Posts Tagged ‘post apocalyptic’
I needed a comfort read.
After 4 days of trudging thru the world’s most boring political thriller and finally DNFing it, I needed a comfort read. Something I knew I was going to like, something distracting and escapist, ideally something I’d read before and maybe forgotten the ending of.
So I picked up Borne, by Jeff Vandermeer, which I read a few years ago, and loved.
My strong memories from the first time I read Borne were:
Rachel sleeps with her shoes on. I understand why, but that sucks.
Borne has major sensory overload (i think?). I get that.
I remembered some stuff that Rachel had a boyfriend, I remembered it was a post apocalyptic story where everyone is near starving, I remembered the “villain” was a flying psycho-bear. I remembered thinking Vandermeer seems to have a thing for bears. And a thing for tidal pools.
Borne is a book about, among other things, living with discomfort. When you’re just trying to survive another week, comfort is at the bottom of your priority list. In this burned out, half blown up, shell of a post-apocalyptic city, everyone scavenges anything they can find. Bugs and lizards are dinner, because that’s all there is. You’ll trade anything for the medications that keep you alive. Finding a new set of clothing is easy, there’s usually someone recently dead in the road who doesn’t need theirs anymore. Rachel is so desperate for good scavenge, that she’s willing to climb on a sleeping bear.
No one in this book is comfortable. No one knows how long they’ll be safe. Or loved. Or accepted. Or tolerated.
So why the hell would I read this as a comfort book?
Your guess is as good as mine, but I read it, zipped through it, couldn’t put it down. Borne himself is just as amazing and glorious and curious and weird and alien as he was last time I saw him. He’s naive, but not. Rachel needs someone she can love, and Borne realizes he doesn’t want to disappoint her, he doesn’t want her to regret loving him.
And damn did I forget the ending to this book! It’s going along nicely, Rachel trying to balance raising Borne and trying to figure out what the hell he is, while at the same time keeping her boyfriend Wick at bay. Wick and Borne, um, they don’t really get along, and only Wick knows why.
The letter Wick writes to Rachel at the end, holy crap.
The wall that Rachel sees in the building, near the end. Holy crap.
The things (that are hopefully dead), that are falling out of the boxes, in that room, holy crap.
What Borne means when he says “Rachel, I can’t stop”. And Rachel lying to herself, that she doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. And Wick, who can’t bring himself to tell Rachel anything about his past, for fear he’ll be found unworthy of her love.
So, I’ll give you the same “spoilers” that I gave my friends in my book club:
This book is really, really, good. Like, might be one of my favorite books that I read this year kind of good.
There is a really cool character named John.
Also, Maps! There is a map in the book! But it’s no good anymore, because the seas have risen just enough to move the shoreline. So where the map says there is a harbor? The harbor doesn’t look like that anymore!
Omg, so much cool stuff in this book!!!
Ok, other very, very minor spoilers ahead.
Have you read A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World? If you leave spoilers in the comments I will delete your comment and then say very mean things about you.
For those you who read this last year, and have been wondering what the hell took me so long, you were right! This book is awesome! I’m sorry it took me so long.
Ready? Let’s go.
It’s seems to be a year for me to read post apocalyptic stuff? Yeah, I didn’t plan that either. A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World takes place one or two generations after what people called “the gelding”. We don’t know what caused it, within a generation or two, humanity was near extinction. Hardly anyone could have kids. Some people think it was caused by pollution, some people think it was a bio-weapon, some people think it was from something sprayed in the air. (Huh, maybe Mother Nature is an introvert, and she finally had enough of this loud AFparty that she couldn’t ghost?)
A line from the beginning of the book:
In my whole life, I haven’t met enough people to make up two teams for a game of football. The world is that empty
This is a post- apocalyptic world, but the sun is still shining, you can still fish and hunt and do some basic farming, many places are still safe, and although the weather is warmer, it is still bearable. What this is, is a silent world. A world that no longer has a need for humans. All that silence? It was kinda refreshing, actually.
