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178th out of 571 books
—
1,389 voters
Nature's End
by
James W. Kunetka,
Whitley Strieber (Goodreads Author)
The year is 2025. Immense numbers of people swarm the globe. In countless, astonishing ways, technology has triumphed- but at a staggering cost. Starvation is rampant. City dwellers gasp for breath under blackened skies. And tottering on the brink of environmental collapse, the world may be ending.....
It is a future that could well be ours. In their second shocking and fas...more
It is a future that could well be ours. In their second shocking and fas...more
Paperback, 412 pages
Published
May 1st 1986
by Warner Books
(first published 1986)
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„Schwarzer Horizont“ spielt in der nahen Zukunft. Die Welt hat mit dem Smog zu kämpfen, welcher allgegenwertig ist, und die Menschen zwingt, Atemmasken zu tragen. Die Umwelt ist völlig verschmutzt, Bäume gibt es kaum noch, der Regen ist sauer und das Wasser giftig. Dadurch herrscht überall Hunger, da Nahrungsmittel knapp sind. Arme Menschen haben kaum Chancen, da neben Lebensmitteln auch Wohnungen und Arbeitsplätze knapp sind. Die wenigen Arbeitsplätze welche es gibt, müssen gekauft werden. Reic...more
A powerful vision of the near future. While the book was written back in the 1980s, many facets of the book's predictions have either become or are in the process of becoming true. The book's storyline starts out with a powerful scene of the loss of a son by a father during a environmental disaster in Denver in 2024. The storyline evolves around the actions of the son while he was alive and how his actions would ultimately affect the main characters throughout the book.
Perhaps the one element t...more
Perhaps the one element t...more
Jan 09, 2010
Erik Graff
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
everyone
Recommended to Erik by:
no one
Shelves:
sf
I've always enjoyed novels about the end of civilization. They are my preferred form of "horror" fiction, other forms involving aliens, monsters and the supernatural generally leaving me cold. The reason, I suppose, is that the better end-of-the-world fiction is entirely plausible and the very probabilty of something disastrous happening has been a part of my and our culture's consciousness since the Cold War began in the years before my birth. Both of this novels coauthored by Streiber and Kune...more
Nature's End came to me about the same time I began delving into environmental issues in college. I was truly amazed by how Whitley Strieber's and James KUNETKA's (actual last name: for more accurate searches) "non-fictional fiction" drives home the consequences of our own irresponsible actions on this planet, and in such a frightening, yet entertaining way. The plot has stayed with (in) me. I've lost track of my rereads, as the predictions are disturbingly 'not all that' far-fetched. I believe...more
Nov 10, 2009
Matt Mazenauer
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Liberal Scifi fans
Recommended to Matt by:
Bookmans cheapo bin
Utterly fantastic. Though written in 1986, it manages to not once feel dated, which is apparently a big feat in sci-fi. The book follows people trying to survive in the pollution-decimated future, but the plot is so complex that the devastated future is only a backdrop. The political intrigue and fugitive-driven plot lend a feel of a thriller novel, and makes for a fast read. The myriad of inventive futuristic ideas all captivate. It's been a while since I got this into a book, and have tried to...more
I am currently over half way through this docu-fiction (OK so I made the term up but it fits right?). It is an interesting look into the future that is all too probable. Think about the year it was written and the technologies it speaks of that were not so prevalent in 1986. One prime example would be the internet, as well as advanced cosmetic surgerys.
This book is more compelling for the case of environmentalists (spell check please?) than any crap that has come out of Al Gores mouth. A good r...more
This book is more compelling for the case of environmentalists (spell check please?) than any crap that has come out of Al Gores mouth. A good r...more
Slow, barely plausible start, but it got better. I actually rate this one 3.5 stars because the story is regularly interrupted by fake news stories and pages of fake "recovered" data about climate change. At about the half-way point I started skipping that stuff and just reading the meat of the story. The meat deserves a 5, but that other stuff is super distracting so I compromised on the 4 star rating.
