One Second After (A John Matherson Novel), by William R. Forstchen. This is a fictional account of what may happen in a small town in the USA in the year following an EMP event. It's quite realistic in that almost everything (perhaps everything) not only could actually happen, but is one of the most likely scenarios.

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Going Home: A Novel (The Survivalist Series), by A. American. Another really good fictitional account of events following an EMP event. This is a much different focus to "Going Home", it's mostly about the journey of one man from where his car stops working to his home town.

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Divergent, Veronica Roth. These are written mainly for young adults but can be enjoyed by people much older than that. I think its a truly awesome story, and I'm not a young adult. The main character is a girl, so it's written from a girl's perspective. And while its probably fair to say there are more girls are into Divergent than guys, the bias is nothing like some of the other popular series (e.g. about vampires and werewolves). Definitely guys can appreciate this story too.

It's set in Chicago, after the apocalypse. Their post-apocalypse society has been divided into five "factions" based on what virtues people value most: charity, bravery, honesty, knowledge, or friendship. This was done in order to stop any more war, with the idea that if people with different base value systems could live separately from each other, there would be harmony. An interesting idea, but could it really work? If you read the book series (or see the movie) you'll discover how it plays out in the story...

The story of Divergent begins with the main character, Beatrice a.k.a. Tris, having to choose one of the five factions at the "choosing ceremony" which all 16 year-olds participate in. Then she has to undergo initiation into the faction that she chooses...

I'm reading the Wikipedia page about Divergent as I write this, and interestingly there are some comments about the author Veronica Roth being a Christian, and that some people have labelled the book "Christian". To be honest, I didn't notice any of this in the book. Other than perhaps a lot of references to moral choices, more than in most stories — but it really did not seem like what I would call a "Christian book".

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Insurgent, Veronica Roth. This is the second book in the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth. As the sequel to the 2011 bestseller Divergent, it continues the story of Tris Prior and the dystopian post-apocalyptic version of Chicago. Following the events of the previous novel, a war now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. While trying to save the people that she loves, Tris faces the haunting questions of grief, forgiveness, identity, loyalty, politics, and love.

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Allegiant, Veronica Roth. This is the third book in the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth. I'm not up to it yet and I don't want to spoil the story for myself by reading anything too much about it. You can find out more from an internet search.

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1984, George Orwell. I studied this at school in the year 1984, and its probably my favourite book that I ever read at school that was an official classroom text. It's also one of the most famous books ever. The terms "Big Brother", "Big Brother is watching you", "newspeak", "doublethink", and "doublespeak" all originate from Orwell's masterpiece. If you don't know much about it, it's set in the future when the government controls basically everything. Many of its ideas come from events surrounding World War II, and also from other wars and political systems that Orwell had studied.

The concept of doublethink (along with almost everything else in the book) is an amazingly perceptive view of how much of political systems work. Next time you notice the government doing something that seems to make no sense, especially if it directly contradicts something else that they said (or did, or promised) before, have one more read of this quote from 1984:

Doublethink means

the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

A movie came out based on it in the year 1984, which I didn't like. It seemed really disjointed and incoherent. Though it's been a long time since I've seen it. There is also an older movie of it, made in 1956, which is meant to be better thought I haven't seen it yet. You can watch it for free here on YouTube.

Don't expect it to be a happy book. It's very dark.

However (and perhaps surprisingly) I'll end this review on a positive note: Sometimes learning more about the world, and how it works, and what's likely to happen in the future can actually make me feel more hopeful. I remember feeling really quite frightened the first time I read this book. I had a severely disturbing feeling of what if something like this could really be the future, as in the final state of humanity, from which there would be no escape, ever. Perhaps other people who read these kinds of stories also wonder about this. In one sense, it seems logical (and therefore possible) — in that once one state/country/regime has enough strength to beat all opposition, then there would never be another state that could rise up against it. Which would give rise to a one-world-government that would last eternally, like in Orwells' famous quote "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever." BUT — what I've learned since then is that a permanent future like that would be completely impossible. The reason being that any kind of empire run along these lines would require ongoing growth to be able to exist. And once there is a one-world government, there is very little unconquered parts of the world left for the empire to grow into. In fact, once an empire becomes all-powerful it's usually a sign that there isn't much time left for it, and it's about to collapse. So, reassuringly, the kind of evil empire portrayed in Orwell's 1984 could not possibly exist for more than a short period of history (or of the future, or the present).

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