Five books that find beauty in the apocalypse

Sam Reader is a writer and conventions editor for The Geek Initiative. He also writes literary criticism and reviews at strangelibrary.com. One of his five "books that give us hope that our apocalyptic future will, at least, be beautiful," as shared at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters

While not as on-the-surface beautiful as the other entries on this list, The Last Policeman slowly settles into a linguistic rhythm that creates its own kind of poetry. As the asteroid Maia hurtles closer and closer to a collision with Earth, Hank Palace plugs away at civilization’s last, futile murder investigation. It might not be pretty, but his internal monologue, and the way he looks at the world, finds the wonder in a planet very quickly going mad as its destruction hurtles ever closer. There’s a desolate beauty to Hank Palace’s New England, a place called “Hangertown” by the locals, where even the belongings of a dead murder suspect can take on a certain cadence and light. Winters makes you feel every bit of it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Last Policeman is among Joel Cunningham's eleven "literary" novels that include elements of science fiction and Melissa Albert's five best recent detective fiction classics.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Policeman.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Policeman.

--Marshal Zeringue