I have the optimistic belief that I can tell which SFF works will be upbeat and which will be dour and depressing. But all too often this belief turns out to be an illusion. I once breezed into Mark E. Rogers’ Zorachus expecting the same lighthearted comedy that I found in Rogers’ Samurai Cat…even though the cover copy made it clear that lighthearted comedy was not on Zorachus’ menu.
Not every surprise involves discovering works that are unexpectedly depressing. Some stories give every indication that they are as bleak as would be the love child of Wuthering Heights and The Road and yet turn out to be exactly the opposite.
If you want to read something (relatively) light, you might be interested in the following unexpectedly upbeat works.
The Hole in the Ground, film produced by R.H.R. Productions for the Central Office of Information (1962)
Reliable diligence is to be expected from British workers, even volunteers like the majority of the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organization staffers. What makes the staff members’ unflappability remarkable is the task to which they have devoted themselves: documenting the detonation of enemy nuclear weapons, which as the film begins are already en route toward allied nations.
What follows is remarkable calmness under pressure, even on the part of civilians fleeing into their homes. Detonations are observed, located, the probable fallout patterns calculated, and appropriate warnings issued. The long-term consequences of World War Three fall beyond this film’s remit, but at least in the short term, the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organization staffers manage the crisis with the same detached professionalism with which they might prepare a cup of tea.
I did not expect that the United Kingdom would not be the nation to which I would turn for optimistic takes on nuclear war. When the Wind Blows, Threads, and Brother in the Land are just a few works whose thesis is that nuclear war could well be a bit of a bother. The Hole in the Ground is a curious exception. Even staffers learning that their own home towns have been obliterated don’t seem much upset by the news.
Up the Walls of the World by James Tiptree, Jr. (1978)
Dr. Dann joined Project Polymer, only to discover that the Department of Defense’s parapsychology research program was staffed by deluded eccentrics and probable con artists. Given the dire news from planet Tyree, this is unfortunate.
A being of vast power, THE EVIL ONE, is bearing down on the planet Tyree, to the considerable detriment of Tyree’s intelligent inhabitants. Escape from Tyree is possible… by reaching across light-years to appropriate human bodies, leaving the human minds trapped in alien forms on doomed Tyree.
One or the other species must die. Or so it seems. Is there some other alternative, overlooked by humans and aliens, that will prevent tragedy?
Everything I said about the usual British works about nuclear war (doom, doom, and more doom) also applies to James Tiptree’s fiction… but not to this novel, where things work out much better than one would expect. Especially given that it was written by Tiptree.
One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun (2010)
Eungyo and Mujae have much in common. Both are dropouts. Both eke out meager livings in shops within the same run-down electronics market. Neither possesses much in the way of interpersonal skills. Both are slated to fall victim to encroaching gentrification. Either one or both might fall victim to inexplicable supernatural phenomena. In short, life isn’t great for either of them, and it will probably get worse.
Yet somehow, despite a comprehensive lack of interpersonal skills, the pair somehow meet and fall for each other. What follows is a romance majestic in its inarticulate awkwardness, a curious bright moment in a world seemingly designed to prevent joy.
Knowing as I did that this novel was inspired in part by the 2009 Yongsan apartment building incident, I expected events to unfold considerably more grimly than they did. Perhaps that’s the secret to cheerful contentment: set expectations low enough and even leopards eating one’s face may seem better than the alternative one expected.
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead by Haro Aso and Kotaro Takata (2019– onward)
Akira Tendo was once cheerful and energetic. Years of slaving away for a rapacious employer has reduced the young man to a dispirited shell, too overworked and depressed to even clean his tiny apartment. Death would be a sweet release. Akira gets the next best thing.
Many of us, if confronted with a zombie apocalypse would focus on the drawbacks: shambling corpses, violent death. Not Akira! The zombie apocalypse means that he need never return to his horrible job. Even better, this impromptu holiday is an opportunity to check off every item on his bucket list…or die trying.
I once had a job where I was always disappointed to discover each morning that I had not experienced a fatal aneurism in my sleep, so the idea that someone’s job would be unpleasant enough that a zombie apocalypse would be a welcome relief is completely believable. I’d be willing to bet a lot of people reading this have been in the same boat.
Sadako-san and Sadako-chan by Aya Tsutsumi (2021)
Sadako-san’s angry ghost has long conducted a campaign of terror against unlucky mortals. Of late the murdered girl has encountered an unforeseen impediment. The means by which her curse operates depends on VCR tapes and CRT screens. As these become obsolete, Sadako-san loses her ability to kill.
