Posts Tagged ‘books’

Foreign Post-Apocalyptic Novels

Monday, January 18th, 2010

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m intersted in non-American perspectives of the end of the world, but I haven’t had much luck finding post-apocalyptic novels originally written in something other than English. The only foreign PA novel that I can recall reading is Malevil, and I only know of a few others.

Probably the most notable recent example is the Russian novel Metro 2033 (and its sequel, Metro 2034), which I plan to read as soon as I can get my hands on it. My limited searching has only turned up three others – the French Ravage from 1943 and La Compagnie des Glaces (The Ice Company) from 1980, and Russian novel, The Last War, from 1970.

Does anyone know of any others that would be worth tracking down?

Huge Bundle of PA Ebooks

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

As I was scroogling for PA book links, I came across a listing for a torrent containing a ton of PA ebooks in htm, txt and pdf formats.  I had a lot of them already, but still it’s a great collection, and many of them I’d never heard of, so it’s a great find.  If you want to find it yourself, do a search on your favorite torrent site for “apocalyptic ebooks” or “Gerard of Utah”.

The collection contains:

Aldiss, Brian – Greybeard
Aldiss, Brian – Hothouse
Anderson, Poul – Vault of the Ages
Atwood, Margaret – Oryx and Crake
Atwood, Margaret – The Handmaid’s Tale
Ballard, JG – The Drowned World
BeauSeigneur, James – Christ Clone Series
Brackett, Leigh – The Long Tomorrow
Brin, David – The Postman
Brunner, John – The Sheep Look Up
Budrys, Algis  – Burning World
Budrys, Algis – Some Will Not Die
Butler, Octavia – Parable of the Sower
Butler, Octavia – Parable of the Talents
Card, Orson Scott – The Folk of the Fringe
Christopher, John – The Death of Grass (AKA No Blade of Grass)
Crace, Jim – The Pesthouse
Crowley, John – Engine Summer
Dick, Philip K – Dr Bloodmoney or How We Got Along After the Bomb
Dickson, Gordon – Wolf and Iron
Disch, Thomas – The Genocides
DuPrau, Jeanne – The City of Ember
Florman, Samuel – The Aftermath
Frank, Pat – Alas, Babylon
Galouye, Daniel – Dark Universe
Goonan, Kathleen Ann – Nanotech Series
Herbert, Frank – The White Plague
Hoban, Russell – Riddley Walker
Huxley, Aldous – Ape and Essence
Kearny, Cresson – (Non Fiction) Nuclear War Survival Skills
Kornbluth, CM – The Syndic
Laumer, Keith – Catastrophe Planet
Leiber, Fritz – Gather, Darkness!
London, Jack – The Scarlett Plague
Matheson, Richard – I Am Legend
McCammon, Robert – Swan Song
McCarthy, Cormac – The Road
McDevitt, Jack – Eternity Road
McIntyre, Vonda – Dreamsnake
Merle, Robert – Malevil (Non English)
Merril, Judith – Shadow on the Hearth
Miller, Walter – St Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman
Miller, Walter – A Canticle for Leibowitz
Niven, Larry – Lucifer’s Hammer
Norton, Andre – Daybreak 2250 AD
Norton, Andre – No Night Without Stars
O’Brein, Robert – Z for Zachariah
Pangborn, Edgar – Davy
Sheffield, Charles – Aftermath 1 – Aftermath
Sheffield, Charles – Aftermath 2 – Starfire
Shiel, MP – The Purple Cloud
Shelley, Mary – The Last Man
Shute, Nevil – On the Beach
Simak, Clifford – Cemetary World
Smith, Mitchell – Snowfall Series
Stewart, George R – Earth Abides
Stirling, SM – Change Series
Tucker, Wilson – The Long Loud Silence
Tucker, Wilson – The Year of The Quiet Sun
Varley, John – Millennium
Wilhelm, Kate – Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Williams, Walter – The Rift
Wylie, Philp & Balmer, Edwin – When Worlds Collide
Wylie, Philp & Balmer, Edwin – After Worlds Collide
Wyndham, John – The Chrysalids
Zelazny, Roger – Damnation Alley

I just wish Malevil was the English version; am still looking for that one.

ps  If you need a reader to make use of these ebooks, I’d suggest the BeBook.  It doesn’t have the wireless capabilities of the Kindle, but it can read tons of formats natively with no conversion necessary.  I’ve been using one for six months and I love it.

