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Ok, this one isn't really post-apocalyptic, but the story centers around a nuclear-armed submarine, and it looks awesome, so that's good enough for me.

500 feet beneath the ocean's surface, the U.S. ballistic missile submarine Colorado receives their orders. Over a radio channel, designed only to be used if their homeland has been wiped out, they're told to fire nuclear weapons at Pakistan. Captain Marcus Chaplin (Andre Braugher) demands confirmation of the orders only to be unceremoniously relieved of duty by the White House.

XO Sam Kendal (Scott Speedman) finds himself suddenly in charge of the submarine and facing the same difficult decision. When he also refuses to fire without confirmation of the orders, the Colorado is targeted, fired upon, and hit. The submarine and its crew find themselves crippled on the ocean floor, declared rogue enemies of their own country.

Now, with nowhere left to turn, Chaplin and Kendal take the sub on the run and bring the men and women of the Colorado to an exotic island. Here they will find refuge, romance, and a chance at a new life, even as they try to clear their names and get home.

And here's the trailer.

It's been a very exciting few days for Woolites.  Hugh Howey confirmed not one, but two huge deals for the WOOL series.

First to be announced was that the movie rights are going to 20th Century Fox, with talk that production will be a partnership between Riddley Scott's Scott Free and Steve Zaillian's Film Rites.  Those are names connected to great films like Alien, Gladiator, Shindler's List, Black Hawk Down, and Moneyball, among many others.  Hugh is quick to point out that movie rights don't mean that a movie is guaranteed, but it's certainly great news.

The other big announcement was that book publishing rights for the UK have been picked up by Century, a division of Random House.  Hugh has so far resisted a publishing deal in the US, and he seems to be doing fairly well without one, but he's taking a more traditional route overseas.  Century plans to have a hardback relase in January, 2013, and then a paperback the following August.

Not too shabby for an independant book series that first hit the 'net not even a year ago, but if you've read the books, then I'm sure you're not surprised; happy and excited for Hugh maybe, but not surprised.

But if you haven't read the books, and want to see what all the fuss is about, head on over to Amazon and pick up the Omnibus.  The more popular the books are, the better the chances that we'll get to see it on the big screen.

"Governments fell, and militias, and generals, and warlords rose up..."

I know it's hard to tell how good a show is going to be from a four-minute clip, but my stokage level with Revolution is rising steadily.  It was just a few months ago that we first heard about J.J. Abrams' new project for NBC, but they've been working steadily, shooting for a fall priemere, and they've just released a trailer and several other clips to get potential viewers excited. And I have to say that it's working for me.

If you missed the earlier news, here's the synopsis:

Our entire way of life depends on electricity. So what would happen if it just stopped working? Well, one day, like a switch turned off, the world is suddenly thrust back into the dark ages. Planes fall from the sky, hospitals shut down, and communication is impossible. And without any modern technology, who can tell us why?

Now, 15 years later, life is back to what it once was long before the industrial revolution: families living in quiet cul-de-sacs, and when the sun goes down, the lanterns and candles are lit. Life is slower and sweeter. Or is it?

On the fringes of small farming communities, danger lurks. And a young woman's life is dramatically changed when a local militia arrives and kills her father, who mysteriously - and unbeknownst to her - had something to do with the blackout. This brutal encounter sets her and two unlikely companions off on a daring coming-of-age journey to find answers about the past in the hopes of reclaiming the future.

From director Jon Favreau ("Iron Man," "Iron Man 2") and the fertile imaginations of J.J. Abrams and Eric Kripke ("Supernatural"), comes a surprising "what if" action-adventure series, where an unlikely hero will lead the world out of the dark. Literally.

If it lasts at least a full season, and they don't leave us hanging at the end, it could turn out to be one of the best post-apocalyptic TV shows ever, if for no other reason than the visuals.  But I am a bit leery of the "how did it happen and can we change it back" storyline they introduce in the trailer.  I can't imagine that they'd be able to come up with a satisfying scientific answer for the blackout, so I wish they'd just leave it ambiguous and concentrate on the state of society in the post-apocalypse.

