The voyage is full of menace (though moments of almost calm menace and surreality are not uncommon). On his way to the centre he is aided, and hindered, by a motley crew of individuals who reflect the chaos that reigns below. fear, and always uncertainty.Īrtyom, our hero, is asked to deliver an important message that could affect the survival of humankind in the subways. Criminals and refugees, traders and mystics. You only have to read the Strugatsky Brothers' 'Roadside Picnic' (or watch the film version, 'Stalker'), Gansovsky's 'A Day of Wrath' or watch Lopushansky's amazing 'Letters From A Dead Man' to realise that they understand what it is to live on the edge of the abyss.Ĭlaustrophobic, dark cul-de-sacs of danger and terror, 'Metro 2033' is a world of uncertainties and fear, hung on the fringes between survival and death. The Russians have a skill in writing apocalyptic, nightmarish stories. He holds the future of his native station in his hands, the whole Metro - and maybe the whole of humanity. But now a new and terrible threat has appeared.Īrtyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro, to the legendary Polis, to alert everyone to the awful danger and to get help. It was one of the Metro's best stations and still remains secure. VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line.

Feelings have given way to instinct - the most important of which is survival. It is a world without a tomorrow, with no room for dreams, plans, hopes. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters - or the simple need to repulse an enemy incursion. They live in the Moscow Metro - the biggest air-raid shelter ever built. Man's time is over.Ī few score thousand survivors live on, not knowing whether they are the only ones left on earth. Mutated by radiation, they are better adapted to the new world. Man has handed over stewardship of the earth to new life-forms. The ether is void and the airwaves echo to a soulless howling where previously the frequencies were full of news from Tokyo, New York, Buenos Aires. More than 20 years have passed since the last plane took off from the earth. But the last remains of civilisation have already become a distant memory, the stuff of myth and legend. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. The half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation.

2033 book