Ration, by Cody T. Luff
Posted on: February 8, 2020
Ration, by Cody T. Luff
published August 2019
where I got it: purchased new
I bought Cody Luff’s debut novel Ration on a lark. It had been advertised as a horror novel, and I don’t really do horror.
I am however, that person who loves negative space, I look for what’s between the lines, what isn’t said. I like weird, sharp things with edges. I like characters that have no fucks left to give. When you’ve got nothing left to lose, you are at your most dangerous.
Ration is 100% negative space. And it is weird, and it is sharp. And I couldn’t put it down. Everywhere I looked in this book, I wanted to know more about it. The kinds of questions I had, when I finished this book, where the kind of questions all authors want to hear.
I better say this up front: If you are the kind of reader who wants everything explained to you, who wants a lot of exposition and a lot of worldbuilding and backstory, this probably isn’t the book for you. When I say “negative space”, I don’t mean it as a bad thing. This book is packed with atmosphere, and it reads like I’m the person who cornered a starving animal.
Because you should know what you’re getting yourself into.
Ration is post-post-post apocalyptic, As dystopian as it gets. Generations after the calorie companies of The Wind-up Girl, this is generations after The Children of Men. You read a post-apocalyptic book, and you’re like “the world has ended, neat!”, but if there is still an ocean, if there is still grass, if there are still plants and animals to eat, the world still has some life left in it. It is not “over”. Ration takes place after all of that – the ocean is poison, what few plants exist are grown in labs, the population is, well, not. And don’t even get started on animals for food.
There is literally nothing left to lose, what’s left of civilization is at the end of it’s rope. The world of Ration isn’t plan A, or plan B. Plan Z failed decades ago. So here we are, we’ve lost count of how many things we tried, and that all of them have failed so far. Grim? Yes. but this doesn’t read like a grim book, it reads like someone screaming and clawing their way to freedom.
The book opens with a bunch of tween-ish girls living in an old apartment building? An orphanage? An old hotel? Hard to know, and the girls sure don’t know. They just know they’ve been here as long as they can remember. A few mean old ladies run the place. When you’re hungry, you ask the machine in your room for a Ration. Whatever you ask for, it will give it to you. There are only so many calories to go around, so rations will cost you in other ways.
Calories are life. Will you spend them to feed yourself, or to feed someone else? (did you eat meat or eggs today? That cow ate calories. So did that chicken). Will you let someone else die, so you can eat?
We watched the Netflix movie I Am Mother the other day. Deceptively simple, the movie takes what looks like an unbelievable simple plot, and actually doesn’t do a ton with it. This movie isn’t going to win any awards, but it was a good use of my 2 hours, and I’d watch it again. The robot was hella cool!
And yet.
The movie is more about what isn’t ever said, and what isn’t ever explained.
I keep thinking about this movie, and I can’t get it out of my head. I like that I’m thinking about it, and i like that i’m thinking about everything that was never explicitly mentioned, all the negative space, all the showing instead of telling.
In my opinion, the best stories are hiding in plain sight, in the negative space.
Do you have teenagers in the house? Have them watch this movie, and then ask them what the movie is about. Younger kids can watch it too, but they might get bored. Adults can watch it too! But I categorize I Am Mother as great for teenagers, as this really is a YA story.
don’t know what I’m talking about? I Am Mother is a netflix original movie. A young girl, known as Daughter, is being raised in an underground bunker by a robot, known as Mother. They are alone in the bunker, Mother will not allow Daughter to go outside due to dangerous contagions. Daughter is a happy, well adjusted, obedient child. You know immediately that Mother is hiding information from Daughter, perhaps waiting for the right time to tell her. As Daughter is preparing for an important exam, there is a knock on the front door of the compound. A woman is begging to be let in, she has been shot in the leg, and is hoping there is antibiotics in the compound. When the woman sees Mother, she freaks out. Daughter is pulled between curiosity of the outside world, the strangeness of their visitor, and her love of Mother.
