Ok, bad pun.

I have to give the

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read this if you're going to read The Road.

I just had a discussion with Rob earlier today about whether The Road ends with hope or not. My feeling is not. I found this last paragraph quoted somewhere, not sure it's exactly correct, but I don't have the book in front of me to compare.

Once there were brook trout in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in their hand. Polished muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

On one hand, it's very clear that this paragraph is about what once was, not what is. It is of the past. Yet, obviously it's here, at the end, and that carries great significance. Is it here because it's speaking of things greater and older than man that will live beyond him? Is it here as one last regret for what we destroyed?

The bit that goes "Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again." is pretty damning. The very last line about the humming of mystery is about the only thing that could feed into something we don't understand, can't explain, that could continue life.

Maybe that's what McCarthy intended. I personally think it reads like a eulogy. The only hope of life I saw were the morels the man found in the forest and shared with the boy--the only growing thing.

Perhaps life will go on in the world of The Road, but it's clear it cannot be put back the way it was.

I just finished watching Threads and felt the need to chronicle the apocalyptic and post apocalyptic fiction that I have read/watched/listened to. Somehow that subject's become an interest of mine, so it will probably be a long and rambling list.

I have to say that all of these are adult type media. They're dark and disturbing in one way or another, and generally not for kids.

The Post Apocalyptic World

To be difficult and begin with something that's not entirely post apocalyptic, I read a science fiction short story years ago that I haven't been able to track down where everyone just slips sideways out of the world somewhere and leaves a boy (I think) alone. I vaguely recall that in the end people return somehow. Anyway, it was fascinating to me as a kid when this person is left alone to cope with an empty world.

As I've created this list, I've come to realize that what interests me in many of these stories is the environment the characters are placed in. Something that often that draws literary praise is rich, multilayered characters--individuals that you come to know through the work of the author. I remember reading somewhere that in science fiction and fantasy the variables that you're able to alter outside the range of other genres are the "where" and "when." Having believable, "real" characters is critical to a good story, but I believe it's the world that the author creates in these post-apocalyptic tales that I enjoy experiencing through the characters he's placed in it.

The same is often true for me of the computer games I like to play--especially Unreal Tournament. The developers of that game provide tools for the users to create their own levels to share with other players--to build the "user community." One thing I enjoy about playing that game online is just wandering around newly downloaded levels to see what the designer has created. It's a place that existed in the head of the designer, and he's carved it out to create a space I can interact with (and shoot people in).

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

Ok, to contradict myself again, this is a children's story. It's good stuff. It's about a whole city built under the earth to protect some human life against a looming catastrophic war. They lose their instructions on how to get out and inhabit the city far past its intended expiration date. It's better than its sequel (The People of Sparks), but that's also decent, and worth reading if you liked the first one. I just did some googling and found that there's a prequel called The Prophet of Yonwood. I'll have to check that out as well.

The Giver, Gathering Blue, The Messenger by Lois Lowry

Let's do the kids books first. These are all good stories, though a bit mushy, by Lois Lowry. Somehow she changed from writing about Anastasia Krupnik to being a science fiction writer. No offense to Anastasia, of course. Also good kids books.

Planet of the Apes

Included in this list to appease Travis. :-) Just kidding. It's good stuff, if way-way post apocalyptic. I'm referring to the original, not the Marky Mark version.

Time Enough at Last - Twilight Zone

You know, the one when he steps on his glasses. A classic.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

He's an odd one. It's like he always has a headful of good ideas for a story and instead of paring down he crams them all in and lets the reader deal with the noise. I can enjoy some of that, but I hope he didn't pay his editor(s) much. The movie based on the book, Blade Runner, is also good, but is much more specifically about androids and the philosophical human vs. human-created-thing discussion--which is not to say that the book isn't about that, it's just got a good deal more crammed into it as well.

The book paints a world where most life on Earth has been destroyed by nuclear war. Humans are encouraged to ship out to off world colonies, and most have left Earth. All the creatures are dying out, and it's considered a status symbol to own an animal. This includes any animal, not just traditional domestic pets. It's also very significant to find an animal, even an insect or spider, in the wild. There's a scene in the book where androids pull the legs off a spider recently discovered by the protagonist, Rick Deckard, and you can feel his agony at their disregard for its life.

Humans have created robotic animals to substitute for the loss of the living ones. Deckard cares for an "electric sheep" because his died. I think the bleakest bit for me in that book was near the end when Deckard believes he has found a toad, which was thought to be extinct, only to later have his wife flip it over and find a control panel on its underside.

The Stand by Stephen King

His best book. I think most people would agree on that. It's that or The Gunslinger (from the Dark Tower series--below). Both good reads. In The Stand the apocalyptic event is disease (superflu) rather than nuclear holocaust. It's an interesting world because the general environment isn't poisoned in the same way that it would be with radiation.

