Post-apocalyptic: books tagged “post-apocalyptic” @ BookFinder.com

ISBN 9780060741877 (0-06-074187-2, 0060741872)

by Pat Frank, David Brin

ISBN 0060741872 (0-06-074187-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:

Those fateful words heralded the end. When the unthinkable nightmare of nuclear holocaust ravaged the United States, it was instant death for tens of millions of people; for survivors, it was a nightmare of hunger, sickness, and brutality. Overnight, a thousand years of civilization were stripped away.

But for one small Florida town, spared against all the odds, the struggle was just beginning, as men and women of all ages and races found the courage to join together and push against the darkness. [via]

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ISBN 9788497599412 (84-9759-941-1, 8497599411)

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Apocalipsis

by Stephen King

ISBN 8497599411 (84-9759-941-1)
Softcover, Debolsillo

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Spanish edition [via]

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Apocalipsis: ISBN 8497599411 (84-9759-941-1)
Softcover, Debolsillo

ISBN 9780060892999 (0-06-089299-4, 0060892994)

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A Canticle for Leibowitz

by Walter M. Miller, Mary Doria Russell

ISBN 0060892994 (0-06-089299-4)
Softcover, Eos

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Walter M. Miller's acclaimed SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz opens with the accidental excavation of a holy artifact: a creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma." To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th-century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. As 1984 cautioned against Stalinism, so 1959's A Canticle for Leibowitz warns of the threat and implications of nuclear annihilation. Following a cloister of monks in their Utah abbey over some six or seven hundred years, the funny but bleak Canticle tackles the sociological and religious implications of the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, questioning whether humanity can hope for more than repeating its own history. Divided into three sections--Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man), Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light), and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done)--Canticle is steeped in Catholicism and Latin, exploring the fascinating, seemingly capricious process of how and why a person is canonized. --Paul Hughes [via]

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ISBN 9780553379266 (0-553-37926-7, 0553379267)

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A Canticle for Leibowitz

by Miller, Walter M., Jr.

ISBN 0553379267 (0-553-37926-7)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Walter M. Miller's acclaimed SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz opens with the accidental excavation of a holy artifact: a creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma." To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th-century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. As 1984 cautioned against Stalinism, so 1959's A Canticle for Leibowitz warns of the threat and implications of nuclear annihilation. Following a cloister of monks in their Utah abbey over some six or seven hundred years, the funny but bleak Canticle tackles the sociological and religious implications of the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, questioning whether humanity can hope for more than repeating its own history. Divided into three sections--Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man), Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light), and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done)--Canticle is steeped in Catholicism and Latin, exploring the fascinating, seemingly capricious process of how and why a person is canonized. --Paul Hughes [via]

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A Canticle for Leibowitz: ISBN 0553379267 (0-553-37926-7)
Softcover, Bantam Books

ISBN 9780375822742 (0-375-82274-7, 0375822747)

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The City of Ember

by Jeanne Duprau

ISBN 0375822747 (0-375-82274-7)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books

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It is always night in the city of Ember. But there is no moon, no stars. The only light during the regular twelve hours of "day" comes from floodlamps that cast a yellowish glow over the streets of the city. Beyond are the pitch-black Unknown Regions, which no one has ever explored because an understanding of fire and electricity has been lost, and with it the idea of a Moveable Light. "Besides," they tell each other, "there is nowhere but here" Among the many other things the people of Ember have forgotten is their past and a direction for their future. For 250 years they have lived pleasantly, because there has been plenty of everything in the vast storerooms. But now there are more and more empty shelves--and more and more times when the lights flicker and go out, leaving them in terrifying blackness for long minutes. What will happen when the generator finally fails?

