If you've been paying attention to almost any mainstream culture over the past few weeks, you probably would have noticed a certain buzz in some quarters about an enormous new post apocalyptic role playing game. Fallout 4 arrived this month with an appropriately nuclear sized bang and seems to have taken over the world. No doubt you have seen the adverts, both on the internet and in the real world. The internet is awash with talk of it, your friends and their kids are talking about it, and collectively its players have already spent hundreds of years of playtime exploring its post-nuclear wasteland.
And all that is wonderful for those that are into it. But what if you're like me, bitten by the post apocalyptic bug whilst having absolutely no interest in playing the game. Well, I'm here to help. Here are a few post-nuclear literary worlds you can immerse yourself in whilst your friends have disappeared because they're spending days at a time on their PlayStation.
Mortal Engines:
Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines quartet is set several thousand years and two or three world orders after the end of a cataclysmic event known as the Thirty Minute War. As a solution to the problem of the world's dwindling natural resources, many of the remaining inhabitants of the world have returned to a nomadic lifestyle and put their cities on wheels. Vast tracked cities roam the remains of Europe and a now empty North Sea gobbling up natural resources and hunting other cities in a system known as Municipal Darwinism.
If this all sounds a bit grim, rest assured, it isn't. Mortal Engines is a rip-snorting action-adventure on a massive scale, following two outcasts from London that has almost everything. There are the aforementioned cities on wheels. There are airships, gunfights, and humorous misunderstandings of the technology we left behind. There is a terrifying and unstoppable, yet sympathetic antagonist, and best of all, there is Hester Shaw. One of the strongest, angriest female leads I have ever laid my eyes upon. I really can't say enough good things about Mortal Engines, and if you enjoy a great adventure story, you need to put this on your list.
There is also a quartet of prequels, starting with Fever Crumb, set at the dawn of the traction age. Sadly, we may never see the fourth book, but the three that we have wrap up quite nicely on their own and are well worth your time. Just be sure to read Mortal Engines first.
The Metrozone:
Put simply, Simon Morden's Metrozone trilogy is Die Hard transplanted into London, with a post-nuclear twist.
Metrozone's world is one that has survived a wave of nuclear terrorism perpetrated by a group of Christian fundamentalists known as the Armageddonists. It is here that we meet the lovably unlovable scientist, Russian refugee, and possible sociopath, Samuil Petrovich. A chance decision to intervene in a kidnapping sets off a chain of events involving the Neo-Yakuza, an all powerful computer virus called the New Machine Jihad, some car chases, some crashes, many explosions, a few giant robots, several heart attacks, and a warrior nun. And that's just the first book.
Just like Die Hard, the story tears along at breakneck pace and Morden takes great delight in beating the stuffing out of his leading man. You'll read these books in a single sitting. They're that good.
Metro 2033:
And now for something a little different. Metro 2033, by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky is an altogether more plausible study of what we might become in the aftermath of the unthinkable. Set twenty years after a nuclear strike on Moscow, what might be humanity's last remains make the best of what they have living in the world's largest bomb shelter, the Moscow Metro. Unremittingly bleak from beginning to end, the inhabitants are beset by terrors from all sides. The surface is devastated by war and given to the mutants. Radiation seeps through the cracks and makes everyone sick. People lose their minds in the darkness of the tunnels or to the Dark Ones who periodically venture down from the surface. And of course there are the other people, who can be much worse than all of that.
So yes, Metro 2033 is dark, but it's also an excellent study of how we band together to cope with the most extreme situations and a compelling journey to take alongside Artyom, the story's leading man. Read it and feel the terror at how close we once were to this book becoming reality.
Wool:
Continuing the bleak, we move onto Hugh Howey's Wool. In Wool, we find ourselves with Juliet, living in a silo with no contact with the outside world except for what's shown on the screens in the main communal area. Those screens show a completely dead vista of lifeless foothills and hints of towers in the distance. As a power struggle and rumblings of an uprising begin to brew, Juliet finds herself caught in the middle, and that's when the real trouble starts for her.
Whilst Wool is less unremittingly grim than Metro 2033, it still has a very downbeat and dystopian tone. The society in the silo is very much two tiered, and very controlled. The elites of the upper floors tend to look down upon the people of the lower floors, who as usual are the people who actually keep the civilisation running. Particularly cruel is the twist inflicted upon anybody unlucky enough to be sent to the surface. Like Metro 2033, Wool is scary because it's so plausible, and it's very much worth your time for that reason.
Shades of Grey:
Let's finish on something light, shall we? When you open the covers of Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey, you find yourself in Chromatacia; Britain several hundred years after The Something That Happened. A Britain where your place in society is determined by the colours you can and can't see. In fact, almost everything in this society, likened by Fforde as an English grammar school as run by Pol Pot, is determined by colour. From the names of towns and places to a person's job, to whom you can and can't associate with, even your name. Amusingly, certain shades of green have narcotic effects and stronger shades, such as lincoln, are strictly controlled.
Also, there is a critical shortage of spoons.
So yes, Shades of Grey is a very strange book, and it drops you in at the deep end, with leading man Eddie Russet about to be digested by a carnivorous tree. There's a lot to take in, but thankfully, Shades of Grey has an ace up it's sleeve. It is very funny, which helps lubricate the gears of your mind as you try to catch up with the strange place you've found yourself in. Once you're up to speed however, things quickly get sinister, stranger and amazingly, funnier. The plot barrels along through a conspiracy that will shake the characters' worldview to its core and on to an ending that will definitely play on your mind.
I love this book, and have recommended it to pretty much everyone who's ever asked me what they should be reading. If I have one gripe with it, it's that the next book isn't coming soon enough.
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