The Death Of Grass by John Christopher (UK / US) is often talked about as one of the classic post-apocalyptic books. It's funny then that it's not in print. And consequently the second hand copies are going online for a decent amount of money. Fortunately Niall lent me his copy, thanks!

The apocalypse in the story is triggered by a virus which wipes out all types of grass, which includes rice and wheat and of course, plain old grass. The story follows a band of people as they try to escape London and make it to a safe valley in the North of England.

Initially it felt pretty much like a John Wyndham novel. Slowly though differences began to emerge, the main one being that it was a lot nastier. People kill other people for survival, the government tries to nuke London and there is no collective survival instinct beyond immediate small tribes. Also surprising was that the story was just about the journey to escape, whereas I expected it to be a longer examination of the situation.

I particularly enjoyed the slow build up to the apocalypse, which felt real, no sudden cataclysm. And I enjoyed the idea that potatoes could be our saviour :-)

An interesting book, it's easy to see why it's been remembered as a classic, but it doesn't quite reach that status for me.

At the beginning of the year I said that I was going to read twelve post-apocalyptic books, inspired by John Joseph Adams' Wastelands anthology and the associated reading list.

I've done pretty well so far, I've read eight (two reviews outstanding!), the most notable ones that I haven't read so far being A Canticle for Leibowitz and Wastelands itself, which sold out at Amazon and missed being bought for my birthday :-( .

Enter the Octopus has a few more suggestions, some of which are non-fiction:

and A World Beyond Healing” by Nicholas Wade (which has no cover picture on Amazon).

Interesting, I shall investigate.

That post was, by the way, inspired by Cory Doctorow's post Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition, leading to a post on worldchanging.com, which talks about "super-networked post-apocalyptic Peace Corps who respond to the Great Fall by figuring out how to put it all back together". Sounds good to me. It's interesting stuff, and worth reading.

I should however point out that not all post-apocalyptic books are full of Mad Max style militia and violence and gloom (although most have doom, by definition). Some of the books I've read this year are in fact filled with hope in particular the wonderful Earth Abides and the fantastic Alas, Babylon.

On the Beach by Nevil Shute (UK / US) is one of the strangest and most depressing books that I have ever read. To understand why I make that statement I will have to talk not only about the plot but also the very end of the book. Take that as a spoiler warning.

The first thing that struck me is that the language in the book seems very old fashioned, and a bit stilted in places, having not read any other books by Nevil Shute I can't ascertain whether this is a deliberate attempt to invoke the age of the story, or the author's style. (The book was first published in 1957).

The story follows a handful of characters living in Melbourne , Australia, after a nuclear war. The Northern hemisphere has been decimated, and the Southern hemisphere tries to survive. However it is gradually revealed that the fallout has crossed the equator and is moving south in a final cloud of destruction.

It's not only the language which is stilted at times but also the characters actions. This, I'm fairly certain is deliberate, and conjures up images of "stiff-upper-lip" and extreme naivety. The characters carry on their every-day lives, either ignoring the impending doom by not believing it, or casually dismissing their inevitable demise by saying things like "we've only got a few months".

I thought the plot was going to take off at one point when a submarine is sent on a mission, up the coast of the USA. But no, because there is no escape, no hope, nowhere to run. Instead the plot just plods relentlessly towards the apocalypse.

What I found unbelievable was the apparent lack of chaos in the remaining cities. There are mentions of drunk people in the streets, but it's all glossed over, as if the worst that people would do is drink themselves towards the oblivion. It's a very optimistic view of humanity. Maybe it's correct? Even when the end is ever nearer people take their own lives in a dignified manner, choosing it almost matter-of-factly as the best choice. A farmer worries what will happen to his cows when he dies. A submarine commander feels he should go down with his ship. A sailor jumps ship to spend his days fishing, despite dangerous radiation. People go Salmon fishing in the mountains. Someone restores an old racing car. And so on.

The only horror is very near the end when the family we have been following become ill, baby included. And then there is disbelief, and grief and worry. And agonising over whether to take the baby's life. By this time I had become used to the language and the flow, and the horror cut through the disaffectedness very acutely.

And then everyone dies. Everyone.

It's a depressing sermon on the horror of nuclear weapons. It's the exact opposite of Alas Babylon. There's no hope, and because of this I didn't really enjoy the book. But I can appreciate it. I can't even imagine the impact it would have had if read on the year of it's publication, in the early years of the cold war, when destruction loomed at the press of a button.

Worth reading, but do it on a sunny day with your favourite things to hand.