With Sunrise on the Reaping, a prequel to The Hunger Games, currently in development as a major motion picture, I thought it might be a good time to revisit the original novel. To that end, I have posted by 2013 review of the book below, along with an analysis of how it fits into the larger genre of dystopian fiction. Please be aware that there are spoilers...

​I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins after enjoying the 2012 science fiction movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson. It's easy to see why both the novel and film were so popular. The story strikes a primal chord since people have always been fascinated by those things which also appall us – and what's more fascinatingly appalling than a gladiatorial competition which pits teenagers against each other? Collins has taken some criticism for her depiction of kids killing kids, regardless of the fact that this happens in our world all the time. These recriminations would be fair if Collins did anything to glamorize the ritual, but as protagonist Katness Everdeen makes clear through her narrative, the Hunger Games are pure brutality, designed to keep the people of this futuristic America passive by constantly reminding them that their lives are not their own. 

The idea of young tributes being herded off to die in bizarre competitions hails all the way back to Bronze Age Greece with the story of Theseus (see Greek Myths Retold for more). As you may recall, Theseus and other Athenian youths were trotted off to fight for their lives in a subterranean lair guarded by bull-headed monster called the Minotaur. Even more obvious are Collins's references to the gladiatorial games of ancient Rome and some of our more loathsome reality television shows. Maybe the author even picked up a copy of the The Most Dangerous Game (1924), about a castaway trying to survive a murderous aristocrat who's stalking him for sport, a book considered by many to be the definitive man-hunting-man story? 

The ever-widening gap between rich and poor in America is also reflected in the pages of The Hunger Games. Katness lives in District 12, located in modern-day Appalachia, where people eke out a rough living by mining coal. There's never enough food... or anything else for that matter. Most of what the district creates is shipped off to the country's capital which is lush, beautiful and deeply corrupt. The capital residents all speak with bizarre affectations and, reminiscent of the French Royal Court of old, try to outdo each other with flamboyant hairstyles and ostentatious fashion. The Hunger Games play a dual role in this society. For the idle rich, it's a guilty pleasure using people they consider inferior anyways. For the districts, it's a constant reminder of who's in charge.

Katness becomes the female tribute for District 12 when she volunteers to take the place of her younger sister. She's unexpectedly qualified for the games, having spent years sneaking into the forest to hunt for wild game and collect medicinal plants for her family. Most of the book deals with the young woman's quest to stay alive as she navigates a treacherous outdoor arena and forms uneasy alliances with some of the other tributes, including a boy from her home town named Peeta Melark. Unlike most of the other combatants, Katness's experience as a hunter-gatherer have taught her to think of three-dimensionally. She sleeps tied to tree branches, knows how to find water, can hunt wild game and avoid poisonous plants. She has no desire to murder others and at first is content to avoid her competitors and allow them to pick each other off. It's not until she begins to care for Peeta that survival becomes much more complicated. Yes, in the Hunger Games, even affection can be used as a weapon.

Reading The Hunger Games was a joy. It's simple narrative style were a welcome relief from some of the other young adult authors I've read who seem to think pretentious prose amounts to high art. Katness is an intelligent and logical protagonist in a genre which often portrays young women as trifling. I won't go so far as to say The Hunger Games should be on a high school reading list about the nature of tyranny alongside the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley or Gabriel Garcia Marquez; but there's much more to the book than just teens killing teens. Anyone who says otherwise either hasn't read it or doesn't understand its literary lineage.

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​Jason has spent his life running from his problems, but now he and his childhood sweetheart are on the precipice of parenthood, and he’s struggling with the loss of his adolescence. Then he re-discovers his favorite old video game, THE MIDNIGHT, a nostalgic 1980s fantasy adventure about a helmeted hero who travels to a cyberpunk world to save the people from eternal darkness. Seeking to repair his broken game, Jason ends up at a mysterious arcade in an abandoned 1980s mall, where he plays the old arcade game of The Midnight and suddenly he’s transported to… 

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The "Great Invasion" originated from the sea. It moved north across the mainland. Many fled, while some took refuge on a small concrete island called Celestia, built over a thousand years ago.

Now cut off from the mainland, Celestia has become an outpost for criminals and other misfits, as well as a refuge for a group of young telepaths. Events push two of them, Dora and Pierrot, to flee the island and set sail to the mainland. There, they discover a world on the precipice of a metamorphosis, though also a world where adults are literally prisoners of their own fortresses, unintentionally preserving the "old world" at a time when a new generation could guide society towards a better humanity. 

​Celestia is the most ambitious and successful graphic novel to date by one of the world's most exciting storytellers, Manuele Fior (Red Ultramarine and Blackbird Days). The novel showcases his singular talents as a once-in-a-generation visual artist and a deeply empathetic writer who uses science fiction to look to the future of humanity.

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The story of a nameless father and son trying to survive with their humanity intact in a postapocalyptic wasteland where Earth's natural resources have been diminished, and some survivors are left to raise others for meat, The Road is one of Cormac McCarthy's bleakest and most prescient novels. See below for info on the novel. 

This first official graphic novel adaptation of McCarthy's work is illustrated by acclaimed French cartoonist Manu Larcenet, who ably transforms the world depicted by McCarthy's spare and brutal prose into stark ink drawings that add an additional layer to this haunting tale of family love and human perseverance. 

Cormac McCarthy personally approved the making of this book before his death, and the adaptation bears the approval of the McCarthy estate.

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I just got through watching the entire Mad Max movie series for about the fifth time... so I guess I'm in the mood for crazy vehicles packed with weapons and driven by lunatics hauling ass across a desert landscape! Fortunately, Convoy by Kevan Stevens and Jef is a very satisfying way to scratch that post-apocalyptic itch.

It’s 2074, and the Earth is an abused ruin, a landscape of desolation thanks to mankind’s inability to live in moderation. Pockets of makeshift civilization are spread out like islands in a sea of wasted misery, a distance that only the craziest and most desperate madmen dare to traverse. Alex and Fonzie are two such individuals, and they are about to take the contract of their lives leading a convoy of misfits and mercenaries on a mission to deliver a cargo of precious medicine across the desolate plain. They’ll face lawless hordes and competing agents, and their fleet will winnow before they reach their destination, but none of those opponents will be prepared for Alex and her wily ways…

Buckle up for an explosive tale of hard-boiled anti-heroes riding the razor’s edge between Death and Destiny… A pulse-pounding one-two punch full of criminal behavior and karmic justice from two of the most genre-pushing comic creators: Kevan Stevens and Jef!

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