But in any case, I'm totally looking forward to it.  Check out the trailer below, and if you agree, head over to the official NBC page for even more.

Hat tip to QuietEarth.us for turning me on to the trailer.

The blogs are abuzz with news that first appeared on TVGuide.com that confirms that Netflix and CBS are in talks to possibly revive Jericho as a Netflix-original program.

Of course the chances of it actually happening are slim, but fans of Arrested Development probably thought the same thing before Netflix came to their rescue by bringing that series back to life.

If the show does start up again, one interesting question would be if it would overwrite or negate the storyline continued in comics and billed as Season 3 and Season 4 of the show.

I've now read the first three issues of Season 3, and it's pretty interesting, but it definitely moves the action out of Jericho itself, and opens the story to much broader issues than just a small town in Kansas trying to survive after a disaster.

I'd watch it either way of course, and while my first thought would be that I'd like to see it revert back to small scale survival, it would also be cool to see more areas of the country and how they're coping, and to find out more about the conspiracy behind the bombings that started it all to begin with.

But in any case, keep your fingers crossed that Netflix and CBS can come to an agreement.  And I'm only half-joking when I wonder if it would help if we sent Netflix some peanuts...? 

Syfy recently announced a slate of 28 projects that are in development for upcoming seasons, and one of them in particular seems like one to keep an eye on, not only because it sounds like a cool TV show, but because it's supposed to be a lot more than just that.

Defiance is described as "a revolution in transmedia entertainment that unites a groundbreaking scripted television series and a massively multiplayer online shooter for the very first time.

Set in the near future, Defiance introduces players and viewers to a completely transformed planet Earth, inhabited by the disparate survivors of a universal war who endeavor to build a new society among the devastation. The game combines the intense action of a AAA console shooter, with the persistence, scale, and customization of an MMO, while its TV counterpart weaves the rich tapestry of the world into a series with the scope, characters, and drama of a classic sci-fi epic. Because they exist in a single universe, the show and the game will influence each other and evolve together over time, with actions in both mediums driving the overall story of Defiance."

Production on the TV pilot started this week, with a premier set for some time in 2013.  The release mentions that a lot of the Battlestar Galactica production team has reunited for this project, so I'm really excited to see how it goes. 

I've read elsewhere the game will take place on the West Coast and the show will be set on the East Coast, so it will be interesting to see how much they interact, other than being set in the same universe.

Here's a pre-alpha trailer for the game, and you can read more about the entire project at the official site, Defiance.com.

I am very excited to present this special guest post by Irene W. Galaktionova, a Russian freelance writer and journalist specializing in the subjects of Russian literature, history and culture.

Officially, Russian post-apocalyptic fiction starts in 1828. At that time, all Russians, educated and illiterate alike, expected Halley's Comet to collide with the Earth in 1835. A few Russian writers started fantasizing what the planet would be like once the comet had destroyed our civilization.

In 1828, Vladimir Odoevsky - a leading Russian wordsmith of the time - wrote Two Days in the Life of the Globe, a futuristic novella that depicted the comet's apocalypse and its consequences. It was followed by Ivan Gurianov's The 1832 Comet (1832), Mikhail Pogodin's Halley's Comet (1833) and by Odoevsky's novel, 4338 (1834). The novel, which remained unfinished due to Odoevsky's death, depicted a futuristic humanity in 4338 which had survived the comet apocalypse in 1835 and was now facing another: the arrival of Biela's Comet in 4339.

But the first Russian PA novel translated into English was We by Eugene Zamyatin (1921).  It is probably best known for the fact that it was the major inspiration behind George Orwell's 1984 who regarded Zamyatin's book as an artistic challenge and decided to write his answer to it. But the two are dramatically different: 1984 is a very realistic piece of fiction whilst We is written from a futuristic and almost inhuman point of view. There's no nuclear threat in it yet, but there is some major world war/catastrophe implied that had divided the world into two camps: a responsible and well-organized One State behind a crystal wall and the rest of the planet.

