Latest news with #postapocalyptic
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
If you enjoyed The Last of Us, you'll love these 8 survival books
If the gruesome setting of HBO video-game adaptation The Last of Us left you reeling for more stories of survival, found family and the haunting beauty of decay, you are in the right place. Whether you are drawn to tales of fungal terror, dystopian futures or post-apocalyptic perseverance, this list includes books that capture the emotional depth, eerie atmosphere and heartbreaking stakes that made the series unforgettable. 1. What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher A gripping and atmospheric reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. Arriving at the remote Usher estate, retired soldier Alex Easton discovers their childhood friend Madeline wasting away and the land itself much degraded. Alex has to uncover the sinister truth behind the House of Usher before it consumes them all as fungal horrors spread and anarchy descends. The cover of Daryl Kulak's book. Photo: Lulu Press 2. The Bulgarian Bartender by Daryl Kulak A darkly thrilling tale of friendship and betrayal in the heart of Eastern Europe.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Death Stranding 2 was written before the pandemic, but illness and isolation had a heavy impact on Hideo Kojima and pushed him toward games that "don't already exist in the world"
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. With Death Stranding 2: On the Beach right around the corner, we're ready to dive back into the post-apocalyptic world Kojima Productions first introduced in 2019. As we enter this next chapter, director Hideo Kojima finds himself reflecting on the unexpected parallel between the first game's continental rift and the real-world coronavirus pandemic that soon followed. In a conversation with Edge magazine, Kojima discussed how he had already written the sequel by the time the pandemic hit, only for the state of the world to horrifyingly reflect the story he had told in Death Stranding. When Kojima returned to the Kojima Productions' office after an undisclosed but severe illness, he found it empty. At the time, everyone was working remotely, and it struck a chord with him. "I felt that perhaps I would never meet anyone again," Kojima shared. "Something had been lost," he lamented, "Physically, we weren't connected anymore." Death Stranding launched only a handful of months before the world was suddenly isolated. In the game, we take on the role of Sam Porter Bridges, an on-the-nose name for his role as a porter tasked with rebuilding the communication bridges throughout the country with the use of the chiral network. A fictionalized take on our internet, the chiral network allowed communication to resume between a country that had been forced to isolate, the outside world far too dangerous and deadly for most. Kojima took no pride in finding he had inadvertently told the story of a future similar to what would come to pass, and found our own digital connections unsatisfactory. Zoom parties and hangouts were an empty substitution for the real thing: "We were having drinking parties and school events, but now entirely online, an almost entirely digital existence." At the time, this digital existence and his recovery reinvigorated Kojima's desire to make games "that don't already exist in the world." The success of Death Stranding has left many players excited for the next installment, and players will finally get to see just what Kojima and his team have cooked up in the hotly anticipated sequel on June 26. Death Stranding surpasses 20 million players amid spike of Steam users presumably trying to finish it before the sequel
Irish Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Water in the Desert Fire in the Night by Gethan Dick: An ambitious, inventive and stirring debut novel about everything
Water in the Desert Fire in the Night Author : Gethan Dick ISBN-13 : 9781915290168 Publisher : Tramp Press Guideline Price : £14 How do you write the end of the world? It's a question many authors and artists have asked themselves, from HG Wells and Cormac McCarthy to REM. Of course, no one is really interested in rendering the end of the world in art. At the end of the world, there is no art. Looking into the abyss, we see only things that make sense to the living, and those who write of oblivion are usually trying to make sense of life itself – they write about an impending end; or the end of someone else's world; or the end of an old world to make way for a new. In Gethan Dick's ambitious, inventive, and stirring debut novel, the characters have lived, oxymoronically, beyond the end of the world. We find them – an Irish Rastafarian named Pressure Drop; a retired midwife named Sarah; a neoliberal couple named Joy and Trevor; a young student named Adi; and our narrator, a multilingual music roadie named Audaz – in a series of railway arches in postapocalyptic London. They are the 'living, breathing afterparty' of the world as it once was, surviving off the 'all too much' left over from a previously hyper-consumerist society. (The arches, now abandoned, were a Chinese supermarket, a bike repair shop, a false-tooth business, artists' studios, a church, House Clearance). READ MORE All networks of communication have gone dark, and the land is awash with corpses. As they try to