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Showing posts with label post apocalyptic novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label post apocalyptic novels. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

 


Station Eleven is about the Georgia virus, one that is even more disrupting than COVID-19. In this prescient novel, Mandel writes about a virus that ends civilization, eliminating people quickly and with them the knowledge of technology. After it hits, there's no electricity, phone, internet, cars, law enforcement, hospitals, or government. Bands of survivors that set up settlements in abandoned restaurant, hotels, and airports.


The principal characters are all connected in some way to a King Lear production that took place shortly before the collapse in Toronto. An aging actor, Arthur, dies on stage; the actor's childhood friend, Clark, and a child actress in the production, Kirsten, survive. 

While this is a grim scenario, Mandel cleverly knits the factions together. Jeevan, for instance, is an aspiring paramedic that rises out of the audience to try to rescue Arthur. His story interconnects with Kirsten's and the roaming Symphony that band together for art's sake after the collapse. 

Kirsten believes that "survival is insufficient." In addition to survival, there must be beauty and art; thus, she continues to perform Shakespeare with the Symphony in spite of the hazards. The Symphony sometimes wander through dangerous territory and encounter sinister people such as the mysterious Prophet.

The Symphony are all armed and trained, even if they aspire to preserve beauty. Kirsten is an expert knife-thrower who can defend herself in necessary. The Prophet, in contrast, is an armed aggressor who takes what he wants, including children, as his wives. He kills without regard and proclaims himself the "Light."

The Prophet is also connected, Clark soon learns, to his old friend Arthur. Miranda is linked to Arthur and it is her graphic novel, Station Eleven, that provides a clue to the Prophet's origins. Everything is wonderfully knotted together, its up to the reader to unravel the connections. 

HBO is creating a ten-episode drama series based on Station Eleven starring Mackenzie Davis and Himesh Patel. 

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

This is an absolute stunner in every sense of the word--rich prose, tight plotting, and imaginative twists and turns. 

The Company has manufactured biotech that wreak havoc upon the City. The actions of Mord, a man-made bear-like creature, and his proxies cause the Magician and her pseudo-children to rebel. 

Even before the rebellion, however, the City has been wrecked, leaving many scavengers. Rachel, who lives in the Balcony Cliff with Wick, has learned the art of scavenging. 

Though there is a gap in her memories, Rachel remembers once living on an island. Later, as the waters rose, she became a climate refugee and moved to the City.

Perhaps she sees something of herself in the creature, Borne, who helplessly clings to Mord's flank. She nurtures him yet she doesn't know exactly what he is. 


No one does, not even Borne himself. For a time, he ponders if he is a biotech weapon created by the Company. Wick suggests that they deconstruct him to see what he is but Rachel feels outraged. He is a "person" in her eyes yet he at first seems little more than a plant with eyes. 

Saturday, February 11, 2017

The Girl With All The Gifts

If you liked the television series Stranger Things, you might like, The Girl With All The Gifts

Melanie lives in a military facility with other children where she is given minimum care. Each day she is taken at gunpoint to a schoolroom and tied to a chair. Unbeknownst to her, Melanie is infected with a zombie-producing virus. She is infected, yet remains half-immune.

She and a few other "hungries" as they are known maintain their ability to think and reason. Consequently, scientists like Dr. Caldwell. want to study and even dissect them. Melanie and the other children are treated as animals, as lab experiments. 

The only kindness Melanie receives is from her teacher, Miss Justineau.

Even if you've read a hundred other zombie books, this one is different. All of the characters, Sargeant Parks, Private Gallagher, Dr. Caldwell, Miss Justineau, want to survive. Melanie wants more than that; she wants a chance to be treated like a human being.  


Other books with similar themes:
Heller, Peter. The Dog Stars.
Gregory, Daryl. Raising Stony Mayhall. 

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Wool by Hugh Howey

In this trenchant debut novel, Hugh Howey describes a highly-stratified, post-apocalyptic society. To escape toxins, human beings have at some point crept into an underground silo of immense size. 

Some live in the up tops, some live in the mids, and some live in the deepest deep, Mechanical. Those at the top rarely know what is happening at the deepest levels. 

Criminals or "cleaners" are forced outside to clean the silo's only window situated at the top of the silo. Dust storms keep this window cloudy. Residents can only see a clear view after a doomed silo resident cleans the window with a steel wool pad.

Something , however, is amiss in this highly mechanized, highly stratified world. Children in nurseries are given children's books but they are told the children's books tell lies. They believe green grass and blue skies are fairy tales.

But what if everything you thought you knew about your society was a lie?

No one knows who built the silo or who erased the servers data about the uprisings. Alison, Sheriff Holston's wife, believes IT is hiding something. Holston never gets to know what his wife learns. She self-destructs and leaves the silo voluntarily.

When a new sheriff is chosen, Juliette, she is quickly ousted by IT and forced to become a cleaner. She expects to die but she discovers something that takes the novel in a whole new direction.

Jules is a wonderful character--strong and smart--whose act of defiance--entering silo 17--makes all the silo 18 residents rethink what they know. 

Wool is one of three exciting novels that form a trilogy. If you like Wool, you may like Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, or Andrew Weir's The Martian.

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