If you’re thinking of getting one, use the referral code iwant@bebookdiscount.com to save 25 Euros.

Things have changed a bit around here…

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

You, faithful reader, might have noticed that things have changed a bit around here.  I spent the last few days switching the site from Blogger to WordPress.  Overall, it was basically painless.  Signed up for new hosting with Godaddy, installed WordPress, and imported all my posts from the Blogger account.

I haven’t fully decided on a theme yet, but I guess I’ll stick with this one for now.  I tweaked the color scheme a bit, and I like how it turned out.

One other change is the fact that I started a Twitter account for MEGAT0N, and will be adding my tweets here as posts.  And when I add a post here it will send it out as a tweet as well.

I spent some time rediscovering a few good lists of PA books.  Take a look at the links in the sidebar, and maybe you’ll come across some books you hadn’t known about before.

MEGAT0N has been Twitterized

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

I just signed up for a Twitter account and added a Twitter feed of the posts over on the right sidebar. I also set up a Twitterfeed so that anything I post here will get sent back over to Twitter.

I know I don’t post enough here, but I’m on Twitter a lot, so I figure I’ll be able to throw up random, occasional thoughts on books I’m reading or shows I’m watching and such.

Now I just have to find someone to read them…

Finally got to read Day by Day Armageddon

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

I’d been keeping an eye on the book Day by Day Armegeddon by JL Bourne for a while, but it was really hard to find a copy unless you were willing to pay big bucks for it on Ebay or something

But I guess it was finally reprinted, ’cause I was able to get a copy off Amazon for a normal price. I figured it would be a good vacation book and it was. Finished it in a couple of evenings and really enjoyed it.

It’s a story of the zombie apocalypse written as the narrator’s journal, with an entry or two per day for a few months. The zombies in this one are pretty much the stereotypical shamblers that most people think of when they think zombies. The narrator is a Naval aviator, but he definitely has knowledge of survival tactics beyond what he learned it flight school. Lots of description of weapons and such.

Overall, it was very entertaining, but it did kind of just stop at the end. I understand the author is working on a sequel so maybe the story get wrapped up there.

It wasn’t as good as World War Z, but I’d still definitely recommend it.

Just read The Host

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

So I just finished reading The Host by Stephanie Meyer. I hadn’t planned on mentioning it here, but it turned out to be post-apocalyptic in the sense that it takes place years after a planet-wide invasion where all but a handful of the population have been turned into mindless “hosts” for centipede-like aliens.

I was a big fan of Ms Meyer’s previous books, the Twilight Saga, so I was really looking forward to reading this one. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t anywhere near up to the Twilight standard. I’d recommend it, but only if, like me, you don’t go into it expecting a hard sci-fi alien invasion story. It really is much more of a relationship book, rather than an action one.

Good, but not great, would sum it up, I guess.

Bailed on Bar Code Tattoo

Friday, April 25th, 2008

I tried to read The Bar Code Tattoo but it was so bad I just couldn’t finish it. It might have more appeal to a younger audience that wouldn’t question how dumb certain aspects of it were. I didn’t have that problem at all with the other young adult series I just read, Uglies and Fire-Us.

I’m about 75 pages into The Hopkins Manuscript, and it’s pretty good so far. It’s definitely old school, but I think I’ll be able to get all the way through it without losing interest.

What Else I’ve Been Reading

Friday, March 28th, 2008

I guess it’s about time for what have turned out to be semi-annual “what have I been reading” posts.

Since we last spoke, I’ve read a few PA novels.

First was I Am Legend. I liked it, but I thought the ending was strange. I had seen the Vincent Price movie version recently, so I kind of knew what was going to happen, but the book didn’t really explain it better than the movie did. But overall it was ok.

More recently, I read through the a couple of “young adult” trilogies, both of which I really liked.