Our protagonists are trying to create a computer program that replicates the consciousness of...more
Our protagonists are trying to create a computer program that replicates the consciousness of...more
In the beginning of this book nearly the entire population of Denver dies because of pollution so thick that Twelve-noon looks like dusk, people are asphixiating in the streets, clawing thier chests and crushing each other as they fall gasping for air. Its a graphic beginning, and made all the more intense for me because I was reading it at the beginning of this year's fire season, when there were over 2,000 wild fires burning in Northern California, and we were living in thick smoke for almost...more
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Chilling and eye-opening at the same time. It seems to have a small taste of George Orwell's 1984 in it, and the world built by Strieber and Kunetka is so intricate and well-described that it seems like an all-too-possible future - Perhaps not by 2025 as described, but 2125... A few segments are a bit slow to get through and certainly the first few chapters are not for the faint of heart, but if you're looking for an intense dystopia with a crazed and sadistic 'saint' on the rise and a tiny glim...more
I read this book when it first came out and it seemed so 'sci-fi'/futuristic back then. Now many of the technologies 'predicted' in the story are in fact available to us - cell phones that can communicate with our home pcs, digital medical records...for what was amazing back-in-the-day, we now have at our fingertips; including global warming, air and water pollution. This was a good read then and is even more meaningful 25 years after publication.
This book changed my life - it was my first Streiber book. It is one book that was written as fiction that actually came to be reality. I highly recommend it. I had borrowed it in Seattle and eventually bought my own copy on the Oregon coast and it is one of my most prized paperbacks.
This is an apocalyptical story; one which you hope will never come true but it written in a manner that is foretelling on times ahead. Having read this book in my twenties, I hate to acknowledge that it appears to be a truthful unfolding of our future todate.
The strength of Nature's End is its attention to what was just beginning to happen. Strieber draws from current news stories and postulates from there. I was really drawn to its message and didn't sleep very well for a few weeks after I read it the first time.
I've only read two other of Strieber's books -- Wolfen and Communion -- and, although they were interesting, they didn't have quite the same punch as this one still does. Like one reviewer says, we're about halfway between when it was writt...more
I've only read two other of Strieber's books -- Wolfen and Communion -- and, although they were interesting, they didn't have quite the same punch as this one still does. Like one reviewer says, we're about halfway between when it was writt...more
Interesting, outdated story, but very interesting. It's always entertaining to read a "futuristic" book written so long ago that today is their future.
Slightly absurdist in some of the societal freakshow scenes, but strongly written. I do not want to live in that world.
Biospheric apocalypse ... caused by humans. I read this in the late 1980s and it scared the daylights out of me.
This book is really fascinating right now because we're a little more than halfway between when the book was written and when it is set. Great time to see how much of it is coming true. The title is deceptive. Although it involves all sorts of environmental catastrophes nature is not actually dying in the book. Human society is on the breaking point and the possible extinction of humans is a strong theme. The book strives for realism, and does a better job of that than most future stories. A few...more
One of my all-time favorites. I wish I still had a copy, as it's been out of print for quite a while.
One of the scariest books I have ever read, and I have read a lot of scary books.
Depop? TAV? The net? Dr. Gupta Singh. And Tom Sinclair.
Another book by this author that I thoroughly enjoyed.
read this one 3 times
meh. (seriously, that's all i can think of to say about this book. it was long, and only about 20% of it was interesting/good.)
Jun 14, 2008
Trevor Parker
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
environmentally intrigued people
Recommended to Trevor by:
my mom
Shelves:
sci-fi
Good read! I enjoyed it. I found it interesting that the authors published the book in 1986 but had their fictional history in the book going back to the early 1980's. Most authors choose an arbitrary date in the future and remain ahead of that so that they don't have to try and be accurate. This book is obviously not meant to be a prediction of our world, but to get you thinking about our world's problems. And indeed, I find interesting parallels to Gupta Singh and modern politicians.
this book was written almost 30 years ago, and its about the 'future', the book starts with the future being in about the 1990's and goes further and further. The planet is a mess, people are dying and depopulation seems to be the only answer..
Not as wacky as Streiber's later work, but more believeable and chilling. An eco-thriller where a run-down world is reaching its global carrying capacity and people begin thinking that maybe eugenics and euthanasia are the answer.
No way near as good as Warday but still a good read.
Excellent story. I do enjoy a story about the dangers of the future, especially when there is hope at the end.
Eerie depiction of the not-so-near future. Look up desertification to see what I mean.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Is This book prophetic? | 3 | 13 | Jan 01, 2013 06:15am |
I was just saying how i neede...more
May 27, 2012 02:17pm