Some recommendations for a thoroughly bleak Christmas

[McChubs]

Pretty simple request, any recommendations for ultra-bleak, fatiguingly futile sci-fi/dystopian/cyberpunk? Books along the lines of The Road, Down to a Sunless Sea, Empty World, The Fungus (haha). The filthier cheap '80s-esque special effects, the better!

 

[Toby Frost]

Try 1984 by George Orwell or On the Beach by Nevil Shute. Both are comedy extravaganzas.

 

[Vladd67]

How about When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs a real treat for Christmas

 

[Connavar]

80s effetcs hm.. Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny is a good fun post apocalyptic ala Mad Max.

sci-fi/dystopian/cyberpunk? : Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. That future world,way of life atleast depressed me like few SF could.

Philip K Dick is a my fav dystopian writer though. If you havent read Flow My Tears,the Policeman Said or Dr Bloodmooney or Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep ? one of them will be worth it.

He is not too much special effects though.

 

[McChubs]

1984, When the Wind Blows and On the Beach are all ones I've read or seen. Damnation Alley was fantastic! Do you mean the book or film? Is there a book of it?

I saw Blade Runner and thought it was excellent. I've been meaning to check his work out for years, better chop chop with it.

 

[Ian Whates]

Damnation Alley was fantastic! Do you mean the book or film? Is there a book of it?

Oh yes, very much so. The film was based on the novel by Roger Zelazny, and the book knocks the film into tin hats!

 

[McChubs]

Oh yes, very much so. The film was based on the novel by Roger Zelazny, and the book knocks the film into tin hats!

You have to love that psychedelic sky in the film though... and that film Radioactive Dreams was a similarly brilliant film. Not to be missed on grainy VHS!

 

[murphy]

Might as well add in Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. Very bleak.

 

[CyBeR]

Yevgeny Zamyatin - We
Walter Tevis - Mockingbird
Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2033

Straight off the top of my noggin.

 

[Hypnos164]

Sleepless - Charlie Huston

The world is falling to an epidemic of sleeplessness; a disease leading to mental degeneration and eventual death; very bleak but skillfully done.

Market Forces - Richard Morgan

Kind of cyperpunk meets deathrace 2000 ... in a UK starkly divided into rich and poor by ecconomic failure "conflict investment" contracts are awarded to the companies who's gladatorial drivers leave the opposition in pieces on the side of the road*.

Originally written as a film script it would have been chock full of cheap '80s-esque special effects.

*Morgan makes it seem slightly more plausable than that description - but not that much more

 

[clovis-man]

Lest we forget, there's always Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. Certainly one to warm the cockles of your heart.

 

[McChubs]

Top hat, keep them coming. I was halfway through A Canticle for Leibowitz but sadly left it at my father's house weeks ago.

By '80s special effects I meant more, the stark and brutal stylings of that period, Blade Runner being a good example. You know, steaming piles of nuclear waste, constant raining misery, food of questionable history being served by equally ...unsual street sellers. Something that really grips you as a violent and unpleasant world.

 

[alchemist]

The Electric Church by Jeff Somers. Not the best SF I've ever read, but satisfyingly bleak. Probably helped that i read it during the worst time of my life.
I second Toby's nomination of On The Beach. My English teacher once recommended it to me. Thank God I waited another 20 years to read it or I probably would have killed myself.