navigate what to do next – to look, however narrowly, into the future – it becomes clear that Sarah has a plan. She wants to 'save the world in a feminist way' by journeying to Dignes-les-Bains in France, a kind of Utopia where she will set up a midwifery school, with Audaz as her apprentice. And so the novel becomes an odyssey, our characters (minus Joy and Trevor), gathering supplies and heading, by bike, into the great unknown. This is dystopian fiction, but also utopian The odyssey is an accommodating form (just ask Joyce). You can wander off on as many tangents as you please. Dick uses it to great effect, meandering through everything from Cuban communism (Audaz grew up in Cuba, before moving to London), to semantics (Pressure Drop has a particular fascination with the meaning of words), to an anecdote about a secret truffle farmer and the beliefs of the ancient Greeks, to the joys of the kind of hangover where you don't get out of bed until after dark ('once you're out in this new beginning of a new darkness, your flayed nerve-endings are all quivering and the world feels raw and new and hilarious and strange and beautiful', Audaz observes, in the book's typically charged and opulent, yet colloquial, prose style). The book has no chapters, and relatively few line breaks, and at times this run-on nature can leave the reader bleary-eyed and slightly lost. But it makes sense that a book about a new world order should veer off course from the typical order of a novel, and attempt something new. With the treacherous journey these characters take, across sea and land, seeking asylum in places that turn out to trade in sex and violence, it's hard not to think of the plight of present-day migrants, many of whom are fleeing their own end-of-world scenarios (war, climate disaster, extreme poverty, persecution). But the events of this book are abstracted from political context. The point seems to be to place the reader into a close and blinkered viewpoint. We only understand what the characters understand about the world, which is very little. 'Fragmentation,' Audaz points out, 'is our natural state.' 'It is very recent in human history that we have any idea of overview – until stuff like newspapers and reading became really common, overview was just what the oldest person in your village remembered and what the farthest-travelled person discovered,' she muses, to the wonder – almost envy – of anyone who has grown up in an era of mass-communication. This close, childlike view – this innocence about the universe – also points to another of the book's main themes: that the end of the world is also the beginning of a new one. Devoid of an overarching understanding, the characters must construct their own; they must learn from one another, and from their experiences. The main exploration of this topic is through the beginning of all our worlds: birth. The book offers a deep and philosophical – but also carnal and physical – exploration of this sublime power mothers have, to deliver more life and to carry the past forwards into the future. Water in the Desert Fire in the Night is a curious and expansive text. I have called it an odyssey. It is also a love story. It is dystopian fiction, but also utopian. It is a philosophical study, full of pertinent, unanswerable questions. What does the world look like after the veil of civilisation has lifted? What continues to matter, and what does not? Are there some things that are so real, they continue after the end? Like love? Like life?
Irish Times
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
The idea of roadblocks to keep people from their holiday homes sounds fantastical, but is it?
The scene opens ... it is early summer in Connemara . Dusk is falling. A black Range Rover with 27 D plates approaches Roundstone from the east. The driver slows, dims the lights and pulls over. The woman in the passenger side turns around and speaks to her two children in the back seat. 'Okay, kids, let's go over it again in case we are stopped by the men ... ' 'Where are we going?' she asks. 'To Clifden .' READ MORE 'Where are we staying?' 'The Clifden Arms Hotel.' 'Good.' The woman turns back to the man. 'What if they don't believe us?' 'It's cool. I have made an online booking. We can cancel it when we get to the cottage,' he replies before driving off. 'Why don't the men want us to go to our holiday cottage, Mummy?' the girl asks. The woman pauses before answering quietly: 'They have nowhere to live, and they think it's our fault'. 'Is it our fault?' the girl asks. The driver responds: 'No ... it's the Government's.' Apologies to Paul Lynch and all other authors of post-apocalyptic fiction. The idea of roadblocks in Connemara to stop people getting to their holiday homes admittedly stretches credulity. But until Wednesday the idea that a senior manager in neighbouring Mayo County Council would call for a boycott of holiday homeowners might have seemed equally so. The fact that he was taken seriously – to the point of him being interviewed on RTÉ's Morning Ireland – takes it closer to the level of plausibility. In case you missed it, Tom Gilligan, the council's director of services with responsibility for housing and roads, emailed his colleagues in the local authority's strategic policy committee (SPC) over the weekend floating the idea of a boycott in the context of the housing shortage in the county. 