.ICBM. said:
Cormac Mccarthy's - The Road
*snip*
FINALLY! I was shocked it took so many posts for this book to be mentioned.
The Road truly makes you understand how stylized and glorified the majority of post apocalyptic fiction is. Whether it's about surviving the zombie apocalypse or fighting super mutants or being Mel Gibson nearly all of them managed to insert and element of "cool" into a bleak situation.
Cormac's vision of the end of days is very different. There's no bad ass shoot outs or city's of junk. This is one man and his son trying to survive. Not even that. Trying not to die too soon.
This book will make you want put a gun in your mouth. But in a good way. It grabs you by the throat and never let's go. Though ever moment is absolute undiluted misery you must keep going.
The funny thing is though the thick fog of depression makes every tiniest triumph and light in the darkness such a joyest moment that it makes it all worth. Honestly, you have no idea how uplifting finding a can of coke can be.
Strangely enough the book gives very little information away about anything that's happening in the world other than these two survivors struggle. There a little snippets here and there other things happening but none of it is made clear, which makes the book all the more interesting. We never even know how the world came to be this way (I doubt it was nuclear war though).
There are also moments that truly make you question what you'd do to survive. Would you help someone on the road when ever moment of life is differcult as it is? If all the animals and plants began to die would you consider cannibalism? Would you kill your loved one so he/she wouldn't suffer? Would you want to live at all?
It's a very different world from that of Fallout; there's no humor. No heroes. No hope. This is the apocalypse as it would be. Read it, but keep all implements you make be able to harm yourself with locked away when you do.
EDIT: This is also a strange case where the resent film is possibly as good as the book, as well as very faithful. Both are worth checking out.
Herr Mike said:
The Road was an incredible book, I read it in two sittings. I haven't seen the movie, I'm not sure I want to.
I would like it if Fallout were a little more like it.
I don't. I fear I'd batter myself to death with the mouse.
The movie is a very faithful adaption, it's well worth seeing.