Twelve-year-old Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet seem to be the only people who are worried. They have just been assigned their life jobs--Lina as a messenger, which leads her to knowledge of some unsettling secrets, and Doon as a Pipeworker, repairing the plumbing in the tunnels under the city where a river roars through the darkness. But when Lina finds a very old paper with enigmatic "Instructions for Egress," they use the advantages of their jobs to begin to puzzle out the frightening and dangerous way to the city of light of which Lina has dreamed. As they set out on their mission, the haunting setting and breathless action of this stunning first novel will have teens clamoring for a sequel. (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell [via]

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Damnation Alley

by Roger Zelazny

ISBN 0743486625 (0-7434-8662-5)
Softcover, ibooks, Incorporated

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You've gotta love to hate the 1977 movie Damnation Alley, a cheese-filled classic from sci-fi's cinematic canon. But there's at least one good thing you can say about this otherwise awful flick: it's prevented the movie's far superior source material from being forgotten. Roger Zelazny's post-apocalypse novel predates the George Peppard-Jan-Michael Vincent vehicle by about a decade and represents the fine storytelling talents of one of science fiction and fantasy's most daring writers (likely best remembered for his imaginative Amber series).

Speaking of vehicles: the coolest part of the movie--and likely, thankfully, the only part most people remember--turns out to be even cooler in the book: the flame-spewing, .50-caliber-bullet-belching, grenade-throwing, gigantic all-terrain vehicle that's responsible for getting a crucial antiserum shipment from Los Angeles to Boston to stop a deadly plague. The driver, a despicable lowlife named Hell Tanner, has been given a not-so-difficult choice. He can either get the drugs to the East Coast intact, save humanity, and receive a full pardon for his crimes, or he can refuse and spend the rest of his life in a "zebra suit." So what's the catch? Thanks to World War III, Middle America is now an electrical-storm-torn, heavily irradiated playground for dino-sized Gila monsters, "freak spiders," humongous bats "that eat off the mutie fruit trees down Mexico way," and 120-foot-long snakes as big around as garbage cans. And the native humans still scrambling around the wasteland aren't much less dangerous.

Damnation Alley might not be Zelazny's best, but for reading on, say, a road trip, you can't do much better. Throw in some '60s-style, freak-out closing riffs, and a trip down the Alley becomes pretty hard to pass up. --Paul Hughes [via]

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ISBN 9780375706684 (0-375-70668-2, 0375706682)

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Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

ISBN 0375706682 (0-375-70668-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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What is Dhalgren? Dhalgren is one of the greatest novels of 20th-century American literature. Dhalgren is one of the all-time bestselling science fiction novels. Dhalgren may be read with equal validity as SF, magic realism, or metafiction. Dhalgren is controversial, challenging, and scandalous. Dhalgren is a brilliant novel about sex, gender, race, class, art, and identity.

A mysterious disaster has stricken the midwestern American city of Bellona, and its aftereffects are disturbing: a city block burns down and is intact a week later; clouds cover the sky for weeks, then part to reveal two moons; a week passes for one person when only a day passes for another. The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled. But others are drawn to the devastated city, among them the Kid, a white/American Indian man who can't remember his own name. The Kid is emblematic of those who live in the new Bellona, who are the young, the poor, the mad, the violent, the outcast--the marginalized.

Dhalgren is many things, but instantly accessible isn't one of them. While most of this big, ambitious, deeply detailed novel is beautifully pellucid, the opening pages will be difficult for some: the novel starts with the second half of an incomplete sentence, in the viewpoint of a man who doesn't know who he is. If you find the early pages rough going, push on; the story soon becomes clear and fascinating. But--fair warning--the central nature of the disaster, of its strange devastations and disruptions, remains a puzzle for many readers, sometimes after several readings.

Spoiler warning: If you want to figure out the secret of the novel as you read Dhalgren, then stop reading this review right now! If you want to know the secret before you start, this is what the novel is about: the experience of existence inside a novel. Time passes differently for different characters. A river changes location. Stairs change their number. The Kid looks in a mirror and sees not himself, but someone who looks an awful lot like Samuel R. Delany. Central images include mirrors, lenses, and prisms, devices that focus, reflect--and distort. The Kid fills a notebook with a journal that may be Dhalgren, and is uncertain if he has written much, or any, of it. The characters don't know they're in a novel, but they know something is wrong. Dhalgren explores the relationship between characters and author (or, perhaps, characters, "author," and author).

