Bone Machine is a showcase of the most apocalyptic, percussion-heavy segment of Waits’ career. The 1992 album focuses heavily on themes of death and its unstoppable progression (“Dirt in the Ground” and “Earth Died Screaming”). However, the album also boasts some of his most soulful works (“Who Are You” and “Whistle Down the Wind”), showing his indescribably wide range in style, subject matter and emotion.
Written in 1993, Parable of the Sower is a piece of speculative fiction that’s set in a post-apocalyptic world of the year 2025. Lauren Olamina is a young African American woman living in a world of constant terror. As California burns due to the effects of climate change and social inequality is at an all time high, Lauren lives in the safe bubble of Robledo, a gated community where she and her family live separately from the chaos outside.
After the Flame Deluge and the Great Simplification, humanity is left with no awareness of its history or scientific achievements. A simple order of monks, worshipping the Saint Leibowitz hundreds of years after his death stumble upon some documents that might bring light as to what the world was like before, and open the door to new scientific discoveries.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is an apocalyptic dystopian novel, McCarty is able to present a bleak and death-ridden world like no other that uses vivid imagery and extensive world-building to create a real sense of hopelessness. A father and son travel across the desolate world following the road seeking a warmer climate facing the “bad people’ along the way with close calls and showing the true horrors of the wasteland, cannibals, marauders, and a constant struggle for supplies and safety.
After their mysterious appearance, the men in rat masks answer none of the questions given to them. No one seems to be keen to ask questions when they provide food and shelter though, in a secret city underground. But who can explain the masks everyone wears? Or the disappearance of everyone assigned maintenance duty? OR most importantly where have all the children gone?
Proloff was once a revered Explorer, one of the only ones allowed to leave the train. So important was their job that only once a year did the train stop and it was for them to deboard. After discovering some things he shouldn’t have, how does Proloff come to terms with his questions about the very world he lives in?
“Across the white immensity of an eternal winter, from one end of the frozen planet to the other, there travels a train that never stops.”
The prequal to the original series, this French graphic novel covers an apocalyptic future where the remainder of the human race lives on a never-ending train to avoid the desolate wasteland outside.
A Winter’s Promise features Animist Ophelia, a young girl who has the power to travel through mirrors and to see an object’s past upon touching it. However, she is soon forced into a marriage with Thorn, a stern and apathetic man from the faraway world of the Pole. As she accompanies her fiancé to the floating city of Citaceleste, she discovers rival clans and powerful families.
Taking place post-apocalyptic, this story follows a father and son’s journey to the sea, in an attempt to find something or someone who could help them. This was an interesting read, as McCarthy has a unique writing style with this book: no chapters, no parts, just ill-grammar words. Although those very aspects made it not my favorite read, it was vital in defining the story’s atmosphere.