The book was published in Europe in 1924, but at first it didn't create problems in Russia for Zamyatin as the first years after the revolution were very tolerant to all philosophies, even anti-communist. It was only when Stalin started gaining the upper hand in the late 1920s that he initiated massive attacks on creative artists, so in 1929 the novel was heavily criticized and Zamyatin had to leave Russia in 1931. He was in fact the first writer who suffered from Stalin's literary purges, and it was the criticism of We that triggered the whole book-banning hysteria in the Soviet Union.

We exists in at least six English translations, all available at Amazon, but I'm at a loss to recommend any in particular. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. The novel itself is quite graphic in places, depicting torture and public executions: definitely not a comfort read. I suggest you have a look at Amazon samples of the book and decide which one you like best.

After the show trial over We, the Russian science fiction - like all literature in the Soviet Union - was obliged to depict only positive scenarios. Socialist doctrine dictated that humanity would progress from one achievement to the next and viewed any negative scenarios as unnatural and defeatist. The Soviet people were told that they were all heading to a bright and happy future, and that people in the West were wise enough to prevent any PA-like scenarios from happening.

Don't forget that common Russian people had no idea of the inner workings of the Soviet government and sincerely believed that the world would one day unite in peace and harmony. And the Russian authorities were only too happy to support this belief by making sure no PA tendencies made it into print.

The only novel that could marginally qualify as Soviet PA is the Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers (1972). It's not really PA as the book deals with the consequences of an alien landing site in a poor and deteriorating Europe. But when the Chernobyl catastrophe struck in 1986, readers noticed its striking resemblance to the Roadside Picnic plot, and in 2007, the story served as a base for a PA game series S.T.A.L.K.E.R. set in the Chernobyl zone.  After that, the novel itself started to qualify as PA.

The Chernobyl catastrophe inspired another leading Russian writer and journalist, Tatiana Tolstaya, to start her post-apocalyptic novel The Slynx.  It took her fourteen years to finish this tongue-in-cheek satire where the post-nuclear Russians survive in medieval villages whose names are suspiciously reminiscent of today's Moscow suburbs and whose settlers are threatened by new rulers as well as all sorts of mutated (and quite hilarious) wildlife, of which the deadliest is the Slynx.

In the early 2000s, the post-apocalyptic genre has blossomed in Russia, mainly due to the success of numerous game tie-ins. Today, new books are written after recent PA games, and new PA games are created after recent PA novels. Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky, published in 2007, was the first of the new wave of Russian PA novels, although not the first one to be turned into a video game. Set in the deadly world of Moscow's vast underground system inhabited by mutants and the dregs of post-nuclear society, it was later turned into a video game of the same name and followed by the sequel, Metro 2034.

But the most popular Russian post-apocalyptic setting is, of course, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series started in 2007.The game (and the following tie-in novels), based loosely on the Strugatskys' novella Roadside Picnic and their short story The Forgotten Experiment, is set in an alternative Earth where the Chernobyl catastrophe took place in 2006. The heroes' militaristic adventures in the Zone rife with mutated enemies were immediately developed into S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-based books.

In total, eighty-three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. novels and short story anthologies have been published in Russia since 2007, but none of them have been translated into English as yet. Russian readers' demand for the new genre exceeded publishers' wildest dreams. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was followed by a succession of post-apocalyptic novels and series like Death Zone, Apocalyptic, Kremlin 2222, Z.O.N.A and The Nuclear City. But arguably the most original on the list was TechnoTma ("tma" meaning "darkness" in Russian).