The final chapter can be even tougher going than the opening pages, with its viewpoint change and its stretches of braided narrative--and the novel ends with the beginning of an unfinished sentence. But the last chapter becomes clear as you persevere; and when you get to that unfinished closing line, turn to the first line of the novel to finish the sentence and close the narrative circle. --Cynthia Ward [via]

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ISBN 9780451460417 (0-451-46041-3, 0451460413)

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Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

ISBN 0451460413 (0-451-46041-3)
Softcover, Roc

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It all started when an electrical storm over the island of Nantucket produced a blinding white flash, causing all electronic devices to cease to function-computers, telephones, engines, radio, television, even firearms-and plunged the world into a darkness humanity was unprepared to face. But even as some people band together to help one another, others are building armies for conquest... [via]

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ISBN 9780345487131 (0-345-48713-3, 0345487133)

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Earth Abides

by George R. Stewart

ISBN 0345487133 (0-345-48713-3)
Softcover, Del Rey

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An instant classic upon its original publication in 1949 and winner of the first International Fantasy Award, Earth Abides ranks with On the Beach and Riddley Walker as one of our most provocative and finely wrought post-apocalyptic works of literature. Its impact is still fresh, its lessons timeless. When a plague of unprecedented virulence sweeps the globe, the human race is all but wiped out. In the aftermath, as the great machine of civilization slowly, inexorably, breaks down, only a few shattered survivors remain to struggle against the slide into barbarism . . . or extinction. This is the story of one such survivor, Isherwood Ish Williams, an intellectual loner who embraces the grim duty of bearing witness to what may be humanitys final days. But then he finds Em, a wise and courageous woman who coaxes his stunned heart back to life and teaches him to hope again. Together, they will face unimaginable challenges as they sow the seeds of a new beginning. One of the finest of all post-holocaust novels. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [via]

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ISBN 9781416520931 (1-4165-2093-7, 1416520937)

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Farnham's Freehold

by Robert A. Heinlein

ISBN 1416520937 (1-4165-2093-7)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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You Would Have Peace? Then Prepare for War! Hugh Farnham was a practical, self-made man. And when he saw the clouds of nuclear war gathering, he built a bomb shelter under his house, hoping for peace and preparing for war. What he hadn't expected was that when the apocalypse came, a thermonuclear blast would tear apart the fabric of time and hurl his shelter into a world with no sign of other human beings. But Farnham's small group had barely settled down to the back-breaking business of low-tech survival when they found that they were not alone after all. The same nuclear war that had catapulted Farnham two thousand years into the future had destroyed all civilization in the northern hemisphere. And the world had changed in more ways than one. In the new world order, Farnham and his family, being members of the race that had nearly destroyed the world, were fit only to be slaves. After surviving a nuclear war, Farnham had no intention of being anybody's slave, but the tyrannical power of the Chosen Race reached throughout the world. Even if he managed to escape. Where could he run to...? [via]

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Farnham's Freehold: ISBN 1416520937 (1-4165-2093-7)
Softcover, Pocket Books

ISBN 9780385490818 (0-385-49081-X, 038549081X)

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The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

ISBN 038549081X (0-385-49081-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Throughout her career, Margaret Atwood has played with different literary genres in her novels--historical fiction (Alias Grace), pulp fiction (The Blind Assassin), the comedy of manners (The Robber Bride)--but no foray into genre fiction has been as successful as her turn to speculative fiction in The Handmaid's Tale. Published in 1985, it echoes Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, but a vibrant feminism drives Atwood's portrait of a futuristic dystopia. In the Republic of Gilead, we see a world devastated by toxic chemicals and nuclear fallout and dominated by a repressive Christian fundamentalism. The birthrate has plunged, and most women can no longer bear children. Offred is one of Gilead's Handmaids, who as official breeders are among the chosen few who can still become pregnant.

