Equipped To Survive Equipped To Survive® Presents
The Survival Forum
Where do you want to go on ETS?

Page 4 of 5 < 1 2 3 4 5 >
Topic Options
#130048 - 04/13/08 10:33 AM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: ChristinaRodriguez]
Brangdon Offline
Veteran

Registered: 12/12/04
Posts: 1204
Loc: Nottingham, UK
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.

It's out of copyright now, and there's a free version on Gutenberg.
_________________________
Quality is addictive.

Top
#130050 - 04/13/08 12:14 PM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: WILD_WEASEL]
Farmer Offline
Member

Registered: 11/04/05
Posts: 125
Loc: Mid-Atlantic
Originally Posted By: WILD_WEASEL
Anybody read the Bible lately?


No, but I saw the movie........
_________________________
Knowing where you're going is NOT the same as knowing how to get there.

Top
#130170 - 04/15/08 01:44 AM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: Farmer]
TheDarkOne Offline
Stranger

Registered: 12/26/07
Posts: 3
My favorite is the oft-overlooked "WOlf and Iron" by Dickson but there are many thousands of Survival / Holocaust / Nuclear War / Natural Disaster books out there. There is probably a book or two that anyone would like.


Here are a few websites I find interesting when looking for a good read :

http://www.sfandf.com/html/scifi-fantasy-books.html?id=4&p1=2015&p2=books&p3=sf
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/nuclear/a.htm
http://www.ibdof.com/IBDOF-genre-booklist.php?genre_id=38
http://www.scifan.com/themes/themes.asp?TH_themeid=9&Items=
http://www.scifan.com/themes/themes.asp?TH_themeid=72&Items=

These are just a couple of sites I use to update my own book database.

Hopefully someone will find a book here that interests them enough to track it down and read it.

- TheDarkOne

Top
#130186 - 04/15/08 10:42 AM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: Brangdon]
Milestand Offline
Member

Registered: 09/29/02
Posts: 124
Originally Posted By: Brangdon
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.

It's out of copyright now, and there's a free version on Gutenberg.

The free versions are the old translations which were extensively abridged and edited by their translators. While the Gutenberg text remains a great tale of ingenuity and improvisation, the recent new translation by Sidney Kravitz retains all of Verne's original detail on how the island dwellers use science to survive and thrive. I found it much more readable, and with almost a third more material than the shortened version I'd originally read - it seemed like a whole new book!

(If you're already a Verne fan, read some of the customer comments on Amazon for the Kravitz translation to get a sense of the changes.)

Top
#130322 - 04/16/08 06:19 PM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: Milestand]
Loganenator Offline
Bike guy
Member

Registered: 05/04/07
Posts: 151
Loc: Sacramento, CA, USA
Another interesting read is a sci fi book by Robert A. Heinlin called "Tunnel in the sky". The book is entertaining and although its not one of his best books it reminded me of the importance of community and knowledge of basic grass root political theory in a long term survival situation. It also explored the subject of guns and a psychological aspect I had not considered. Heinlin argues being without a gun makes a person more cautious and less likely to find themselves in situations where they need a gun. I've had similar experiences with folks driving 4 wheel drive in cars. (e.g. "sure it looks muddy and I could get stuck...but I'll go in anyway because I have 4 wheel drive!") wink

I just finished Butler's "Parable of Sower" and I'm halfway through the sequel "Parable of Talents". Survival fiction has been useful for learning new scenarios and exploring long-term survival ideas I had not thought of prior to reading them. The parable series also emphasizes the community approach to long-term survival but alternatively encourages gun ownership.

Great stuff! smile

Cheers,
Nemo
_________________________
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - MK Gandhi


Top
#130336 - 04/16/08 09:24 PM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: Loganenator]
haertig Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 03/13/05
Posts: 2322
Loc: Colorado
Originally Posted By: Nemo
Another interesting read is a sci fi book by Robert A. Heinlin called "Tunnel in the sky".
I remember Tunnel from my teenage years. I liked that one too. I think it was from Heinlein's juvenile series, but I'm not sure. Another one I always associate with Tunnel (because I read one after the other!) was Andre Norton's "Here Abide Monsters". Another juvenile oriented book (I think that's mostly what Norton wrote). Neither was really an "end of the world" scenario. More like, "people thrown into new worlds where they had to learn to survive". In Tunnel, it was a planned class exercise IIRC, in Monsters it was more of an impromptu, "oops, what happened, where the hell are we now?"

