"Barren, silent, godless."

On the far side of the river valley the road passed through a stark black burn. Charred and limbless trunks of trees stretching away on every side. Ash moving over the road and the sagging hands of blind wire strung from the blackened lightpoles whining thinly in the wind.

- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

I've just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and I was startled and impressed. So much post-apocalyptic fiction either feels a need for a ray of hope, or fails to believably address the realities of the end of our civilization: McCarthy's grim, ashen future does neither. It is a dark and plausible window into what life might be like in a worst-case scenario.

Science fiction has an almost complete claim on end-of-the-world stories. Fantasy will sometimes address the topic - those of you who haven't read the Narnia books are in for a bit of a shock when they adapt the final volume for the movie screen - but for the most part apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic tales are the province of SF.

But what do we mean by the end of the world? Very few such stories deal with the destruction of the planet itself. In our near-infinite hubris, what is generally considered to be the end of the world is really just the end of humanity, which is not the same thing by a long pitch. (Mary Shelley of Frankenstein fame breaks the ice for this sub-genre of science fiction in 1826, with her novel The Last Man, wherein a plague devastates humanity.)

The first post-apocalyptic novel that I can remember reading is Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank, which I purchased through the Scholastic Books catalogue when I was about ten or eleven. (I still own that somewhat battered text, although I see that I've had to tape the spine a couple of times.) Originally published in 1959, it's a fairly conventional tale of nuclear war and its aftermath, a popular topic for that period.

I recall enjoying it when I first received it, but in retrospect I'm amused by the almost positive picture that it paints of the aftermath of a thermonuclear exchange. Much of the United States is destroyed, yet the protagonists, located in Florida, don't suffer from fallout, nuclear winter, starvation, or any sort of degradation. A few cardboard characters die tragically, but for the most part the novel portrays the lives of the survivors as a quiet but optimistic struggle, complete with fresh-squeezed orange juice.

In sharp opposition is Nevil Shute's On the Beach, written in 1957. Shute's novel takes place in Australia, the last part of the planet uncontaminated by fallout after a massive nuclear exchange. But this is only a temporary respite: the invisible cloud of airborne death is gradually making its way south, and slow, lingering death is inevitable. However, a thoughtful government has come up with a solution: mass-produced suicide tablets.

The novel portrays a response to inescapable doom that seems depressingly accurate. Characters become alcoholics, take refuge in complete denial, or indulge in high-risk distractions such as suicidally dangerous car racing. In the end, the fallout cloud arrives, radiation poisoning begins to have its way, and everyone takes their pills and dies. The novel ends with an orphaned American submarine making its way into the open sea so that the captain can scuttle his vessel - and kill the crew - in quixotic obedience to military regulations.

The Road takes a different approach. It tells the story of a father and son wandering through the ashen remnants of the world. The nature of the catastrophe is never specifically articulated, there is little backstory, and the father and son are left nameless. All of the detail is reserved for their struggle through the wasted landscape, and how that brutal struggle has molded and in some ways crippled their relationship.

This sparse, masterful narrative, written in McCarthy's signature punctuation-free style, pulled me in completely. I can imagine that this might not be the case for everyone, depending on your background: for me, the evocation of memory, of walking through barren, leafless trees in rain and snow, of monochrome landscapes and no sounds but those of the weather, was complete.

This is in no way a cautionary tale - the anonymous nature of the catastrophe leaves no room for sermons or cries of "Alas!". The equally anonymous nature of the characters allows anyone who reads the novel to slip into their worn shoes and stinking clothing, to see themselves as starving pilgrims without a destination. In spite of that Everyman structure, I'm uncertain about recommending this book to everyone. It's one of those books that is more easily described as impressive or admirable than enjoyable, and that may not be the sort of thing that people are looking for as we enter the holiday season. However, for anyone who does embark on The Road, I can guarantee a unique literary experience.

- Sid