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After

A Stranger in the Citadel

Tobias S. Buckell2021

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

Same tense register, still post-apocalyptic

1 more ↓

  • The Postman

    David Brin1985

    A drifter in a collapsed America finds a mail carrier's uniform and starts delivering old letters. The lie inspires a new social order.

    tense → earnest, still post-apocalyptic

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Infinite Jest

    David Foster Wallace1996

    A sprawling narrative centered on a tennis academy, a halfway house, and a lethal film. The text includes hundreds of pages of detailed endnotes.

    tense → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

  • Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

    William S. Burroughs

    A series of nonlinear vignettes follow a drug addict's hallucinations and travels. The prose is fragmented and satirical.

    tense → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

  • Winterlong

    Elizabeth Hand1990

    In a decaying, post-apocalyptic Washington D.C., a girl with empathic powers is drawn into the plots of a decadent ruling class.

    tense → dreamlike, still post-apocalyptic

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+2

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Building a Second Brain

    Tiago Forte2022

    A guide to a digital organization system designed to store and retrieve ideas, notes, and information for long-term projects.

    tense → earnest

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Last Question

    Isaac Asimov2007

    A short story told in seven vignettes spanning billions of years. Humanity asks a supercomputer if the heat death of the universe can be avoided.

    tense → meditative

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

  • A Choice of Gods

    Clifford D. Simak1972

    After humanity vanishes, a few survivors live for centuries on a quiet Earth. They eventually learn where the rest of the population went.

    tense → meditative, still post-apocalyptic

    pace-1·prose0·bleak-1

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Get Jiro!

    Anthony Bourdain2012

    In a future Los Angeles, master chefs rule as warlords. A sushi chef who kills rude customers is caught between two warring food factions.

    tense → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

    A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.

    tense → wry

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Ready Player One

    Ernest Cline2008

    A teenager in a dystopian future hunts for a digital easter egg inside a massive simulation. The quest relies on 1980s pop culture trivia.

    tense → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Slower

3 more ↓

  • Beelzebub's tales to his grandson

    Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff1950

    An extraterrestrial being explains the history and strange behaviors of humanity to his grandson during a long space voyage.

    tense → meditative

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

    Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

    tense → bleak, still dystopian

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+2

  • Riddley Walker

    Russell Hoban1980

    A twelve-year-old boy travels across a primitive, post-nuclear England. The story is written entirely in a broken, phonetic future dialect.

    tense → meditative, still post-apocalyptic

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

Heavier

tense → bleak, still post-apocalyptic

3 more ↓

  • Yol

    Cormac McCarthy

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • Wolves

    Simon Ings2014

    Two friends navigate a near-future Britain collapsing under environmental decay and augmented reality addiction. It is a study of memory.

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • The People of the Ruins

    Edward Shanks1920

    A man wakes up in a future England that has regressed into a primitive, feudal society. He navigates the ruins of a collapsed civilization.

    tense → elegiac, still post-apocalyptic

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2