Which Books Explore The Great Tribulation In Fiction?

If you want something a bit lesser known, ‘The Fort’ by Bernard Cornwell is based on the Penobscot Expedition of 1779 and, again, features a small force up against seemingly insurmountable odds. His battles are always very well described. A different history set over the centuries of Christian-Muslim conflict is ‘Crusaders’ by Dan Jones. This too is a huge and character-driven history, and it too gives that thrilling sense of history teetering on the brink of disaster and the consequences of every decision. It too shows how many actual sieges could make great films.

It’s sort of mainstream to touch on these topics as well. I mean, Nicolas Cage was in “Knowing” which revealed the mysterious figures from the first part of the movie to be angelic and trying to cause an apocalyptic type of reset. The end of the movie where a massive solar flare burns up the Earth, and the special children are taken to Heaven to start over in “Eden” was pretty cool, and super religious. It seemed to follow the book of Revelation rather closely, just with a bunch of different Sci-Fi elements thrown in. Another really good example of a spiritual theme in a really good movie is “The Book of Eli”. It takes place in a world that was devastated by war that was brought on by conflicts over religion. It follows a man and his book in a long spanning journey through a post-apocalyptic world, similar to “The Road”. But it has a really spiritual undertone as the book that they are trying to save is strongly implied to be the last Bible on Earth. The movie takes the form of a post-apocalyptic western in order to explore the topic of preserving faith and knowledge in the new world.

I think a really good book for someone to start to learn more about science through fiction is “The Rosie Project” by Graeme Simsion. As a genetics professor, Don Tillman is a very logical person. He tries to develop a system to find the love of his life, but everything doesn’t go as planned. The book is very fun and heartwarming. It’s not really a chemistry book, but it does show the kind of way that scientists look at the world, and how they try to solve problems. This book is very good for someone who is starting to look into the world of science, because it shows a very logical person trying to solve problems in his everyday life in a very scientific way. ‘The Disappearing Spoon’ is another fabulous book that weaves great stories about the elements and their scientists with the hard facts. My belief is that beginners will find this an exciting and less frightening introduction to the ‘hard’ science of chemistry. Sam Kean’s clever weaving of historical events, the odd personal tales and his in-depth descriptions of the various elements mean that a great big story is constructed from seemingly dry facts. As Don Tillman recognises in ‘The Rosie Project’, scientists are just as fascinating as any fictional characters and Sam Kean has an array of characters to pull from the long list of the scientists of the elements. A Science Fiction book that centres around someone involved in Forensic Science has to be considered for this list and in this case, the main protagonist David Hunter is a forensic anthropologist which makes ‘The Chemistry of Death’ by Simon Beckett an ideal science fiction book. Although it is more centered towards the aspects of a Forensic Scientist, the detail that goes into the chemical processes of decay, could be of great interest to someone starting out in chemistry. It’s a great ‘story’ book, with plenty of suspense that keeps you gripped to the book, whilst always coming back to Chemistry within the story. This historical fiction novel is set in the 18th century. A young woman, Emilie, was brought up by her alchemist father in isolation. Her father taught her the alchemist’s craft, and after his death, she is left alone with many questions. She sets out to discover the truth about her father’s life and his work. Her journey becomes one of discovery and of the roots of chemistry. The author provides a great insight into historical science and the novels follows the main character on her journey of discovery and growth. A most enjoyable and thought provoking non-fiction book relating chemistry to real crimes is ‘Elements of Murder’ by John Emsley. This book tells the dark history of poisonous elements used throughout time for crime and assists the reader to understand the aspect of chemistry that can be important in Forensic Science and Environmental issues. This book is written in an entertaining manner making an enjoyable and enjoyable read providing a real insight into real life crime.

This is an interesting discussion for me. I have only watched the show so far, but it sounds like the book took a few different routes than they did in the series. I might have to read this in order to get a better sense of the author's vibe.

Just wanted to mention “The Hiding Place”. This novel by Corrie ten Boom and her daughter is an amazing autobiographical work of a family’s efforts to hide Jews in Holland during WWII and their subsequent sojourn in a concentration camp and their experience of and response to their faith through all of it. The movie made of this novel in the 1970s is also excellent – a powerful, straightforward, amazing movie of great virtue. The movie captures well the hardships Corrie endured and her many moments of peace and inspiration including the little trouble-making fleas in the barracks where she was being held. A great adaptation of a book of incredible true events of extreme hardship and radical faith and an excellent film for those of younger years or those that can’t get into books!

Of course, there are other massive children’s book publishers like Scholastic (so extensively entrenched in schools and book fairs that it’s sort of surreal). But in terms of prestige and literary distinction, I’d rank Penguin Random House (Knopf Books for Young Readers, G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, etc.) above the rest. And then there’s HarperCollins Children’s Books, with its enormous backlist. But really, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster are the two other big players in the traditional publishing world. But again, this is corporate, publishing-bigwigs stuff. The actual YA publishing world is a bunch of passionate, idiosyncratic individual editors who happen to work for these various companies. The logos on the spines of the published books are pretty irrelevant.

This sort of tension packed into a very small space of high stakes is also found in ‘Reborn as the villain’s obsession [MM romance]’ where the protagonist is trapped inside a strict fortress like domain of the antagonist. The pressure cooked, claustrophobic, atmospheric tension between them as they are surrounded by this powerful force is very similar to that found in Attack on Titan, although this story is a character driven romance rather than a struggle for survival.

Other questions: Are collaborative works such as short stories in a shared universe (e.g. a new Star Wars novel) to be treated the same as single-author literary fiction because they are American fiction (813)? Dewey probably would treat them similarly to single-author works of American fiction. So a high-literary novel and a Star Wars movie novelization could be shelved side by side. This is kind of fascinating, in that it equalizes two types of fiction that generally have very different cultural capital and artistic intentions.

The obvious and monumental choice here would be Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. The journey to Jupiter in the film is painstakingly and realistically depicted. The quiet, routine, often psychological pressure on the crew is conveyed through the perfect, sinister logic of HAL. The real journey in the film is that of human experience in a very plausible mission to Saturn (in the book). The mysterious monoliths merely add to the whole.

It is often the point of a serious work on absurdity to be humorous. Much humor in war literature comes from the obvious illogic of the system and the ways in which the unwise decisions of higher-ups lead to more horror. The famous Catch-22 circular reasoning that keeps Yossarian in combat is as funny as it is stupid. And the humor is the point of the comedy: in laughing at a joke we understand its stupidity. Thus the humor of a war story is usually closely aligned with the horror of the story as well.