The first was the Uglies Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld. I also read the fourth related book, Extras. If you can suspend belief about the hoverboards, then the rest of the story is pretty good.

The other one was the Fire-Us Trilogy. This one was meant for slightly younger readers than Uglies, but it takes place in the very near PA-future, which is the sub-genere of PA fiction that I really love. The story is just 5 years after the Fire-Us has killed everyone older than the onset of puberty, and it’s really interesting to see how children would grow up and how much they would know about the world if it ended when they were only eight or nine years old.

It even had escapes from religious whackjobs, which is enough to make any PA story great. Overall, highly recommended.

I’m currently reading Starcross
, which isn’t PA, but it is by Philip Reeve, who wrote the Mortal Engines series. That one is PA, but I’ve only read the first one so far. I liked it, so I’ll definitely get to the rest sometime.

Next on my list I think will be Darkness and Dawn by Andre Norton. I’ve got it on loan from the library, and mean to read it if I don’t run out of time. I may start it and see if it’s worth renewing.

I also picked up a copy of The Hopkins Manuscript on Ebay. I don’t really know how good it’s supposed to be, but it was written in 1939, and I tend to like that old style of writing. We’ll see how it goes.

MEGAT0N – Discussing Books About The End Of The World As We Know It

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Response to a Comment
Dave posted the following:
“Hey there – attempted to send ya an email on this – I’ve been looking for the name of a book that was read to me in my youth at school. This would have been around or before 1984 or maybe 1985. The basic premise is that everyone over a certain age has died from a plague or disease. There are only kids left. This focuses on probably one boy and 2 girls. I can’t really remember all of it, but I’ve been looking for a while. The boy is starting to get feelings for one of the girls and the other girl gets jealous and I think comes after him or possibly the other girl with a butcher knife. :) That’s about it for remembering. Maybe you’ve read it or have some other ideas on where to look – I’ve checked all of your links and have been searching other internet databases for a while.
Thanks,
Chris”

I’m wondering if he might be thinking of The Girl Who Owned a City by OT Nelson. It was written in 1975, which would fit Chris’ recollection, and Wikipedia says it was often used in schools.

I hadn’t ever heard of it, but it does sound interesting, so I think I’m going to track it down and give it a read.

ps If anyone has any other ideas for the book Chris is looking for, please leave a comment.

Some Recent Reads

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

So it’s been a while since the last post again. Here are some of the books I’ve read over the last few months.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Absolutely fantastic. When I saw that it was an Oprah Book Club pick, I almost skipped it, but that would have been a huge mistake. This book is great; probably one of the most realistic-feeling post-apocalyptic books I’ve ever read. It’s just a story of a man trying to keep his son alive in the aftermath of an un-named apocalypse, but as the father of two myself, I kept wondering how I’d handle those situations. A must read for an fan of post-apocalyptic literature.

Also very enjoyable was World War Z, by Max Brooks. I haven’t read too many zombie books yet, but if you’re a fan of the genre, then this is another must read. Each chapter is a separate account of how a particular individual survived the recently concluded zombie war. But the accounts are in roughly chronological order, so you can get a good idea of exactly how the war played out. Very authentic-feeling and very interesting. It definitely got me in the mood for more zombie adventures.

Then one that I can’t believe I never came across before (because it was written in like 1915) is The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London (yes, that Jack London.) It’s a very quick read; I finished it in one Sunday evening, but it’s pretty good. I was going to say it fits the formula of the elderly survivor telling stories of the before-times to those around him who were born after the apocalypse, but then now that I think about it, this book is probably the originator of that formula itself.

More recently, I read Plague Year, by Jeff Carlson. This one was just okay to me. The premise was interesting, a world-wide nanoplague that kills everyone who’s below a certain altitude. But it never really paid off. I was never really into any of the characters, and the ending felt like it was just a setup for a sequel.

I’m now halfway through Earth Abides, by George Stewart. This one’s a classic that I’ve read before, but I was in the mood for that kind of story so picked it up off my shelf.

I have I am Legend, which I’ve never read before, on reserve at the library, so that will be my next read, I think.