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Robert Brockway

Carrier Wave Kindle Edition

by Robert Brockway (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

431 ratings

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Humanity listened to the night sky. What we heard shattered the world.

Listen.

Just once. That’s it.

As soon as you hear it, it has you. And once it has you, it’s over. You may think you’re in control. You’re not. You want one more listen. You want to look at that strange spot in the sky. The one that’s been slowly growing. The one that didn’t make sense… until you listened. You want to listen again, and you will do whatever it takes to make everyone else listen. By any means necessary. Even if it kills you.

Just one more listen. One more.

Listen.

Print length

631 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

February 17, 2020
File size

1292 KB
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B084M9PL8J
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Brockwar Press: The Fightin'est Press in the West (February 17, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 17, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1292 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 631 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ B084QKMX7D

Best Sellers Rank: #138,780 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,840 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #2,446 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)
- #3,458 in Horror (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
431 ratings

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Robert Brockway

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Robert Brockway is the author of the post-apocalyptic horror epic Carrier Wave, the cyberpunk novel Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity, the comedic non-fiction essay collection Everything is Going to Kill Everybody, and The Vicious Circuit, a punk rock urban fantasy series from Tor Books. He is the former senior editor and columnist of Cracked.com (during the good years! Mostly!). He lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife Meagan and their three dogs, Detective Martin Riggs, Detective Roger Murtaugh, and Penny (she did not make the force).

He is represented by Sam Morgan at The Lotts Agency.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

431 global ratings

5 star		60%
4 star		25%
3 star		11%
2 star		3%
1 star		1%

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Amazon Customer

Neat concepts, rough edges

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 20, 2022

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The original variation on a zombie concept was enough to keep me interested and reading, but the book could probably have used another writing pass and some editing.

It took Brockway several chapter-stories to hit his stride and start developing the characters and scenes, and it was hard to get into it or care about the characters beyond a morbid curiosity until then.

Once he hit his stride, the characters and scenarios got more interesting and more engaging and made the story worthwhile.

It could still have used some editing to deal with the extraneous and dropped words, and to correct the erroneous early passage that describes entropy and ambition as opposing intents to match the latter passage that paired apathy and ambition. Describing the characters when introducing them would also have prevented the confusion in later stories where they are described before their names are mentioned and the reader has no prior description to match them to.

This could have been a four or five star book if Brockway had taken the time to bring all the story-chapters up to the quality of the best few.

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Fresh take on tired tropes

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 12, 2022

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4.5/5. Scratched my itch for a dark survival apocalyptic story when so many others failed to do so. Has depth, a unique big-bad, and a satisfying ending. Plenty of characters (almost too many) that are easy to root for, and others that are easy to despise. Great read!

One person found this helpful

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Michael H. Peckham

Carrier Wave is high-concept, epic horror. Don't sleep on this one.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 13, 2020

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Carrier Wave is one of the most original novels I've read in many years, yet so many of the themes *feel* familiar. It's part of the disorienting, unsettling vibe that permeates the whole book.

The basic premise is that an extraterrestrial signal drives humanity mad and leads to the collapse of civilization. There's a post-apocalyptic struggle for survival, and an ultimate battle for humanity.

If that premise sounds vague, it's because I don't want to ruin the carefully planned structure of the book, a series of revelations that build the bigger picture like one of those puzzles where pieces of a photograph come into view randomly and gradually until the whole thing snaps into place.

The plot is laid out in a series of vignettes, most of which could be read as self-contained stories set in a shared universe. It's reminiscent of themed short-story compilations (think Bradbury's Martian Chronicles), but as I said above, each vignette helps knit together a bigger picture. This is a fairly unusual structure for a recent novel, but it was good enough for Canticle for Leibowiz, and it works wonderfully here.

I've read comparisons to Stephen King's The Stand, and in terms of scale and apocalyptic stakes, that's apt. The basic premise of the signal, though, is superficially closer to King's zombie-esque story, Cell: a mysterious signal drives anyone who hears it first into murderous rage, and then a kind of mysterious, uneasy order. There are also many elements that call to mind the Cthulhu mythos. This is what I meant by the themes *feeling* similar: it borrows elements from zombie horror, from contagion stories, and from grand epistemic horror featuring inscrutable godlike beings.

Although Carrier Wave does not feature zombies, exactly, it digs in hard on many of the things that make zombie stories so popular. There is the slow dawning horror as characters see the world collapsing around them, and a reader can't help but wonder what they would do in such a situation. What would *I* do to survive? Brockway anticipates this, teases some of the survival tactics a reader might imagine, and then tears them down with grim efficiency.

In fact, the first half of the book is relentlessly grim, yet some of the vignettes end with survivors heading uncertainly into the future. As the novel barrels towards its conclusion, some of those survivors become the key players in the final battle for the future of humanity. Pay attention to each story -- there's nothing filler or throwaway here.

If you're familiar with Robert Brockway from his humor columns (Cracked.com, especially), or his Vicious Circuit trilogy, you may be surprised that Carrier Wave is not a comedic work. It's not humorless, exactly, but the story is relentlessly downbeat much of the time and what humor there is occurs organically through character interactions. Don't expect Carey from Vicious Circuit to burst on scene and dole out punk rock one liners while punching unspeakable horror in the crotch.

What you can expect is high-concept horror with a slow build and intricately interwoven stories, each of which is satisfying in their own right. Highly, highly recommended.

5 people found this helpful

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Cameron Lowe

Hear that?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 10, 2021

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Let's talk about what Carrier Wave isn't.

This isn't World War Z. Yeah, it is a collection of horror vignettes tied into a looser grand narrative, but calling it similar to that is like saying Bachelor Party and Forrest Gump are basically the same movie because they both have Tom Hanks. World War Z has a clear narrative structure. It's the modern technical boxer, who puts out the jab to score points for a decision in the twelfth.

Carrier Wave is the drunk, lumbering, beer-gut-toting guy who's smoked a few too many cigars, has had his nose broken in three spots, and might go down in the fourth with cardiac arrest. It's a book that doesn't care about landing points. The vignettes - and eventually the overarching plot - go for haymakers and uppercuts, whiffing as often as it connects. But when it connects, it made me see stars like Soda Popinsky.

This is also not The Unnoticeables. That series could hardly be called straightforward, but that was Brockway telling a tale you could easily map out and navigate. Carrier Wave is messy, and in its messiness, you see the heart of the writer, particularly in the gray areas and characters we should hate but can't because he writes them so well. But it takes a long, long, long time to see what he's going for here. Well worth it, but it deserves to be mentioned that this one is a heck of a twisty mountain.

It's cosmic horror in post-apocalyptic form. It's tonally all over the place, it's too long by at least a third, as a few of the stories, particularly in its early going, don't feel as necessary or heartfelt as the last two-thirds of the book. But where this collection of stories lands, it lands hard. It's gruesome and heartfelt and raw in the very best of ways, and I think it's well worth a shot if you love bizarre apocalyptic fiction, horror short stories, or Brockway's previous work.

10 people found this helpful

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tom

Zombie apocalypse but we'll written

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 2, 2022

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The polt is not the sos... the pollinators of humanity her on earth have returned to harvest thier crop...the telling is very well done. I would recommend this book for fans of apocoliptic fiction.

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Sneezy McLiver

Scary and entertaining

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 5, 2022

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I enjoyed this thoroughly. It reminded me of World War Z. The story is disjointed at first then the reader will get sucked in. I really enjoyed this.

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Raven Reviews

Listen...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 25, 2020

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As the tesseract of a cosmic horror is slowly unveiled through the seemingly random viewpoints of some of its innumerable victims, an extinction-level event more terrifying and brutal than anyone could have imagined unfolds.

In this tale of a cosmic signal that sends its listeners into murderous rampages and creepy inhuman behavior, Brockway presents a story epic in scale but deeply personable in its effect. In a manner reminiscent of, but in no way derivative of, horror novels such as World War Z, you’re invited to explore the chaos and carnage from a variety of victims- some who survive, and some who most assuredly do not.

The supernatural threat is one of Lovecraftian proportions, existentially terrifying, attacking the very core of humanity by its very presence. But the consequences are street level, bone-snappingly brutal and heart-achingly human.

Coming off of the excellent Vicious Circuit series, Brockway steps away a little from his irreverent comedy writer platform into something no less entertaining for its seriousness. But don’t be fooled- the Gen X punk sensibilities of the former Cracked legend are still there, lending each character you’re introduced to an unpretentious humanity that grabs you instantly and unselfconsciously by the hand. This, of course, makes it all the crueler when they’re ripped away from you.

For fans of creepy, tense action and smart horror world building, Carrier Wave has it all. It’s a solid, familiar concept that you can find examples of in various popcorn flicks and paperbacks, sure. But then, there were zombies before Romero, right? The secret ingredient that brings an iconic take to a concept is always the creative voice, and Brockway is a potent ingredient indeed. He brings to the mix what he always does- headstrong heart, subtle poetry, a smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes, and knuckles so bloody you can see the bone.

Carrier Wave is also (somewhat ironically, considering the subject matter) distressingly addictive. It’s been a while since I started reading a book only to look up and realise it’s hours past a reasonable bedtime. It’s also been a while since I’ve had the urge to just casually mention a book to complete strangers on a bus.

Am I destined, like the antagonists of the story, to go a little too far in my proselytizing of this compelling new sound?

Yes.

Yes, I think I am.

5 people found this helpful

Danny

New Horror

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book is truly great. There are a lot of cliches in horror and none here.

There is a strange signal in the sky, which grows and affects people differently. As the confusion seeps into horror there is a pattern to to it and how it affects people becomes more clear to you and the characters as the story develops.

This book introduced me to a new sense of horror a lot of readers won't have felt, since they were young and discovered horror for the first time.

One person found this helpful

Allen Vincent

An awesome book you could use to choke a camel.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

Reminiscent of The Stand, this book is easily Brockway’s best work. As someone who has been reading his stuff for a long time, this is a real cut above. Fantastic characters, and lots of them. Yet each is still well rounded and has depth. Also, be prepared for how big this book is. It may look like a standard paperback but this thing is a BOOK. Like, you could choke a camel with this thing.

Luke Haines

Staggeringly good.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 16, 2020

Verified Purchase

Immediately absorbing, deeply disturbing and brilliantly written. Enormous in its scope but unfailingly believable in its characters, this is the best book I can remember reading in a long time.

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