Recommended reading – Outpost

I've got a few book recommendations to share with you over the coming weeks, and today it's the turn of Adam Baker's wonderful OUTPOST. A few months back I saw the cover popping up with increasingly regularity online and I was intrigued. Several people recommended the book to me and when I discovered that Adam himself was a member of Moody's Survivors, I immediately got hold of a copy. For anyone who hasn't yet read it, here's the blurb:

"They took the job to escape the world. They didn't expect the world to end.

Kasker Rampart: a derelict refinery platform moored in the Arctic Ocean. A skeleton crew of fifteen fight boredom and despair as they wait for a relief ship to take them home.

But the world beyond their frozen wasteland has gone to hell. Cities lie ravaged by a global pandemic. One by one TV channels die, replaced by silent wavebands.

The Rampart crew are marooned. They must survive the long Arctic winter, then make their way home alone. They battle starvation and hypothermia, unaware that the deadly contagion that has devastated the world is heading their way…" 

OUTPOST is a great, fast read. Baker presents a truly nightmarish scenario (on many levels) which twists and turns like you wouldn't believe. Considering the isolation and inaccessibility of the refinery location, he manages to spin the tale off in several unexpected directions whilst still maintaining an air of claustrophobic hopelessness. I really enjoyed the book, and I contacted Adam to ask a few questions about the novel and his career in general.

In interviews I've often talked about my first viewing of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and the effect it had on me. Whilst reading OUTPOST, the polar desolation felt reminiscent of John Carpenter's THE THING, and it seems that that movie had a similar effect on Adam as NOTLD had on me: "My cousin rented it on VHS in the early eighties. We drew the curtains, planted ourselves in front of the TV and let it scare the life out of us. The atmosphere of that single viewing grew in my imagination. The cold. The isolation. The dread."

Although he says he's always wanted to be a writer, Adam's CV lists a number of unusual vocations including gravedigger, mortuary attendant, and cinema projectionist which, he says, "was a great gig because, once the films were running, I could sit in the projection box and write. Most of OUTPOST was written during late-night Saturday shows at Cheltenham Cineworld." As well as time to write, it seems the projectionist job also provided plenty of inspiration. I asked Adam what kind of research he did to make the refinery setting in the book so believable. He told me a lot of it came from working "in a dilapidated cinema. I became a connoisseur of industrial decay. Paint-caked water-pipes, rust-streaked ducting, dust-furred girders. Kasker Rampart, the oil refinery in OUTPOST, is a floating city constructed from these textures and memories."

OUTPOST is an excellent book which I thoroughly recommend. Adam's next novel, JUGGERNAUT – the prequel to OUTPOST – is out in February with the third book in the series due later next year.

Recommended reading – Outpost is a post from: David Moody - author of HATER, DOG BLOOD and the AUTUMN series