The Postman

Author: David Brin

Made into a muchâ€”wrongly!â€”maligned movie, Postman is set in a post-apocalyptic world, in which the United States has fallen apart into a lawless patchwork of civil disorder. That's what powerful EMP weapons, some judiciously-placed bombs and the release of biological weapons materials can do. (No zombie here though. Not of the Walking Dead kind anyway!) Gordon Krantz is an aimless wanderer, who earns his meager fare by amusing people with Shakespeare vignettes. One day he chances upon the corpse of a postman and appropriates the still-wearable uniform. It kind of takes over his narratives, as he drops Shakespeare and instead concocts stories of a restored nation and an advancing order. His stories soon assume a power all of their own and indeed contribute to what ends up looking like a concerted effort to restore some kind of civilization. The movie has a rather different narrative, but still picks up on the central theme of the novel, which is about the power of narratives to give people a sense of purpose and direction and spur them into cooperative efforts. Arguably it's about how civilization itself depends on and is held together by stories. Why it's on this list (though at the bottom): A thoughtful novel with multi-layered content and messages.Read if you like: Ratings: Grimness: 3, Bizarreness: 1, Hope: 3, Fun-factor: 3.