LitQueuelitqueue

After

The Book of Flora

Meg Elison2019

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

elegiac → tense, still post-apocalyptic

1 more ↓

  • The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

    Meg Elison2014

    A midwife travels through a post-apocalyptic landscape where women are nearly extinct and childbirth is fatal.

    elegiac → clinical, still post-apocalyptic

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Dhalgren

    Samuel R. Delany1975

    An amnesiac wanderer enters Bellona, a city cut off from the world where time and geography shift. He joins a gang and writes poetry.

    elegiac → dreamlike

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

  • 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.

    elegiac → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • 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.

    elegiac → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

To recover

elegiac → playful

3 more ↓

  • Mile High

    Liz Tomforde2023

    A professional hockey player and a flight attendant clash on the team's private plane during a season-long road trip.

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • Behind the Net

    Stephanie Archer2024

    A former musician becomes the live-in assistant for a professional hockey goalie she knew in high school.

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • She Went All the Way

    Meg Cabot2002

    A screenwriter and an actor survive a helicopter crash in the Alaskan wilderness and must hike to safety while being pursued by a killer.

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

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.

    elegiac → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

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

    elegiac → wry

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • 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.

    elegiac → propulsive, still quest

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

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.

    elegiac → meditative

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak-1

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

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

    elegiac → bleak, still dystopian

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

  • 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.

    elegiac → meditative, still post-apocalyptic

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

Heavier

elegiac → bleak, still post-apocalyptic

3 more ↓

  • Yol

    Cormac McCarthy

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • 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+1

  • 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.

    Same elegiac register, still post-apocalyptic

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1