The movie feels a little like the movie Moon – as in for most scenes you only see a human character and a robot character. . . and that’s it. It also felt a little like a sanitized version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – very sparse, very quiet, a parent protecting their child.
I don’t feel like writing a review for this movie, but for some weirdo reason I feel like writing a study guide / guided discussion questions? Not sure how that happened, but here you go!
(Spoilers ahead!)
I thought it was neat that none of the characters have names. The robot is “Mother”, the child being raised by Mother is referred to as “Daughter”, and the woman they give limited refuge to is never named.
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm
published 1976
where I got it: purchased used copy
.
.
.
.
.
.
I’ve been looking for a copy of this book for years. I had no idea what the book was about, couldn’t seem to find a copy to save my life, so when I did finally find a copy in a used bookstore, I didn’t care that the cover art was obscured by an ugly sticker, I didn’t care that the ratty paperback appeared to be a library discard, I didn’t care that the back cover copy had a glaring spelling error. THIS BOOK WAS MINE NOW. FINALLY. (yes, i know about Amazon. Yes, I know about ABE books. The joy of visiting used bookstores is better than anything on Amazon or Abe)
Described as a cautionary, quiet science fiction novel about surviving an apocalypse, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang won the Hugo, the Locus, the Jupiter, and the Campbell award, and was nominated for the Nebula award. Along with her husband, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm was among the authors who started the Clarion Workshop. Kate Wilhelm passed away at the age of 89, in March of 2018.
As the story opens, it’s not so much an extinction level event that begins the apocalypse, more a slow death of a thousand cuts. Radiation leaks, soil that can no longer sustain agriculture, outbreaks of disease, famines, droughts, all which lead to riots and civil unrest.
The wealthy Sumner family wasn’t entirely sure what was happening or why, but they knew something horrible was on the horizon, so they planned. A valley full of livestock. A privately funded hospital full of everything they could purchase. A private mill for electricity. Underground bunkers.
The goal was for the entire extended family to be self sustaining, no matter what happened to the rest of the world. What they never saw coming was the sterility, the dead children, the lost pregnancies. What’s the point of planning for survival if no one can have babies? If you can’t create babies the old fashioned way, learn how to make them a new way: through cloning. But even the clones couldn’t naturally have children, so that was another scientific puzzle for the scientists in the family to solve.
The Penultimate Truth by Philip K Dick
published in 1964
where I got it: purchased used
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
You trust your government right? Ok, maybe not 100%, but at least when it comes to defense of the nation and keeping our citizens safe, you trust the head honchos, right?
Nicholas St James and his entire community follow that trust. They remember being shuffled into underground shelters when the bombs fell. They remember being told that it would just be until it was safe to come back to the surface, two years at most. Nick and his family and his community listen to the radio broadcasts, they watch Talbot Yancy speak on TV, they know if they just wait a little longer, that it will be safe to go above ground, and that one day soon their children will see a sunrise and a sunset. One day the war will be over and the citizens of the tanks will be able to stop building and repairing the leadies who fight for the people’s freedom every day. Without trust, there would be chaos and death. They’ve been in these damn tunnels for thirteen years.
Meanwhile, Joseph Adams lives on his estate in California with a phalanx of leadies who are mostly used as house servants and security guards. On a daily basis he flies to his job in New York, where he works as a Yanceman – writing the speeches that will be fed into Talbot Yancy. Who is a robot bolted to an oak desk. Adams and his peers literally write “fake news”. So much so that fake documentaries were even made that all children watch in school, and most adults have nearly memorized, documentaries that convince the people in the shelters that the government did what they did to protect their own people from harm. The Yancemen take their orders from Stanton Brose, who effectively rules as a feared regent. In Brose’s attempts to rule forever, he has had multiple parts of his body replaced with artificial organs, known as artiforgs. There may be half a dozen artificial hearts or artificial livers in existence, but according to Brose, they are all reserved for his use.