'So, the objective around this proposed boycott is to highlight the impact of underused housing stock on local communities, encourage policy reform and taxation measures on vacant second homes. And also, to push holiday homeowners to either return properties for sale to the rental market or to the long-term rental market,' he told RTÉ. [ 'Nothing is off the table': Mayo housing official defends call to boycott holiday homeowners Opens in new window ] The thing about Gilligan's comments is that – as was said about Donald Trump during his first term – they should be taken seriously but not literally. Like Trump at his most intuitive, Gilligan has tapped into the resentment of a group that understandably feels its voice is not being heard. It is galling to be surrounded by homes that are unoccupied for much of the year in the middle of a housing crisis. In Trump's case, it was blue-collar, rural Americans – mostly men. In Gilligan's case, it's people in rural Ireland who can't find a place for themselves, or their children, to live. While both Trump and Gilligan have identified a group with legitimate grievances, neither seems to have a workable solution to their problems. Trump's first-term efforts at protectionism were stymied by others in his party and Government, but the second time around he launched his disastrous tariff policy. Gilligan's proposed boycott is misguided and even less likely to succeed than the tariffs. But Gilligan has hit on a word that encodes the anger of those who might agree with him. As Gilligan pointed out, the word 'boycott' is synonymous with Mayo and the late 19th century protests against landlord Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott. 'The local community at the time took it upon themselves to try a form of civil protest ... It's very important that we should never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world,' he told RTÉ. It will be telling to see where Gilligan's idea goes from here. It will no doubt find favour with some frustrated people in the west of Ireland, but also the ragtag group of charlatans who comprise the far right. If the idea of protest – rather than the unworkable concept of a boycott – does gain some traction with the wider community in Mayo, then this serious local issue could come on to the national agenda. We shouldn't discount the possibility. Gilligan boasts an impressive CV and is very different from the angry self-publicists who spread their poison on social media. A qualified accountant with a MBA in local government from DCU, he has held various posts in the public service and the private sector. He is also the founder of , a national housing initiative developed to get empty/derelict homes back into use. The real takeaway – particularly for holiday homeowners with Range Rovers – is that they underestimate at their peril the level of simmering anger felt by people who are locked out of the housing market in parts of the country where homes sit empty for much of the year.
CNET
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
'The Last of Us' Is On Tonight: When to Watch Season 2, Episode 6
It's hard to believe that season 2 of The Last of Us is almost over. The video game adaptation has delivered one heart-pounding moment after another, proving there's still a place for post-apocalyptic programs on television. Instead of kicking off where the first season ended, The Last of Us jumps ahead five years to see how and if the relationship between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) has weathered the proverbial storm. A lot can happen in half a decade, but curing the Cordyceps virus isn't one of them. The infection has only spread further and evolved in terrifying ways, making America's landscape even deadlier. This season of The Last of Us doesn't re-create the original video game subject matter beat by beat. Writer, director and executive producer Neil Druckmann discussed the reasons for this creative choice during a virtual press conference for the series, which CNET attended. Empathy is the first reason. Building an emotional connection with certain characters and their storylines required altering the narrative structure to create stakes for the audience. That connection comes more naturally when you're stepping into a character's shoes while playing the game. Timing is the other reason. "If we were to stick to a very similar timeline, viewers would have to wait a very, very long time to get that context," Druckmann said. Context is key and by all accounts, this strategy is working. Season 1 broke viewership ratings and, just days before the season 2 premiere, HBO renewed The Last of Us for a third season. Gabriel Luna, Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, Young Mazino, Catherine O'Hara and Rutina Wesley also star in the series. Read on to learn when to stream and to check out the episode release schedule for The Last of Us season 2. Read more: Max Streaming Service Review: Loads of Content, but You Have to Make It Fit You Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal as Ellie and Joel in season 2 of The Last of Us on HBO and Max. Liane Hentscher/HBO When you can watch The Last of Us season 2 The sixth episode of The Last of Us season 2 will air Sunday, May 18, at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max. There is just one episode remaining; the season 2 finale will air on May 25.
