Saturday, May 23, 2020

Seven post-apocalyptic sci-fi escapist titles

Paulette Jiles is a novelist, poet, and memoirist. She is the author of Cousins, a memoir, and the novels Enemy Women, Stormy Weather, The Color of Lightning, Lighthouse Island, and News of the World, which was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award.

Her new novel is Simon the Fiddler.

At Lit Hub, Jiles tagged seven titles "for respite in a time of pandemic--riveting stories of societal collapse, plagues, near-death experiences, distant futures on bald stone planets and other tales that will help you escape from this annoying and fretful news-cycle life into the worlds of pure imagination." One title on the list:
John C. Wright, Awake In The Night Land

This is almost impossible to describe but you will be unable to put it down to finish your cup of whatever. Add agave nectar. Anything is drinkable with agave nectar added to it. This is us several thousand years from now, a remnant of us, in a self-contained mountain on a bald Earth of stone with observers on the peak watching great masses of stone moving ever closer year by year and inch by inch. There are Things out there. Inside the Aristocrats have their entertainments and the main character is a princess changing into a warrior, inch by inch.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue