A while ago I read the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London. For anyone who hasn't read it, it takes place in extreme cold, and the MC is hiking with his dog through this harsh landscape. You really feel the cold and the direness of the situation when read it (or I did).
I’m looking for a similar feeling. It doesn't have to be similar to that short story, but books where the environment is central to the story and the characters experiences, challenges. Harsh landscapes/worlds/ nature being nature etc. Could even be on an alien world.
by jackalnapesjudsey
11 Comments
The Left Hand of Darkness, though the struggle with the harsh environment becomes apparent in the latter part of the book.
Silo series by Hugh Howey
He also wrote Sand, which I did not like as much
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff did that to me.
Dark matter by Michelle Paver. Amazing horror story about one year long Arctic expedition. Never ending night, growing tension, unsettling, eerie atmosphere. Dogs are involved as well. The same I can say about The Terror by Dan Simmons. But instead of one year, the story takes 3 years.
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling: sci-fi horror about a climber exploring a deep dark spooky cave with features that have names like “The Long Fall” and “Hell Sump”. The sci-fi part is limited to her high-tech suit that lets her survive in the cave for weeks, besides that it’s pretty much just her and the cave and the dark and her less than sane handler on the radio up on the surface. Clearly written by someone who knows their shit about caving.
From Below by Darcy Coates: paranormal horror about a documentary crew exploring a deep shipwreck. Between the cold, the pressure, the silt, keeping track of your air supply, and the chances of getting snagged on things, deep shipwreck diving is already dangerous enough *before* you throw in the paranormal shit! A lot of the horror leans on the fact that the characters have to do decompression stops, so if the scary thing follows them they’re fucked.
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer: I like to call this a work of “transcendentalist sci-fi” and it is literally about this. The main character is a biologist and she’s studying a freaky wilderness zone called Area X that Changes You the longer you’re in it. The biologist is kinda fine with this. Some people call it a horror novel, personally I think it’s quite Romantic in the literary sense.
Into the Planet by Jill Heinerth: non-fiction by an IRL cave diver! Underground + underwater is a fantastically dangerous combination, cave divers are batshit crazy, and this one is such madwoman that she even went diving *inside an iceberg*. Enjoy reading about all the times she almost died.
Are you specifically looking for fiction? As I can think of a number of non fiction books that would fit your criteria.
*Beyond the Chindwin: An Account of Number Five Column of the Wingate Expedition into Burma, 1943* by BG Bernard Fergusson. Ordinary (not Special Forces trained) Britons fighting the Japanese and the Burmese jungle.
*In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex* [1820] by Nathaniel Philbrick. Men ship wrecked and adrift in the middle of the Pacific: men who believed Hawaii was inhabited by cannibals.
*Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party* by George R. Stewart.
*White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery and Vengeance in Colonial America* by Stephen Brumwell. LTC Robert Roger’s harrowing month-long winter retreat after his St. Francis Raid, Oct-Nov 1759.
The only book I have ever read that dropped the temperature around me: Dan Simmons, THE TERROR.
A Story Like the Wind and A Far Off Place by Laurens Van Der Post
One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor & To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers
*Sphere* by Michael Crichton