LitQueuelitqueue

After

The Walking Dead: Compendium One

Robert Kirkman2009

5 of 6 directions open — nothing heavier

More like it

Same bleak register, still post-apocalyptic

1 more ↓

  • Aftertime

    Sophie Littlefield2011

    A woman wakes up in a post-apocalyptic California overrun by cannibals. She must track down her missing daughter in a landscape of total collapse.

    pace0·prose+1·bleak-1

Denser prose

bleak → dreamlike

3 more ↓

  • Too Like the Lightning

    Ada Palmer2016

    In a 25th-century utopia, a convict narrates the discovery of a boy who can perform miracles. The prose uses 18th-century styles and gender terms.

    bleak → sardonic

    pace-1·prose+3·bleak-1

  • Valis

    Philip K. Dick1981

    A man experiences a beam of pink light that imparts vast information. The narrative explores his mental breakdown and search for God in California.

    bleak → meditative

    pace-1·prose+3·bleak-1

  • Shadow & Claw

    Gene Wolfe1983

    A torturer travels across a far-future Earth where technology is indistinguishable from magic. He recounts his exile in dense, archaic prose.

    bleak → meditative

    pace-1·prose+3·bleak-1

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Grunge

    Larry Correia2016

    A Marine killed in a bombing is resurrected to hunt supernatural creatures. He joins a private company that kills monsters for government bounties.

    bleak → sardonic, still horror

    pace+1·prose0·bleak-3

  • Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000

    L. Ron Hubbard2000

    A human survivor leads a rebellion against the Psychlos, an alien race that has strip-mined Earth for a thousand years.

    bleak → propulsive, still post-apocalyptic

    pace0·prose+1·bleak-3

  • Under the Whispering Door

    TJ Klune2021

    A selfish lawyer dies and waits in a supernatural tea shop to transition to the afterlife. He befriends the shopkeeper and other ghosts.

    bleak → warm, still found family

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-3

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Damnation Alley

    Roger Zelazny1969

    A convicted criminal drives an armored vehicle across a post-nuclear American wasteland to deliver a plague vaccine to Boston.

    bleak → sardonic, still post-apocalyptic

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak-2

  • Equations of Life

    Simon Morden2011

    A Russian physics student in a post-apocalyptic London gets caught between warring factions. It is a fast-paced cyberpunk thriller.

    bleak → propulsive, still post-apocalyptic

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak-1

  • Plague War

    Jeff Carlson1967

    A researcher flees the American government to distribute a vaccine for a nanotech plague that has killed most of the population.

    bleak → propulsive, still post-apocalyptic

    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.

    bleak → meditative

    pace-2·prose+3·bleak-2

  • Gödel, Escher, Bach

    Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

    An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

    bleak → playful

    pace-2·prose+3·bleak-3

  • Ulysses

    James Joyce1914

    Three characters wander through Dublin on a single day in 1904. Each chapter uses a different literary style to mimic thoughts and sensations.

    bleak → playful

    pace-2·prose+3·bleak-2