Fallout? Nah, I'm all about the Metro

[Dyson Logos]

I just finished reading Metro 2033, an awesome post-apocalyptic novel set 20 years after WWIII in the metro tunnels under Moscow.

It's a little too immediate (as in the war was within human memory) for direct translation to standard Mutant Future play, but the themes and mood can carry over exceptionally well. It encompasses a number of hostile city-states (well, station-states) all living below ground and with almost no access to the irradiated and deadly surface. At first each station feels the same, but soon the story moves into stations with distinctly different social environments than the starting ones. It also deals with critters that aren't quite human (and in a few cases aren't human at all), a bullet-based economy of scarcity, and the urge to survive against overwhelming fear.

Seriously, check it out.

[gentleman john]

It's a good book. I believe I did a review of it back on the old forums when it first came out. There is a sequel to it (Metro 2034) on the author's website. Unfortunately, it is in Russian. However, things are looking up. It seems (according to Wikipedia) that Amazon have a translation of the first chapter up on their site, so we may be getting a decent translation.