Oh, there was a war all right, between West Dem and Pac Peop. And there were bombs that fell. Most of the actual fighting was done by leadies. The American government shoved as many people as they could into underground shelters, and those who survived above ground lived our their sterile lives in park like surroundings, with leadies to do their bidding. It’s so beautiful and empty up here, no dirty workers anywhere. Maybe we’ll wait just a few more years to bring the people from the shelters up, yeah? Because it’s just so nice up here, with only our friends up here. Those filthy people who came up on their own? Oh, they are housed in prison-like apartment complexes, where they have a roof over their head, food, their medical needs are seen to, they’re even given jobs!
No review this week, but lots of books to talk and think about.
I just finished reading Nexhuman by Francesco Verso, wow, what a book! A gripping (and maybe creepy?) plotline, a future built around so many “what if” questions, discussion of the unintended consequences of uploading our minds into robot bodies, this book is like a keystone for so much other science fiction that I’ve read. Lots of hard science questions and possible answers presented in a social scifi / coming of age / doomed romance (maybe they are doomed?) novel that doesn’t shy away from visceral violence. Still thinking about it and putting my thoughts together, and I will probably have to read portions of the book again before writing a review. Anyway, if you’re looking for something different and smart, something that puts the pieces together, keep your eye out for Nexhuman, out in August from Apex Books. Full review coming soon, when I’m able to talk about this book in coherent sentences.
Needing something a little easier on the gut, I picked up Shadows Over London, by Christian Klaver. He’s famous for his Supernatural Sherlock Holmes novellas, and I’ve had this Victorian urban fantasy on my shelf for a while. Christian is a super nice guy, and it’s been too long since I read something of his. 70 or so pages in, and I’m up to my eyeballs in the Seelie Court, the Unseelie Court, a stained glass prison, four siblings who give me some super happy The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe vibes, and way too many cats. Kinda worried now that this isn’t a happy little Victorian urban fantasy with faeries, kinda thinking there is plenty of violence and death in these pages? And sorta wanna reread Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks all of a sudden.
On the short fiction front, I found my way to Cat Pictures Please, (Clarkesworld) by Naomi Kritzer, and Fandom for Robots, (Uncanny) by Vina Jie-Min Prasad. Stories told by sentient AIs? I can’t get enough of it! A robot figuring out how to act like a human, how to understand all the weird shit humans do. . . it helps me feel normal that sometimes even I don’t understand the weird shit humans do. You should go read those short stories I linked to. Each one is a five minute read, but they are so good you will wish they were longer. It’s ok, you can read them again.
I promised you pigs and jellyfish princesses, didn’t I. Pigs first! If you are as obsessed with Fullmetal Alchemist as I am (omg, did you see? They are releasing hardcover editions! Goodbye $300!), then you know the creator behind that series, Hiromu Arakawa, has another manga series called Silver Spoon. Silver Spoon is just a high school slice of life story – no magic, no fantasy, nothing supernatural. All these students are at an agricultural high school, many of them are expected to take over their family’s farms and agro-businesses. The main character is a city boy, and he chose this school to get as far away from his overbearing parents as possible. He doesn’t know the first thing about chickens or horses or pigs, and he finds himself fascinated by understanding more about where our food comes from. 
So much food and animal science, I love it!!! This is a great manga if you don’t think you like manga. It has ZERO annoying tropes, great characters, excellent art, and food science! Like why you need to age pork for a few days.
Archivist Wasp, by Nicole Kornher-Stace
published May 2015
where I got it: purchased new
.
.
.
.
She’s been told her whole life that she was chosen by the Goddess Catchkeep, that only she and the few like her had the ability to be Catchkeep’s avatar.
