Charakan said:
A quick question for Serene Muse, is Stalker the book that the excellent video game is based on?
Yes, though they are not 1:1 mappings by any means, but both good in their own respects. The movie's by the great Andrei Tarkovsky but it may take a bit to get into. YMMV. I find the sense of dense open space and such very apt. (
tunnel scene,
railroad transition to a zone scene)
From what I've seen of the Metro 2033 game, I really enjoy the look, sound and atmosphere. Since it's set in Russia, the Enemy at the Gates film (or others, it's just the most available) or any good book on Stalingrad (esp. one that describes the living and combat conditions) might be useful. Or Lennigrad. Both had extreme conditions and such a lack of resources.
Morrow Project is very gameable and rather underappreciated, it had some neat ideas and is essentially a custom Call of Cthulhu ruleset with some serial numbers filed off. And yes Post-Apocolyptic HERO is good, HERO 5th edition had some great cheap genre books, similar to what GURPS 3e had. Oh there's a thought, GURPS Y2K should be cheap in print and SJG might have it (Warehouse 23) or on PDF (e23).
Forgot:
David Brin - The Postman (better than the movie)
Jeanne DuPrau - The Books of Ember series - technically kids books, this means its very readable; does a good job of showing a controlled rationed underground environment subtly, and how people living there who don't know anything else may think it's just fine while to us it'd be horrid; there was a movie made of the first book
Bruce Sterling - The Caryatids might do. Sadly not really read any of his novels completely, I suspect he may have more to offer.
Tsutomu Nihei - BLAME!, NOiSE, Biomega etc. for the art if nothing else. He was an architect (student?) and draws these wonderful megastructures that would be perfect for underground, domed, hueg spaceship, orbital etc. habits / habits gone amuck. There's a gorgeous art book by him that's chock full of inspiration for a post-apoc buildingscape.
So good.
BLAME! manga sample
While the main character tends to have God Level plot armor, the other characters tend to suffer 'orrible fates fast. Oh and
man-portable meson weapons FTW.
Ha ha only serious. BLAME! and Biomega are licensed and available in English the rest of his works are scanalated if not licensed. Biomega isn't quite as amazing as BLAME! but it is faster paced, nominally more near future and you can see the actual sky instead of an interior so big it has its own "room"-specific weather patterns. NOiSE is something of a prequel to BLAME! and is more of a cop work but it was written afterwards and is IMO best read later.
There've been at least two attempts at animating BLAME!, the first was ok but more high concept music videos (and it made even less sense than the books) and the
current attempt is still in progress and well it uses 3D CGI which while cool is not the same feel as the original works IMO. I do dig the first attempt's go at presenting
a messed up fallen tech society and
sound and graphic FX.
(by Dmitry Glukhovsky)
.