The Handmaid's Tale is an imaginatively audacious novel that is at once a page-turning psychological thriller, a moving love story, and a chilling warning about what might be waiting for us around the corner. What ultimately makes it stand out is Atwood's ability to balance a passionate political statement with finely wrought literary fiction. The Handmaid's Tale is a remarkable work by one of Canada's most inventive writers. --Jeffrey Canton [via]

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ISBN 9780312865047 (0-312-86504-X, 031286504X)

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I Am Legend

by Richard Matheson

ISBN 031286504X (0-312-86504-X)
Softcover, St Martins Pr

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One of the most influential vampire novels of the 20th century, I Am Legend regularly appears on the "10 Best" lists of numerous critical studies of the horror genre. As Richard Matheson's third novel, it was first marketed as science fiction (for although written in 1954, the story takes place in a future 1976). A terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive have been transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Except, that is, for Robert Neville. He alone appears to be immune to this disease, but the grim irony is that now he is the outsider. He is the legendary monster who must be destroyed because he is different from everyone else. Employing a stark, almost documentary style, Richard Matheson was one of the first writers to convince us that the undead can lurk in a local supermarket freezer as well as a remote Gothic castle. His influence on a generation of bestselling authors--including Stephen King and Dean Koontz--who first read him in their youth is, well, legendary. --Stanley Wiater [via]

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Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven

ISBN 0449208133 (0-449-20813-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Monumental devastation will sweep across the globe if the newly-discovered Hamner-Brown comet collides with the one major obstacle in its path: Earth.

For millionaire Tim Hamner, the comet is a ticket to immortality. For filmmaker Harvey Randall, it's a shot to redeem a flagging career. And for astronauts John Baker and Rick Delanty, it's a second chance for glory in outer space.

But for a world gripped by comet fever, fascination quickly turns to fear. And only those who survive the impact will know the even greater terror, when rich and poor, politicians and killers, turn to each other or against each other--and the remnants of humanity grow savage to battle for what little remains . . .

Including an all-new introduction by the authors! [via]

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ISBN 9780791075692 (0-7910-7569-9, 0791075699)

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Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale

by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791075699 (0-7910-7569-9)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Bloom's Guides collection, presents concise critical excerpts from The Handmaid's Tale to provide a scholarly overview of the work. This comprehensive study guide also features "The Story Behind the Story," which details the conditions under which The Handmaid's Tale was written. This title also includes a short biography on Margaret Atwood and a descriptive list of characters. [via]

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Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale: ISBN 0791075699 (0-7910-7569-9)
Hardcover, Facts on File

ISBN 9780791059265 (0-7910-5926-X, 079105926X)

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Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Eleanor Atwood

ISBN 079105926X (0-7910-5926-X)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Atwood's best-known novel depicts one woman's struggle to survive in a futuristic society in which women have become property.

The title, Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid's Tale, part of Chelsea House Publishers Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid's Tale through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Margaret Atwood, a chronology of the authors life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. [via]

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Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale: ISBN 079105926X (0-7910-5926-X)
Hardcover, Facts on File

ISBN 9781842322765 (1-84232-276-1, 1842322761)

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On the Beach

by Nevil Shute

ISBN 1842322761 (1-84232-276-1)
Softcover, House of Stratus Ltd

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Book summary:

"The most shocking fiction I have read in years. What is shocking about it is both the idea and the sheer imaginative brilliance with which Mr. Shute brings it off."
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
They are the last generation, the innocent victims of an accidental war, living out their last days, making do with what they have, hoping for a miracle. As the deadly rain moves ever closer, the world as we know it winds toward an inevitable end.... [via]

More editions of On the Beach:

ISBN 9780385721677 (0-385-72167-6, 0385721676)

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Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

ISBN 0385721676 (0-385-72167-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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In Oryx and Crake, a science fiction novel that is more Swift than Heinlein, more cautionary tale than "fictional science" (no flying cars here), Margaret Atwood depicts a near-future world that turns from the merely horrible to the horrific, from a fool's paradise to a bio-wasteland. Snowman (a man once known as Jimmy) sleeps in a tree and just might be the only human left on our devastated planet. He is not entirely alone, however, as he considers himself the shepherd of a group of experimental, human-like creatures called the Children of Crake. As he scavenges and tends to his insect bites, Snowman recalls in flashbacks how the world fell apart.