A ghost told her she’s famous in the underworld, that the dead speak of her skills, her knowledge, and her compassion.
When she gained the title of Archivist by poisoning the previous archivist, she took the name Wasp. Her true name has been buried deep.
It will take a journey to the underworld for Wasp to realize how much of her life is a lie. More than just her true name has been buried deep. Under the shrine, under the town, under what passes for civilization are the lost and forgotten secrets of the dead. The dead rarely speak, but they nearly always communicate, usually by physically attacking living people.
As the Archivist, Wasp is responsible for catching any ghosts found in the region, asking them a specific set of questions, keeping them if they are useful, and releasing them if they prove worthless. Violent ghosts are destroyed. To guide her, she has the notes of the archivists who came before her, some notes are better than others, some archivists collected more knowledge than others. The life of an archivist is usually short and violent, this is not the kind of job you retire from. There can only be one living Archivist at a time, so their knowledge dies with them.
I recently read the soon-to-be-released sequel to Archivist Wasp, Latchkey (July 10th, Mythic Delirium Books) so I’m reading these atmospheric and compelling books backwards. In a way, it’s neat, because I went into Archivist Wasp knowing things about the world that Wasp doesn’t know yet. Latchkey actually had very little in the way of spoilers for the first book, so it was thrilling to watch Wasp as she learns how the harvesting knife works, and I finally got to see what really happened to the Catchkeep Priest.
As expected, Kohnher-Stace’s balanced prose in Archivist Wasp perfectly captures Wasp’s lonesome post-apocalytpic world, just as it exquisitely captures the inhumane violence of Wasp’s life as a temple upstart and then as an Archivist. Imagine Hunger Games on steroids, where teenagers are viciously murdered in cold blood because there can be only one winner, now crank up the masochism and throw in some angry, hungry, and very confused ghosts.
Latchkey, by Nicole Kornher-Stace
Posted on: June 17, 2018
Latchkey, by Nicole Kornher-Stace
publishes July 10th 2018
where I got it: received ARC from the publisher (thank you Mythic Delirium!)
.
.
.
.
.
.
Reading the second book in a series first is like getting to have dessert first. More than likely the worldbuilding is already done, the characters know what they are about, the author has a clearer idea of where the story is going and what should happen. You might feel a little lost, and your mileage will certainly vary. But then when you do go back and read the first book, you’ll feel like a psychic, because you’ll know all sorts of details the characters don’t know!
Suffice to say, the first thing I did after I finished Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Latchkey was order the first book in the series, Archivist Wasp.
Latchkey is part post-apocalyptic, part mythology, part ghost story, and and all perspective shift, told through the lens of Kornher-Stace’s mastery of prose and evocatively transportive language. This is the kind of sharp vibrant prose that would translate beautifully to an anime or a movie. Highly recommended for fans of Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities series, fans of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series, and anyone who enjoys a gorgeously told story about horrible things that should never have happened.
With metaphors that shouldn’t make sense but do, a poetry on the weight of stories that became legend that became religion, and a world where a hypervigilant 6th sense itch is the only thing that will save your life, nothing in Latchkey stays merely on the page. When Isabel was afraid, I was afraid. When she couldn’t breathe, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. When she is about to drop dead of exhaustion, I felt tired and fatigued. She never lost hope, so I didn’t either. When I say this was an exhausting read, I mean that as the highest form of praise.
Latchkey takes place a few years after the events of Korner-Stace’s 2015 award winning Archivist Wasp. Isabel and the other ex-upstarts are still getting used to the fact that they won’t have to kill their friends to survive, that they won’t ever again have to live a life of violence and fear. The old tradition of the archivists has come to an end, even if the PTSD is still at the surface. Isabel and the other girls need to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. In the meantime, they’ll still care for the Catchkeep Shrine, still say the words of their goddess, still have hope that the townspeople of Sweetwater can come to trust them.
the Little Red Reviewer 
Recent Comments