Ex-S.T.A.L.K.E.R. writers Andrei Levitsky and Alex Bobl, together with their fellow authors Victor Nochkin, Victor Glumov and Roman Kulikov have dreamed up a post-war world where the Black Sea has dried out and the South of Russia has turned into a nuclear wasteland inhabited by feuding clans of oil traders and mutated farmers. The eight novels tell the stories of several protagonists who have to fight together in order to oppose a new and immediate danger: the Dominators, an alien force which attempts to take over the devastated Earth.

Alex Bobl says:

"TechnoTma follows the stories of its four protagonists: soldier of furtune Yegor Razin (he figures in The Password Eternity, Sand Blues and the following books), a farmer-turned-soldier Turan Jai (The Wastelands Clans, The Wastelands Warrior, etc), Albino, an ex Crimean Mountain dweller who had left his home to become a humble messenger (Barbarians of the Crimea and Sand Blues - where, incidentally, he meets Yegor Razin) and finally, young Vic Casper from a Moscow mercenary clan (Jagger and The Last Battle)."

There are talks now about having some of the TechnoTma books published in English. With any luck, they might come out on Amazon some time in winter 2012-2013. You can see brief extracts from the novels describing some of the TechnoTma world here: http://boblak.blogspot.com/2012/03/dark-times-vehicles.html

In the meantime, Andrei Levitsky and Alex Bobl have initiated more PA projects. Alex Bobl's latest standalone novel, Memoria. The Corporation of Lies, describes New York City struggling to come back to normal after a devastating civil war. This is a different post-apocalyptic scenario: rightless and penniless New Yorkers enthusiastically support each other helping to build a better future ruled by justice and hope. Memoria. A Corporation of Lies is coming out in English early this summer.

The latest project to date is also the most original. Andrei Levitsky has started the Invasion (Nashestvie) post-apocalyptic series which he co-writes with his readers. On Levitsky's website, anyone can suggest their own ideas and discuss those by other PA fans. The readers then decide how the next installment should develop and Andrei Levitsky writes it based on their suggestions. He says about writing the first novel:

"You'd think that writing the book itself would be easier, wouldn't you? Quite the opposite. It was exhausting. I had to work to a strict deadline: a week to discuss all the possible plot alternatives with the readers, and another week to actually write it up.  Good job I had a lot of co-authoring experience when there's no way you can let the other writer down or take a sabbatical waiting for inspiration to come."

He seems to be right: Russian post-apocalyptic writers don't need to wait for inspiration! I just hope we'll be able to read their best work in English soon.

To view more of Irene's writings, visit her blog Read Russian Books in English, where she reviews "fun and interesting" Russian books in English translation, primarily science fiction, fantasy, mystery and romance.

It's been almost four years since Jericho went off the air, after what most fans of the genre would say was too short of a run with barely more than a season broadcast.  But even though the show was cancelled, it had enough of a fan base to keep the fanchise alive in one form or another.

Jericho Season 3: Civil War was a six-issue comic series published between 2009 and 2011, that picks up right after the events of the second season on TV.  I haven't read it yet, but the consolidated graphic novel is $14 on Amazon, and the digital comics only come to $8 total, so I think I might pick it up.

Now would be a good time to do it, because IDW Publishing has announced that Season 4, a five-issue series, is going to be released startng in July.

Here's the release from their site

IDW Publishing is pleased to announce another series of Jericho comics hitting shelves this summer! The fan-favorite returns with a story picking up after the events of Jericho: Season Three. Overseen by the original television series’ writing staff and written by Kalinda Vazquez with art by Andrew Currie and covers by Tim Bradstreet, this five-issue series will be an absolutely essential piece of Jericho’s sprawling post-apocalyptic story.

“The greatest fans in the world came out strong for Jericho Season Three: Civil War and we are so thrilled to announce another installment of the comic book series," said Dan Shotz, Executive Producer of Jericho. “Jake and Hawkins have finally come home to Jericho and we want to personally thank those fans and IDW for allowing that to happen.”

“Working so closely with the creators of the TV show has been a blast, their love of the material is contagious, and one of the reasons I think fans relate to it so fervently,” said Senior Editor Scott Dunbier.

