If your loved ones who own an Xbox 360 have not been out of the house, not bathing or brushing their teeth, or maybe are missing entirely, it may because they are obsessed with last week’s release of Fallout: New Vegas.
After having been immersed in post-nuclear Vegas for 6 to 10 hours a day the last week, I’m thoroughly sickened with myself but still can’t resist the urge to play. For those of you who are suffering the same ailment, I suggest a slow withdraw by using some good old-fashioned post-apocalyptic fiction to wean yourself off Fallout and back into real society.
You are probably most familiar with the novels made into films like “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, “I Am Legend” by Richard Matheson, and “The Stand” by Stephen King, but post-apocalyptic fiction goes way back into the 1800s with novels like Mary Shelley’s "The Last Man" (1826) in which a lone survivor learns to live in a world where everyone else is dying from the plague; and “After London” by Richard Jefferies where England has reverted to a medieval existence after a sudden catastrophe. Both novels are available as free ebooks at www.gutenberg.org and audio books at www.librivox.org.
The Cold War era brought classics like “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter Miller which explores mankind six hundred years after a nuclear war, then revisits the same world as it flourishes in a new Renaissance, then once more when it reverts once again to another nuclear age. The characters in Nevil Shute's “On the Beach” are living just days after World War III. When they find signs of life, they must go into the post-apocalyptic world to find survivors.
More recent titles include “Warday,” a very interesting novel in which the authors are also the main characters. The book follows Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka out into radiation and war filled America
Several of us at the library have “Fallout” poisoning (Fallout fever?). Come see us—we may be able to help.