While the story begins with a rather ponderous set-up of what has become a clichéd landscape of the human endgame, littered with smashed computers and abandoned buildings, it takes on life when Snowman recalls his boyhood meeting with his best friend Crake: "Crake had a thing about him even then.... He generated awe ... in his dark laconic clothing." A dangerous genius, Crake is the book's most intriguing character. Crake and Jimmy live with all the other smart, rich people in the Compounds--gated company towns owned by biotech corporations. (Ordinary folks are kept outside the gates in the chaotic "pleeblands.") Meanwhile, beautiful Oryx, raised as a child prostitute in Southeast Asia, finds her way to the West and meets Crake and Jimmy, setting up an inevitable love triangle. Eventually Crake's experiments in bioengineering cause humanity's shockingly quick demise (with uncanny echoes of SARS, ebola, and mad cow disease), leaving Snowman to try to pick up the pieces. There are a few speed bumps along the way, including some clunky dialogue and heavy-handed symbols such as Snowman's broken watch, but once the bleak narrative gets moving, as Snowman sets out in search of the laboratory that seeded the world's destruction, it clips along at a good pace, with a healthy dose of wry humor. --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca [via]

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ISBN 9781888363258 (1-888363-25-8, 1888363258)

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Parable of the Sower

by Octavia E. Butler

ISBN 1888363258 (1-888363-25-8)
Hardcover, Seven Stories Press

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Octavia E. Butler, the grande dame of science fiction, writes extraordinary, inspirational stories of ordinary people. Parable of the Sower is a hopeful tale set in a dystopian future United States of walled cities, disease, fires, and madness. Lauren Olamina is an 18-year-old woman with hyperempathy syndrome--if she sees another in pain, she feels their pain as acutely as if it were real. When her relatively safe neighborhood enclave is inevitably destroyed, along with her family and dreams for the future, Lauren grabs a backpack full of supplies and begins a journey north. Along the way, she recruits fellow refugees to her embryonic faith, Earthseed, the prime tenet of which is that "God is change." This is a great book--simple and elegant, with enough message to make you think, but not so much that you feel preached to. [via]

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ISBN 9781888363814 (1-888363-81-9, 1888363819)

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Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler

ISBN 1888363819 (1-888363-81-9)
Hardcover, Seven Stories Press

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Book summary:

Octavia Butler tackles the creation of a new religion, the making of a god, and the ultimate fate of humanity in her Earthseed series, which began with Parable of the Sower, and now continues with Parable of the Talents. The saga began with the near-future dystopian tale of Sower, in which young Lauren Olamina began to realize her destiny as a leader of people dispossessed and destroyed by the crumbling of society. The basic principles of Lauren's faith, Earthseed, were contained in a collection of deceptively simple proverbs that Lauren used to recruit followers. She teaches that "God is change" and that humanity's ultimate destiny is among the stars.

In Parable of the Talents, the seeds of change that Lauren planted begin to bear fruit, but in unpredictable and brutal ways. Her small community is destroyed, her child is kidnapped, and she is imprisoned by sadistic zealots. She must find a way to escape and begin again, without family or friends. Her single-mindedness in teaching Earthseed may be her only chance to survive, but paradoxically, may cause the ultimate estrangement of her beloved daughter. Parable of the Talents is told from both mother's and daughter's perspectives, but it is the narrative of Lauren's grown daughter, who has seen her mother made into a deity of sorts, that is the most compelling. Butler's writing is simple and elegant, and her storytelling skills are superb, as usual. Fans will be eagerly awaiting the next installment in what promises to be a moving and adventurous saga. --Therese Littleton [via]

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ISBN 9780553278743 (0-553-27874-6, 0553278746)