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

I listened to this on audiobook because it was available at the library. Don't bother. Everyone in the world dies because someone poisoned all the Coke in the world with some incredibly virulent and deadly virus which causes "the blinks." Half of the book feels like the author made up characters so he could write little short stories about them because they'd be interesting and literary. The best bits to me were the Coke advertising scams he (hopefully) invented for the book. The "idea" behind the book would make a good short story. It should have ended there.

The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

The Gunslinger (book one) was a melding of several shorter stories by Stephen King, I believe. Wikipedia says it took him 12 years to write. It's got some rough edges to it, which make it stand out from anything else I've read by Stephen King. I expect it might irritate him to have people say so, since it was one of his earliest works, but it is probably his best book. I know I already said that about The Stand, and I can't say they're both the best, but they're the best in different ways. It's like they were written by two different people. The Stand is his best "Stephen King as Charles Dickens" popular fiction novel, and The Gunslinger stands alone as a piece of literature.

Now, unfortunately, the ending to the Dark Tower series is incredibly frustrating, and he should NOT have pushed the last two through in such a hurry, but gone ahead and taken another 10 years to finish the series, tough luck for the impatient fans. So, while I would absolutely recommend reading the series, enjoy the journey, not the end. King says as much, but I don't think that excuses him from the ending. He'd do better to toss the last book and start over.

Cell by Stephen King

The Stand, shorter, and with zombies. Good stuff.

The Day After

This is probably the American version of Threads, having come out in 1983, a year before Threads did in the UK. It's been so long since I've seen it I don't remember much of it besides a feeling of hopelessness, and will now have to watch it again to refresh my memory. I do remember the ending not having any closure, and being quite disgusted and ill at ease with that when I saw it some summer Saturday or Sunday afternoon when nothing else was on television.

Threads

Threads is, as stated by IMDB, a "Documentary style account of a nuclear holocaust and it's effect on the working class city of Sheffield, England; and the eventual long run affects of nuclear war on civilization." They're the ones with the incorrect apostrophe on the "it's" as of the time that I wrote this. The story begins with the news of the escalating conflict between Russia and the US in the background of the lives of two families. It slowly expands to become the central theme, of course.

The movie mixes in narrations excerpted from some UK civil defense leaflets and videos, a program called (yes, I know it rings a bit oddly today) Protect and Survive. An interesting review of this civil defense policy can be found here. It's a short PDF/HTML doc if you have 5-10 minutes. The criticisms in this document are much the same as those made dramatically through the Threads movie.

The most interesting bit (to me) is that the review states that "in civil defence exercises organised by the Home Office one common problem kept repeating itself: during the simulation of the aftermath of nuclear attack not enough people had died." The world left to those survivors in Threads cannot sustain them, and becomes a hungry, cold place of despair.

Which brings us directly to...

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

As stark, and perhaps graphic (at the time), as Threads was, the world it takes the viewer to is full of hope compared to the world Cormac McCarthy created in The Road. This book is the bleakest thing I have encountered in my life. It is a void that leaves a raw hole in you after every page you read. The world is burned ashes. There are no chapters. There are no names. The dialog is sparse--the set of words the characters share is small. The language of the book itself is lean. My personal belief is that you cannot fully experience this book if you have not had children. I'm not certain it is a good thing to fully experience this book, but that's my opinion. I say this because the way you experience the world changes when you begin to filter everything you see through "what if that were my child?" That is something you cannot help but do as a parent. I'm glad I read this book, but it was awful and draining (thanks, Rob!).

I say there are no names, but there is one. I'll certainly misquote here, but there is one old man that the man and boy meet who gives them the name Ely. When the man questions him as to whether that is his real name he says it's not, and he won't give it to them. The man asks him if he's scared to share his name, and he says he doesn't give people his real name. He doesn't want them going around and talking about what he said or what he did. This way they can talk about him, but it won't really be him. There are all kinds of interesting bits in that interaction in the book--which forces me to admit that there is humor in the book, and there are brief scenes of joy between father and son, but they are pale and slight before the horror of the rest of the story.

I thought I caught a reference to The Stand in The Road, in which the one of the characters states that "you talk about taking a stand, but there is no stand to take." Perhaps Cormac McCarthy would not deign to mention Stephen King and it was not such a reference. Regardless, it spoke to me that The Stand was entertainment, and this was brutal reality.

There is a positive message in The Road, which I won't discuss here, but you could certainly read about later if you were interested, and which you'll likely pick up in some form just by reading the book. But the journey there is harrowing.

So, that's where I leave you, at the end of a long, rambling road of despair. But there is hope. I'm not done with my list. I'm just tired. It's late. More to come, I'm sure. Ok, I know that's not really hope. It's more like a threat.

Speaking of which, who are you and why did you read this all the way to the end? You're insane!