Northstar “Pulp” Poster by Nathan Anderson
Spinning off from the previous entry devoted to Post-Apocalyptic movies that inspired us as we were conceiving Northstar, this time around we’re going to take a look at 5 books that were unavoidable influences. When it comes to this list, we didn’t stick as closely to genre definitions as we did with the movies. Post-Apocalyptic films typically use a disastrous setting as some scorched earth setup for redemptive adventure. This fits the film medium well (movies are, after all, more propulsive), but when it comes to literature, we were more prone to come up with books that use world altering events as a springboard to ask sustained questions about where we’re going as a race and who or what is leading us there.
Note: If any of these books pique your fancy, we encourage you to consider buying from our favorite bookstore, Snowbound Books. Located in Marquette, Michigan, the awesome Snowbound staff has been serving the Upper Peninsula since 1984. Links to purchase from their online store are provided below.
1) Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Reading this again recently, I’m still struck by how plausible the scenario is. The future horror predicted here is hyper-regulated by a small, contemptuous power-base, and the genetically modified people/creatures they lead/manage are thoroughly bred both physically and emotionally to be unaware of their limited life prospects. Huxley believed population growth was the biggest looming threat facing humanity, a hard fact of modern life that in conjunction with the obvious depletion of resources that will come as a result of so many people walking the earth, will also have the added side-benefit of destabilizing governments! The answer? Re-adjust procreation so it runs like a car factory (the dumb ones are human dump trucks, the brilliant ones are pink porcelained Porsches) and subdivide each generation based on a caste system that completely guts the idea that democracy inherently fosters fairness. Self-medicate anyone aberrant enough to start realizing this is all obscene, and we all come to accept this antiseptic hell by degrees. Yes, I can see how this might happen without many of us even knowing it (or caring).
- Take me to Snowbound!
- See Also: Cat’s Cradle
2) 1984 – George Orwell
Both Orwell and Huxley are dealing with a similar story, in that some of the people they follow through a world of eroded human liberty have come to realize how deeply empty anyone is when they don’t have the right to chart their own course. However, the difference with Orwell (and maybe the limitation), is that anyone that steps out of line in Oceania gets thrown into a cell and tortured in ways tailored to their specific weakness. This is societal punishment via boot to the face, whereas Brave New World side-steps the need for such regulations by erasing society’s urge to rebel in the first place. In 1984, Winston Smith learns to love someone in a world where the very thought of romantic attachment is a crime, where the war industry has become THE industry, and where the leadership watches the citizens like an occupation force. The root difference between Orwell and Huxley, is that fear creates order in 1984, while the Brave New World is held together by an unconscious acceptance that this is simply the way it is. You can decide what is more in keeping with human nature. Both stories attempt to dig into the then modern attempt to take apart the human psyche, figure out what drives it and I dunno, *maybe* heal what ails us? or more likely CONTROL US? Both stories then illustrate how that may or may not be a futile notion given how irascible human beings tend to be. In the end, to me the concept of Big Brother is Orwell’s greatest gift to humanity; a jackbooted warning that there are people in power that will always feel tempted to think of their fellow man as cogs in a machine.
- Take me to Snowbound!
- See Also: The Handmaid’s Tale
3) A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
600 years in the future, a nuclear war has drastically reduced humanity down to a mix of savage colonies (sure), barbarous mutants (awesome!) and… a resurgent catholic church (whaaaaaa???)? Thus begins a book that follows a series of monks as they struggle to preserve the flame of human knowledge across the course of a 1700 year period where humanity reestablishes itself as the dominant species. The mystics that populate the Albertain Order of Leibowitz (named after a Jewish electrical engineer that worked for the US Government and later converted to Catholicism after he survived getting nuked), live out the immediate post-holocaust dark age illuminating holy texts (and I’m not talking about the Bible here guys… the first Monk we follow has spent years tricking out an aircraft blueprint he doesn’t even begin to understand!). From there, we follow this order as the knowledge of Saint Leibowitz survives, comes to be re-understood, and finally helps to re-establish civilization as we know it. But even after this second chance at bat, humanity 2.0 still can’t overcome a a pesky itch to blow itself up again! Leibowitz’s cyclical narrative asks if human beings are capable of learning from their mistakes, or if there’s something inherent in our nature that renders us pathologically suicidal. Miller was deeply religious, and I’m sure the basic questions that prompted his masterpiece were overlaid with the concern of original sin – that taint we as humans might not be able to escape no matter how much punishment we’re subjected to. As it happens, the Apocalypse as divine punishment brings me to the next book on our list!
- Take me to Snowbound!
- See Also: Pax Romana
4) The Stand – Stephen King
Like the “Great Deluge” in Leibowitz, Stephen King’s highly readable door-stopper uses a crowd-clearing event as pretext to set up a new high-stakes chess game for what remains of humanity. Heck, let’s not keep the influences constrained to sci-fi novels here man – you could go all the way back to John’s Revelation if you want to find the most culturally resonant origin for epic tales like this. Using the Bible as a framework then, the whole point of telling the story is that the initial holocaust is a purge or cleansing. After this divine broom has swept 99.999% of the world into a snot-ridden dustbin (Superflu would be NOT fun), the chosen few remaining have been left for a purpose. Again, like with Miller’s book, King is writing about a group of people that are plunged straight down into the nitty-gritty business of human destiny, where the final man standing will determine the true worth of an entire species. Heady stuff for what is on the surface a quest novel where like, 47 main characters are all drawn across the country to be handed either a white or black hat so they can duke it out in Las Vegas. I kid about the large cast. To be honest, despite the fact that he wrote what feels like a thousand books after this opus, you really only need to go back to The Stand to see why King is so popular. He’s a gifted story-teller true, but his characters are the engines that drive his greatest novels. In addition to Stu and Franny, wayward Harold, shadow-woman Nadine and that M-O-O-N guy, we are treated finally to King’s Cosmic Villain, Randall Flagg, a charming devil that takes on an appropriate guise for an Apocalypse story that is particularly American.
- Take me to Snowbound!
- See Also: Earth Abides
5) Y: The Last Man
For 60 comic issues, writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra followed what may be the last two males (one would be escape-artist, one helper monkey) on earth after a selective plague has instantly killed every mammal possessing a Y chromosome. In this world where Women have inherited the earth, Yorick Brown and his monkey Ampersand embark on a quest to find Y’s girlfriend in Australia, and in the process encounter a host of new friends and obstacles, all of which offer what might have been in lesser creative hands, either a stale sociological tract or a no-brainer premise for a porn movie. With Yorick, we have what might be called a realistic portrait of the type of man to come of age in the last 30 years or so: over-educated yet physically emasculated, ready to spout a pop-cultural quip to deflate any serious moment, yet unprepared when he comes to realize the greater emotional depths he’s capable of accessing. In this, you might be tempted to say that in addition to exploring the evolution of gender roles in the 21st century, Y uses it’s male-stripped apocalypse to a deconstruct the latest, not so greatest generation of men. But that takes away from what is an effortlessly readable, consistently funny, and often tear-jerking journey where a man, his monkey and his multiple girlfriends learn to navigate a new, feminine planet.
- Take me to Snowbound!
- See Also: DMZ
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