Top
#130552 - 04/19/08 01:37 PM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: Milestand]
Brangdon Offline
Veteran

Registered: 12/12/04
Posts: 1204
Loc: Nottingham, UK
Thanks for that. I read a paid-for version as a child, with the extra third, and I've not reread the free versions to see how they compare.
_________________________
Quality is addictive.

Top
#130654 - 04/20/08 11:01 PM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: Brangdon]
Art_in_FL Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/01/07
Posts: 2432
The best:
Two-way tie between "Alas Babylon" and "Lucifer's Hammer" with "Babylon" being the more realistic and useful at a practical level but "Hammer" being the more exciting.

Not too bad but lacking: "The Keep", which get tiresome because of the protagonists political and economic grumblings, and "Farnham's Freehold" which veers too quickly into sci-fi fantasy.

Low middling but with some merit: "Patriots". Weakly inspired writing made worse by patently false and dangerous assumptions. The book isn't entirely useless but you need to take the assumptions, setting, action and techniques with a large grain of salt. Borderline gun porn with an overweight emphasis on firearms and violence.

The worse: "The Survivalist" series by Jerry Ahern. This series is little more than comic-book heroic action, gun porn and posed self-assumed superiority. The protagonist never pulls a generic gun. He pulls a particular weapon. Often described with pornographic detail including make, model, manufacturer, barrel length, trigger pull, and everything short of the serial number. Violence and degradation of other, lesser survivors, is described in gloating detail. All the better to highlight the assumed nobility of the protagonists I suppose.

Within the course of the individual books and the series, as a whole, the violence and self-righteous posing escalates to wild excess while the plot line and prose largely repeats itself with just a few embellishments and escalation. Pretty much like other forms of pornography.

Unknown to me but highly reviewed: "The Road". It is "on-deck" as my next purchase.

Top
#130670 - 04/21/08 02:02 AM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: Art_in_FL]
UTAlumnus Offline
Old Hand

Registered: 03/08/03
Posts: 1019
Loc: East Tennessee near Bristol
IIRC Wasn't "Lucifer's Hammer" the continuation of "Footfall"?

Top
#130676 - 04/21/08 02:35 AM Re: End of the World Fiction [Re: UTAlumnus]
Art_in_FL Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/01/07
Posts: 2432
"Lucifer's Hammer" is about what happens after a huge natural disaster and how mankind struggles to stay alive and reorganize.

As I understand it "Footfall", having picked it up a few times without reading it, but answering entirely from memory is concerned with an alien invasion.

Top
Page 4 of 5 < 1 2 3 4 5 >



Moderator:  Alan_Romania, Blast, cliff, Hikin_Jim 
March
Su M Tu W Th F Sa
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31
Who's Online
0 registered (), 324 Guests and 6 Spiders online.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Newest Members
GallenR, Jeebo, NicholasMarshall, Yadav, BenFoakes
5367 Registered Users
Newest Posts
What did you do today to prepare?
by dougwalkabout
Yesterday at 11:21 PM
Zippo Butane Inserts
by dougwalkabout
Yesterday at 11:11 PM
Question about a "Backyard Mutitool"
by Ren
03/17/24 01:00 AM
Problem in my WhatsApp configuration
by Chisel
03/09/24 01:55 PM
New Madrid Seismic Zone
by Jeanette_Isabelle
03/04/24 02:44 PM
EDC Reduction
by EchoingLaugh
03/02/24 04:12 PM
Using a Compass Without a Map
by KenK
02/28/24 12:22 AM
Newest Images
Tiny knife / wrench
Handmade knives
2"x2" Glass Signal Mirror, Retroreflective Mesh
Trade School Tool Kit
My Pocket Kit
Glossary
Test

WARNING & DISCLAIMER: SELECT AND USE OUTDOORS AND SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT, SUPPLIES AND TECHNIQUES AT YOUR OWN RISK. Information posted on this forum is not reviewed for accuracy and may not be reliable, use at your own risk. Please review the full WARNING & DISCLAIMER about information on this site.