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The Postman

by David Brin

ISBN 0553278746 (0-553-27874-6)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Gordon Krantz survived the Doomwar only to spend years crossing a post-apocalypse United States looking for something or someone he could believe in again. Ironically, when he's inadvertently forced to assume the made-up role of a "Restored United States" postal inspector, he becomes the very thing he's been seeking: a symbol of hope and rebirth for a desperate nation. Gordon goes through the motions of establishing a new postal route in the Pacific Northwest, uniting secluded towns and enclaves that are starved for communication with the rest of the world. And even though inside he feels like a fraud, eventually he will have to stand up for the new society he's helping to build or see it destroyed by fanatic survivalists. This classic reprint is not one of David Brin's best books, but the moving story he presents overcomes mediocre writing and contrived plots. [via]

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The Protector's War

by S. M. Stirling

ISBN 0451460774 (0-451-46077-4)
Softcover, Roc

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Richard Matheson's I Am Legend

by Steve Niles, Elman Brown

ISBN 1932382089 (1-932382-08-9)
Hardcover, Diamond Book Distributors

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Richard Matheson's I Am Legend: ISBN 1932382089 (1-932382-08-9)
Hardcover, Diamond Book Distributors

ISBN 9780253212344 (0-253-21234-0, 0253212340)

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Riddley Walker

by Russell Hoban

ISBN 0253212340 (0-253-21234-0)
Softcover, Indiana Univ Pr

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Book summary:

'Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.' Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece. [via]

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ISBN 9780307265432 (0-307-26543-9, 0307265439)

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The Road

by Cormac McCarthy

ISBN 0307265439 (0-307-26543-9)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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Book summary:

Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including last year's bestselling No Country for Old Men, and this year's The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham

Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play).

Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane

[via]

More editions of The Road:

The Road: ISBN 0307265439 (0-307-26543-9)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc

ISBN 9780385121682 (0-385-12168-7, 0385121687)

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The Stand

by Stephen King

ISBN 0385121687 (0-385-12168-7)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing

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Book summary:

In 1978, science fiction writer Spider Robinson wrote a scathing review of The Stand in which he exhorted his readers to grab strangers in bookstores and beg them not to buy it.

The Stand is like that. You either love it or hate it, but you can't ignore it. Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.

"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke."

There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book. --Fiona Webster [via]

More editions of The Stand:

The Stand: ISBN 0385121687 (0-385-12168-7)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing

ISBN 9781568495712 (1-56849-571-4, 1568495714)

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The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition

by Stephen King

ISBN 1568495714 (1-56849-571-4)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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Book summary:

In 1978, science fiction writer Spider Robinson wrote a scathing review of The Stand in which he exhorted his readers to grab strangers in bookstores and beg them not to buy it.

The Stand is like that. You either love it or hate it, but you can't ignore it. Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.

"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke."

There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book. --Fiona Webster [via]

More editions of The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition:

ISBN 9781401207922 (1-4012-0792-8, 1401207928)

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V for Vendetta

by Alan Moore, David Lloyd

ISBN 1401207928 (1-4012-0792-8)
Hardcover, DC Comics

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Book summary:

V for Vendetta is, like its author's later Watchmen, a landmark in comic-book writing. Alan Moore has led the field in intelligent, politically astute (if slightly paranoid), complex adult comic-book writing since the early 1980s. He began V back in 1981 and it constituted one of his first attempts (along with the criminally neglected but equally superb Miracleman) at writing an ongoing series. It is 1998 (which was the future back then!) and a Fascist government has taken over the UK. The only blot on its particular landscape is a lone terrorist who is systematically killing all the government personnel associated with a now destroyed secret concentration camp. Codename V is out for vengeance ... and an awful lot more. V feels slightly dated like all past premonitions do. The original series was black and white and that added to the grittiness of the feel while the colouring here in the graphic novel sometimes blurs David Lloyd's fine drawing. But these are small concerns. Skilfully plotted, V is an essential read for all those who love comics and the freedom, as a medium, they allow a writer as skilled as Moore. The graphic novel contains all the V series plus two additional stories concerning V that were originally considered "interludes". This edition also contains an essay from Moore dating from 1983 explaining the creation process. For any comic fan it's a must-have. --Mark Thwaite [via]

More editions of V for Vendetta: