Saturday, February 3, 2018

The Dead Lands

Benjamin Percy

A very clever dystopian future fiction that recreates the Oregon trail and the journey of Lewis and Clark. Earth is in a post global nuclear war scenario, where the nuclear bombs were dropped not out of aggression, but in an attempt to burn out an impossibly virulent flu that decimated humanity. The opening setting is St Louis. A few tens of thousands of people live in St. Louis, and they have built a serious wall around the city to keep out the monsters and goblins, who are in reality mutagenic results of the massive radiation dosage on earth. Most people have cancer, or will have cancer and water is the premium limiting resource in the desert of St. Louis. Due to a series of circumstances, the local museum curator (Lewis) and low level police deputy (Clark) escape the wall and begin a journey to the west coast and Oregon. I love the occasional breadcrumb of historical trivia overlapping this dystopian future. I love the world created... well, the world created is quite scary, but I love the detail and imagination of a post flu epidemic/nuclear catastrophe North America. This is quite fun and engaging throughout.
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