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The Quiet Earth

Author: Craig Harrison

Here's a very cool novel by a New Zealand author, that was made into a pretty good film as well. Geneticist John Hobson wakes up from a nightmare and finds that everybody's gone. POOF! Oh, yes, and all the clocks have stopped at 06:12h. And there's no fauna either, except for an earthworm he chances across. Still, dead meat did not disappear together with the live stuff. Hobson avoids going insane by resorting to the usual human defense mechanism: trying to make sense of it all. In his case, he postulates that it was done by some higher force and intelligence. Well, it wasn't. Turns out he had a hand in it. It's, as they say, 'complicated'—but in the end he figures out what he'd done, and insanity is slowly taking hold. The novel ends on a kind of Groundhog Day note, when Hobson tried to kill himself, only to wake up again, to find his watch stopped at 06:12h. Why it's on the list: It's a twisted tale of self-imposed human isolation, mixed in with a goodly does of solipsism. Thoroughly depressing in many ways, but a damn good story nonetheless. Hobson's name was probably chosen for a reason, alluding to 'Hobson's Choice', where your only choice is to take or leave the only option offered. Ratings: Grimness: 5, Bizarreness: 4, Hope: 1, Fun-factor: 1.

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