Local lass, scientist, writes a YA+edgy bits story that plods along and ends up with a family unit of 3 living in a cottage. Ah sweet. Bus stop book.
The Shining Wall
Melissa Ferguson
3.64
103 ratings24 reviews
In a ruined world, where wealthy humans push health and longevity to extremes and surround themselves with a shining metal wall, privilege and security is predicated on the services of cloned Neandertals, and the exploitation of women in the shanty towns and wastelands beyond the fortress city.
Dunno nuffin about this bloke, he writes an intriguing tale with a very strong Aboriginal bent. It starts out as a bit of a lark involving two youths stealing a water tanker and then morphs into alternate timelines and stuff that describes some of the Aboriginal worldview. The best of the three
The Waterboys
Peter Docker
3.77
31 ratings10 reviews
In an apocalyptic future, Conway inhabits a continent caught up in a violent struggle for water control. He is on the run from the Water Board flunkies who hate him but need his water-divining skills to survive. A white man whose heart and spiritual connections are black, Conway dreams about the arrival of Europeans in Western Australia—when Captain Charles Fremantle chose to throw off the mantle of Empire and join the indigenous people.
And then there's this one. Obviously goodreads doesn't like morbid satire, I do. This is sort of a bit Brave New Worlds, but witty. Much of the dialogue is well done, but read as straight SF it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, (there is no explanation as to why watching a video of someone getting injured is a substitute for eating food, or really how they discovered that). But given the premise it's a short if good ride.
Spoiler!
Patrick Allington
3.25
206 ratings50 reviews
Each morning, the last humans start their day with graphic footage from the front. This is what sustains them - literally.
In a world where eight billion souls have perished, the survivors huddle together apart, perpetually at war, in the city-states of Rise and Shine. Yet this war, far from representing their doom, is their means of survival. For their leaders have found the key to life when crops, livestock, and the very future have been blighted - a key that turns on each citizen being moved by human suffering.