The slew of post-apocalyptic media out there makes me realize how screwed I’d be in the event of an actual apocalypse. I have no survival skills and I’m not familiar with any weaponry. Anyway, I picked up The 5th Wave based on reviews that said it didn’t suck, in fact was quite good, and it had a badass teenage heroine à la Katniss. Were these reviews right? Well, yes and no. Aliens have finally come to Earth, but instead of bringing gifts, they set off a deadly series of events. Here’s a wave-by-wave program to take out the human race: The 1st Wave: Shut down […]
The Trouble with Poet is How Do You Know It’s Deceased…
Lucifer’s Hammer – Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven – 1977 When I saw this on a used bookstore shelf, I recalled I hadn’t read it since the seventies. Something about a comet hitting Earth and the struggles of the survivors in California trying to save civilization. Feeling the need for a hard dose of pure science fiction and inspired by the recent news of the European Space Agency’s spacecraft landing on a passing comet, I bought a copy to reread and was surprised how timely […]
Millennials are so screwed if this is our future.
I was surprised to find California by Edan Lepucki on several “Best” lists this year. While I did find it to be an easy, quick read I didn’t find the story itself to be as entertaining or engrossing as many of the reviews lead me to believe it would be. I didn’t regret reading California, but I certainly wouldn’t credit Lepucki with having written “a gripping and provocative debut novel” either. Frida and Cal live in the woods. Alone. In a shack. Apparently the […]
Living for the ‘maybe.’
Goodreads summary: “Exiled from her home, the enclosed city of Reverie, Aria knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland–known as The Death Shop–are slim. If the cannibals don’t get her, the violent, electrified energy storms will. She’s been taught that the very air she breathes can kill her. Then Aria meets an Outsider named Perry. He’s wild–a savage–and her only hope of staying alive. A hunter for his tribe in a merciless landscape, Perry views Aria as sheltered and fragile–everything he would expect […]
California, by Edan Lepucki
Set in the middle of this century, “California” spins a tale of an earth in flux. Droughts, super storms and climate shift have caused financial and environmental catastrophes that leave the 1% in “safe” enclaves while the rest scramble to eek out a life wherever they can, preferably out of the cities, preferably with like-minded souls that can provide a group illusion of safety and power. Cal and Frida are a young couple who flee dry Los Angeles to build an existence in […]
Genetic engineering, a nuclear holocaust, human identity, and twoo wuv?
The first thing I will say is this: Ruins, despite its bleak title, had possibly the happiest ending in a YA dystopian trilogy that I remember reading in quite some time, and, admittedly, I was kind of relieved. I was getting the sense that many YA authors have been under pressure from publishers — and their own ambition — to write ‘shocking’ or ‘original’ endings, so they’ve been steered away from neat resolution and feel-goods. But an ending can be positive without being trite, you know? […]
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