I Am Legend is excellent, indeed. I have a soft spot for Bid Time Return, which was made into the movie Somewhere in Time. Yes, it was kind of sappy, and I get misty-eyed at the end. Nice touch paying time-travel homage to Jack Finney in the movie: Richard Collier's professor being a "Professor Finney."Originally Posted by Sturgeon's Lawyer
Lou
Atta boy, Luther!
I read that one, too. Considering his previous achievements, for Matheson it's tantamount to sleepwalking. The protagonist is also an obvious reflection of the author himself.
Easily!
(I do have a soft spot for The Omega Man.)
I agree.Books are always better than the movies, even World War Z.
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Tow Truck Springfield VA
The only movie I've seen that is better than the book is Clockwork Orange.
Lou
Atta boy, Luther!
I think the original Planet of the Apes movie (the one with Charlton Heston) is better than Pierre Boulle's book. But then, I've never read the book in French, so I could be missing a great deal.
Impera littera designata delenda est.
I think "Blade Runner" is better than "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep".
The book and movie have little in common apart from the title, zombies, and the world being overrun by zombies.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. It's a very slick production with an ending that work very well. It stands out as one of the better zomb-apoc flicks.
Just finished a fabulous book called Lovecraft Country, by the inestimable Matt Ruff. It isn't exactly Lovecraftian, but it's in that same range of disturbing fantasy - but the real disturbing nature comes from the struggles of the main characters, who are African Americans, to survive in 1950s America...
Impera littera designata delenda est.
Found out yesterday that Subterranean Press will soon release Joe Lansdale's prequel to Bubba Ho-Tep called Bubba and the Cosmic Suckers. Looking forward to that one.
Lou
Atta boy, Luther!
I disagree. As good as the movie was, it missed the point by excluding the 21st chapter. Burgess' ultimate message was that you outgrow your childish ways. The last chapter in the book ( the UK version that is) is the ultimate in irony!
"Corn Flakes pissed in. You ranted. Mission accomplished. Thread closed."
-Cozy 3:16-
I am looking for some dystopian and/or apocalyptic horror. In the same vein as Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". What have you got besides King's "The Stand" or McCammon's "Swan Song" ?
"Corn Flakes pissed in. You ranted. Mission accomplished. Thread closed."
-Cozy 3:16-
^^ Well, there's Max Brooks's WORLD WAR Z.
Impera littera designata delenda est.
Zombies, correct? I should have specified no zombies or vampires...
Actually, I didn't realize that Margaret Atwood had written 2 sequels to Oryx & Crake, so I think I'll look into those.
"Corn Flakes pissed in. You ranted. Mission accomplished. Thread closed."
-Cozy 3:16-
I stand partially corrected. I do remember that last chapter now (I read a version without the dictionary in the back). If not mistaken, I believe Alex contemplated being a father. In the movie, Alex wasn't "cured alright."
Lou
Atta boy, Luther!
Yves, try Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon or George Stewart's Earth Abides. Another would be A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. Not really horror as there's no "Randal Flagg" or "walking dude," just the horror of the situation and the fear that it's going to happen again.
Last edited by Lopez; 09-19-2017 at 02:56 PM.
Lou
Atta boy, Luther!
The "better" version of this story has been debated. Some prefer the American version. Kubrick did, as I guess it held the whole dystopian storyline together better; thus making for a better movie. I prefer the original version though because after everything that was done to him, then undone to him, Alex was going to outgrow the violence anyway. To me, that's perfectly ironic!
"Corn Flakes pissed in. You ranted. Mission accomplished. Thread closed."
-Cozy 3:16-
Noted! I was looking for dystopic > horror anyway. I find most horror writers lacking in the prose dept .
"Corn Flakes pissed in. You ranted. Mission accomplished. Thread closed."
-Cozy 3:16-
I have this on my Kindle but haven't read it yet. Sounds great though.
Oh, well, if you're looking for dystopian end-of-the-world fiction, here are some goodies...
o On The Beach, by Nevil Shute. Preceding The Road by half-a-century, it has that same "the world really does end!" vibe.
o A whole bunch of early novels by J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World, The Crystal World, The Burning World (a/k/a [b]The Drought[/b, and The Wind from Nowhere - in which Ballard destroys the world by (respectively) water, earth, air, and fire.
o Also in the English "Cozy Catastrophe" vein is John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, about killer plants. Also apocalyptic, but less cozy, is his The Chrysalids (a/k/a Re-Birth), set some generations after a nukular war and dealing with mutation.
o ... and speaking of killer plants, Brian Aldiss's Hothouse (mutilated edition as The Long Afternoon of Earth) deals with a distant future in which, yes, plants have taken over. Ignore the physics...
o Of course, we mustn't forget Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote at least two EotW novels, Cat's Cradle and Galapagos.
o Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz was already mentioned in this discussion, as was George R. Stewart's Earth Abides. Consider both recommendations seconded, along with the warning *not* to read the sequel to the Miller.
o You might consider Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens, a delightfully funny book where the apocalypse is derailed because they've misplaced they Anti-Christ.
o John Christopher's lovely YA series "The Tripods": The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire, pretty well-known because of the Beeb miniseries, but good in its own right; aliens have taken over.
o Speaking of "Aliens Have Taken Over," Thomas M. Disch's The Genocides is another one where, yes, the human race really is wiped out. More cheerfully, his The Puppies of Terra (a/k/a Mankind Under the Leash) is about humans enslaved by aliens.
o A rather more cheerful "alien takeover" scenario is the framework for John Varley's "Eight Worlds" stories and novels, in which the human race was banned from Earth by aliens who were rather peevish about the way we had treated the cetacea. Varley also wrote Slow Apocalypse, in which the world comes apart a bit at a time.
o James Blish wrote a deligtfuly pair, Black Easter and The Day after Judgement, in which a black sorcerer releases all the demons from Hell.
o Fail-Safe, by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. Due to a slight error, an American bomber is sent to nuke Moscow.
o Peter George: Red Alert, which Stanley Kubrick filmed as Doctor Strangelove; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is a rather more satirical take on the same theme...
o ...and Philip K. Dick wrote a sort-of-sequel, Doctor Bloodmoney; or, How We Got Along After the Bomb. Actually, a number of Dick's books are apocalyptic in one way or another.
o And speaking of post-nuclear worlds, one mustn't forget David Brin's The Postman.
o D.F. Jones wrote Colossus, filmed as The Forbin Project, about a supercomputer that sees no reason to let a bunch of irrational humans run things.
o Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley - ignore the ludicrious movie - is a good post-apocalypse about crossing a horrifically transformed US.
o John Brunner wrote a "USA Trilogy" consisting of The Sheep Look Up, Stand on Zanzibar (which won the Hugo), and The Jagged Orbit, which deal with, in order, pollution, overpopulation, and violence; it's worth noting that (a) the world doesn't actually end in either of them, and (b) they are structured a little irregularly.
o Philip Wylie - whose 1930 novel Gladiator inspired Superman - wrote in the '70s an incredibly dark vision of ecocoloapse, The End of the Dream. Earlier, he collaborated with Edwin Balmer on the rather cheerful end-of-the-world duology When Worlds Collide/After Worlds Collide.
o Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and the late Jerry Pournelle describes life after a major comet impact.
o Then there's the "Dying Earth" scenario - the Sun itself has grown old, blablablah. Best known of this subgenre would be (a) Jack Vance's The Dying Earth and its various sequels; (b) Gene Wolfe's quartet The Book of the New Sun and its sequel, Urth of the New Sun, which is apocalyptic in its own right; and (c) M. John Harrison's Viriconium, a four-book series available in a single volume.
o Octavia Butler wrote two apocalyptic series. The first, Xenogenesis, deals with humans on the spaceship of a (possibly, but maybe not) benevolent alien race after the world has ended. The second, the "Parable" novels, is a more conventional post-collapse sort of world.
o Whitley "Aliens Raped Me!" Streiber and James Kunetka wrote two mosaic end-of-the-world novels, War Day and Nature's End.
o A really different end of the world: Moonfall, by Jack McDevitt. The moon, well, falls, after being blowed up real good.
o Paolo Bacigalupi writes real good eco-apocalyptic books, especially The Windup Girl.
Note that I'm limiting myself here to books I've actually read. Jose Saramago's Blindness gets a lot of good press, as does Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles, but I can't attest to either. Likewise Hugh Howey's Wool, which is at least on my to-read shelf.
Impera littera designata delenda est.
Copied, pasted, and printed for future book shopping. Thanks!
"Corn Flakes pissed in. You ranted. Mission accomplished. Thread closed."
-Cozy 3:16-
I haven't read it, but I understand Emily St. John Mandel's Station 11 is better than decent. It concerns nomadic life some 20 years after a virus wipes out most of the world's population. A 2016 novel, IIRC.
I'll add it to the list Elias! Thanks!
"Corn Flakes pissed in. You ranted. Mission accomplished. Thread closed."
-Cozy 3:16-
There's an interesting young-adult apocalyptic book out there called Life As We Knew It by Susan Pfeffer. It's told from the viewpoint of a young junior high or high school girl. The Moon is hit by a large meteor and is sent a bit out of orbit. This has a devastating effect on the Earth. Power is available for short bursts; agriculture suffers; people migrate; life slowly changes for the main characters in a small rural town as the Earth gradually dies. It's different because there's no sudden holocaust on Earth such as an atomic blast or rampant disease.
Lou
Atta boy, Luther!
I think Robert Pobi's Bloodman is a great modern horror-story.
http://www.robertpobi.com/picts/Bloodman.mp4
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