The Oblivion Society (Paperback)

~ (Author), David Wong (Foreword)
Key Phrases: fusion fuel, oblivion society, shotgun crutch, North of the Border, Vivian Gray, Boltzmann's Market (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Oblivion Society is a smart, hip, fun, ride through our worst cold war nightmares. Read it today. You won't be able to put it down. -- Michael Gallant, Editor, QuantumMuse.com

Product Description

The end of the world is just the beginning of the adventure!

What would you do if you slept through the apocalypse? What if everything you knew about disaster survival came from old B-movies? What would you do if society as you know it suddenly became The Oblivion Society?

After an accidental nuclear war reduces civilization to a smoldering ruin, grocery clerk Vivian Gray joins a comically inept bunch of twentysomething survivors, and together they try to ride out Armageddon on little more than scavenged junk food and half-remembered pop culture.

When the contaminated atmosphere unleashes a menagerie of deadly atomic mutants, Vivian and her friends take to the interstate for a madcap cross-country road trip toward a distant sanctuary that may not, in the strictest sense of the word, exist. But can they get to safety before the toxins get to them?

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Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Permuted Press; 2 edition (September 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0976555956
• ISBN-13: 978-0976555957
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #138,342 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Humorously Funny and Graphically Graphic, September 12, 2007

By	Wayne Elgin - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'll admit that I'm not too much of a book person, so it's not easy for me to digest reading anything, much less 363 pages of anything. Oblivion Society managed to capture and hold my attention through five people's journey through one post-apocalyptic nightmare. The characters are well-developed in a subtle yet important fashion from the beginning to the end. Hart's attention to detail evidences itself throughout. His claim to fame may well be his generously-scattered, late-nineties, pop-culture references, which come in quantities closely approximating a treasure trove for geeks. The humor in this book is mostly laugh-out-loud clever, with the occasionally obvious roll-your-eyes pun thrown in for good measure. Such humorous posturing is a welcome comic relief in contrast to the circumstances of the book.

Oblivion does a good job of describing in great detail the surprising transformations that occur. It's impossible to give examples without spoiling the book. Hart provides such phenomenal word pictures of events that you've never seen, you may actually believe you've witnessed them.

The book does have a fault, in that the first three chapters tend to drag out and make the book seem longer than it is. This stigma, however, does not extend into the fourth chapter and the pace is justified for the remainder. Still, even with the slow beginning, the groundwork for the rest of the book is well laid and the investment of the reader's time is a small price for such a great reading investment.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laugh out loud and be late for... whatever, June 12, 2006

By	E. A. Holcombe (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Oblivion Society (Paperback)

I'm not really a science fiction person. Reading "The Oblivion Society" was the literary equivalent of the astonished and exhilarated feeling you get after your fervent sci-fi friends drag you to the latest cult classic and you find yourself earnestly enjoying it. This book has the intensely caricatured characters of a superhero comic, the spine-tingling suspense of a horror film, and the explosive special effects of a top-budget adventure, all mixed up in a sincere and original drama... and it works! Vivian Gray is an inadvertently alluring lead heroine and her friends set you laughing from start to finish - the only infallible way to take a sojourn from reading your copy of this book will be to loan it to a friend! (You might not get it back.)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I read it three times, September 12, 2007

By	W. DEROOY (Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a connoisseur of comedy, I have been a fan of Marcus Alexander Hart's writing for many years. His genius for storytelling and comedic timing are evident in anything he produces that has words in it, from movie reviews to novels to two-line emails.

The Oblivion Society is an absolute blast. It blurs the lines between sci-fi, adventure, horror, and comedy in a way that few writers can even approach, let alone pull off as delightfully entertainingly as Hart does, with more laugh out loud moments than The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The characters are colorful and surprisingly alive. Vivian Gray, the sensible heroine, provides the grounding that makes the over-the-top antics of the supporting cast believable. Hart knows just how to skewer stereotypes.

Hart's description is vivid and at times surprisingly graphic, and his action sequences are not to be missed. There's no good place at which to set the book down.

Do you like plot twists? As you read this book, you will have truly NO idea what's going to happen next, and I guarantee your guesses will be wrong, without exception. What's more, the story is so tightly woven that not until a second reading do you realize all the clever contrivances that are the reason this novel took eight years to perfect. Sharp readers may spot the Easter eggs that make it certain Hart did his research, too.

Hart's talent is truly standout. With any luck we will hear more from him, and when we do I honestly can't wait to see what else he has up his sleeve.