Jericho’s engrossing plot and rabid fan base have kept the show alive in different forms, seemingly against all odds. 

For long-time fans of the television series, or those discovering it for the first time, the enduring tale of survival against a backdrop of compelling suspense has proven to be an engrossing experience that’s not to be missed!

Sounds good to me; I'll be looking forward to getting a chance to read it.

It was just about two months ago that I discovered book one of the Wool series by Hugh Howey, and then it only took a matter of days to read the next four.  To say that I've been anxiously awaiting the next part of the story would be putting it mildly, and given the level of enthusiasm for the series (the five books have amassed nearly 1000 5-star reviews on Amazon alone), I'm not the only one.

Well, Woolites, the wait is almost over; at the time of this writing, there are just shy of six days left before the release of the next chapter in the Silo Series, First Shift: Legacy, and I can tell you that this is definitely a case where the taste is worth the wait.

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of reading the WOOL Series yet, the story takes place several centuries after a world-wide apocalypse forces survivors underground into a huge concrete silo.  There their descendants go about their lives, with little to no knowledge of the state of the world outside of their contained environment.

In my review of WOOL 1, I said that one great thing about the story is the questions it brings up. Things like what caused the apocalypse?  How long have they really been down there?  Who's in control,  and what do they know about the past? What is the world really like outside their self-imposed prison?

If, like me, you've been starving for answers, First Shift: Legacy will feel like filet mignon; it might not satisfy your entire hunger, but what it does give you is amazing. 

First Shift takes us back to the origin of the silo project.  We get some information about who built the silos, when, and why.  I say some information, because in classic Hugh Howie style, nothing is stated, everything is only hinted at.  You get a tid here and a bit there, and each morsel serves to expand the scope of the Silo universe, and make it even more interesting.  But of course, there are not only answers and revelations in Legacy, but a whole slew of new questions to ponder as we wait for the next chapter in the story.

So that I don't sound like a total fanboy, I will say that there is a certain plot device that is essential to the story that I won't spoil, but if I was to state it outright, you might have a reaction like "Huh? There's no way..."  But that being said, in the course of the story, it works, and even if you have a niggling doubts about it, it makes it easier to overlook because without it, there's no Legacy (in more ways than one...)

But even so, First Shift is definitely my favorite of the WOOL books so far.  If you've read the first five, you'll want to read Legacy ASAP. (And if you haven't, do so.)

My official rating for First Shift: Legacy is 9 megatons.

ps I should also note that even though this book takes place first chronologically, you do not want to read it first.  Similar to the way watching the Star Wars prequels will ruin certian revelations in the original Trilogy, reading Legacy first will definitely spoil the rest of the series for you, so be sure to start with WOOL 1.

My buddy Fear Death by Water of the Cosy Catastrophe blog had an idea that was so good that I decided to steal it, creating a list of free post-apocalyptic Kindle ebooks.

I don't mean public domain items, I mean modern commercial books that for whatever reason are available for free on Amazon.  Some are listed as free by their author, and some are put on sale by Amazon.

For my version, I'm using RSS feeds of items tagged with various apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic terms, and then aggregating them into a single feed with Yahoo Pipes, and filtering for items that include "Buy New: $0.00".

The results are displayed here on my Free Kindle eBooks page, and also on a Twitter account I set up at Twitter.com/FreeKindlePA.

The page doesn't have the exact look that it will eventually, and I'm still playing with the sources I include in the search, but so far it's pulling in at least a couple free books per week.  If you've got a Kindle or a phone or tablet with the Kindle app, there's no reason you shouldn't grab them all, and even if you don't, if you see something you think is interesting, you can always read it online with the Kindle web app.

If you want to get the feed in your own RSS reader or see how it works, the source is on Yahoo Pipes.

And my method of finding free books definitely misses a lot of what's out there, so be sure to keep an eye on Fear's picks also.