The Gone-Away World
A hilarious, action-packed look at the apocalypse that combines a touching tale of friendship, a thrilling war story, and an all out kung-fu infused mission to save the world. “A flat-out ferociously good novel.... Reads like a surrealist smashup of Pynchon and Pratchett, Vonnegut and Heller.” —Austin Chronicle Gonzo Lubitch and his best friend have been inseparable since birth. They grew up together, they studied kung-fu together, they rebelled in college together, and they fought in the Go Away War together. Now, with the world in shambles and dark, nightmarish clouds billowing over the wastelands, they have been tapped for an incredibly perilous mission. But they quickly realize that this assignment is more complex than it seems, and before it is over they will have encountered everything from mimes, ninjas, and pirates to one ultra-sinister mastermind, whose only goal is world domination.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
8mentions
8people
2012–2026years
88% recommend13% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you like unreliable narration and rug pulls Nick Harkaway's novel 'The Gone-Away World' really takes the cake (and is brilliant)
- Fiction
--------
Termination Shock - Neal Stephenson
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
Shards of Earth - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
Gnomon - Nick Harkaway
The Gone Away World - Nick Harkaway
The Apollo Murders - Chris Hadfield
Nonfiction
----------
Mindf*ck - Chris Wylie
1776 - David McCullough
Apollo 8 - Jeffrey Kluger
- Absolutely. I had the extraordinary pleasure of picking up, on a whim, the novel The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. Unaware of his father's prestige and budding recognition as an author in his own right, I found the book itself to be a lucid and gripping read the entire way through.
Hate to sound like an advertisement, but I consider it to be the most fun I've had with a story in a long, long time.
- PSA: for contemporary, entertaining, thought-provoking novels relating to sci-fi, my short list of must-reads includes these gems:
* The Gone-Away World (Harkaway) [1]
* Ready Player One (Cline) [2] and
* The Martian (Weir) [3]
each of which is impossible to put down. Actually Harkaway's entire oevre is terrific. The steampunk Angelmaker [4] was a ton of fun.
Also, many of Iain M Banks' Culture novels (The Player of Games [5] is at the top of my personal list; they can be read in any order) and The Wind-up Girl (Bacigalupi) [6] are must-reads too.
This is not meant as criticism of the OP, rather as fodder for commenters referencing other longer and more contemporary lists.
Oh and a final, related tangent: if, like me, you really enjoy G.R.R. Martin but generally avoid straight-up fantasy [it seems to me the genre is awash in mediocre Tolkien rip-offs] please give The Name of the Wind (Rothfuss) [7] a chance. You'll be glad you did. :)
[1] http://smile.amazon.com/Gone-Away-World-Nick-Harkaway-ebook/...
[2] http://smile.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline-ebook/...
[3] http://smile.amazon.com/Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir-ebook/dp/B00...
[4] http://smile.amazon.com/Angelmaker-Nick-Harkaway-ebook/dp/B0...
[5] http://smile.amazon.com/Player-Games-Culture-Novel-Book-eboo...
[6] http://smile.amazon.com/Windup-Girl-Paolo-Bacigalupi-ebook/d...
[7] http://smile.amazon.com/Name-Wind-Kingkiller-Chronicle-Day-e...
- 3D Shape: Its Unique Place in Visual Perception by Zygmunt Pizlo. (I studied human gesture briefly in college so it caught my eye at a used book store. Pretty good cognitive science survey so far. Haven't gotten to the CS part yet, but I'm not knowledgeable in computer vision anyway so I couldn't really review it from that perspective.)
Quantum Computing and Quantum Information by Michael Nielsen and Isaac Chuang. (Beastly book. I actually find it to be a pretty well-written introduction so far, but I just barely have the background to plod through it.)
Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut. (S.O. loves Vonnegut, so I'm working my way through his collection. Great so far, though I don't always have the patience for goofy midwestern people humor, despite being a midwesterner myself.)
Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson. (Only a few pages in, but I have a weakness for fantasy-in-modern-day-setting novels and it came on a recommendation from a friend outside of the genre. On a similar note, I strongly recommend both of Nick Harkaway's novels, Angelmaker and Gone-Away World, which I recently reread.)
- You'd be interested in The Gone Away World [1] which touches on this quite a bit.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Gone-Away-World-Vintage-Contempora...