Sadako-san finds an unlikely friend in young Sadako-chan. Prophesied to bring terror and despair to the world, Sadako-chan’s mother confined Sadako-chan in a small closet. Lifelong confinement has in no way blunted the little girl’s joie de vivre, nor her willingness to befriend a murdered girl, nor, most importantly, Sadako-chan’s ability to spot a possible technological workaround for Sadako-san’s problem: the power of YouTube.
There sure is some bad parenting going on in this manga. Nevertheless, this tie-in to The Ring franchise is surprisingly touching and life-affirming for a manga about a vengeful murdered girl and a young harbinger of doom uniting through the power of friendship.
Those are just five surprisingly upbeat works that I have encountered1. Have you had similar experiences? If so, let us know in comments.
- I too was surprised by the lack of footnotes.
No comments? *sniff* That’s OK. I’ll be over here by myself, eating worms. In the rain.
Look, if you want comments you need to write something that will generate Controversy! If everyone agrees with your choices, and no one can think of better ones, then you’ll be getting no comments.
Two weeks ago you thought you weren’t going to get any comments at all.
Then you got over 90.
You’re doing just fine my friend.
Come in out of the rain.
Make sure to cook the worms before eating.
Fried, of course. Ask me how!
Interstellar, maybe?
Given the political shitstorm we’re living through here on Turtle Island, I’m having trouble feeling upbeat about anything at all.
Literature has always been my comfort food, but everything I read just tastes kind of bland. I don’t have the appetite to read through something grim in hopes of finding a happy ending.
However, I will take an airplane crash in which nobody dies as a win.
The first images of the Pearson incident, I thought to myself “I am no aviation expert but I am pretty sure you want the hull letters to be right-side up and readable, the wheels to be on the bottom, and ideally one or even both wings should be attached.” But those details aside, it looked pretty good for a catastrophe.
This morning, video of the landing started going around. That’s a lot more fireball than I expect from a landing everyone lived through.
They came in too fast and too hard, which – despite being the cause of the crash – paradoxically helped the fuselage to ‘outpace’ the burning wings. I hope they all bought lottery tickets afterwards!
All of these are convincingly more pleasant than the current conduct of the US Government.
to compile such a list one would need to dive into books one expected to find dour and depressing. some of us have the inclination and the luxury to avoid that!
Hey folks, please avoid bringing current politics into this discussion. Thanks!
All of these are now on my radar.
My social media algorithm funnels me a constant stream of people looking for book recommendations and now i have a great link to share when they ask for something upbeat.
Thanks!
I would suggest Girls Last Trip…an anime about two girls navigating through a post apocalyptic landscape.
Forty Signs of Rain? I’m only a very occasional reader of KSR, but I liked this book. I particularly liked the ending, which sounded weirdly, inappropriately and unnecessarily upbeat, given that the subject was global warming. I also found this credible – ie, that people might react to a catastrophe in unexpected ways.
I’d qualify this by saying it may not have been the author’s intention and may simply have been how I chose to interpret it. Plus I read it a while ago.
Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book. It is about the Black Death after all. Yet the “contemporary” part, which deals with a different disease outbreak, is told with her typical brand of humor skewering human foibles.
Monument by Lloyd Biggle Jr. (1974) introduced me to eco terrorism and the fight of indigenous peoples to determine their own future. Yes, there is a premise of the ‘white savior’, but all of the action happens after he is gone, and the ‘Baddies’ intending to exploit planetary resources get taken down by the natives.
Back when I had a hobby store, one of my regulars knew Biggle… but not through SF. She knew him through music.
The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells will always have my recommendation for upbeat science fiction (I can’t decide if it’s cosy cyberpunk or space operetta). And by the way, James Tiptree Jr, was the pen name for Alice Bradley Sheldon, because in her day women science fiction writers had a difficult time getting published and being taken seriously.
I thought the Girl with All the Gifts was surprisingly optimistic for a zombie apocalypse novel, particularly the ending. Then again maybe it’s because I’m a misanthrope?
I don’t find Tiptree’s book that surprising. The odds of one of her earlier works being upbeat (or recovering from downbeat, at least) were pretty good. Indeed, I would call Up The Walls Of The World downright Campbellian, if people knew what that meant anymore*.
Her famous works are not as cheerful, but I wonder if the lack of fame for her less downbeat writing is because they’re not downbeat.
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(*) I did in fact use the term in front of people who were a scant 15-20 years younger than me. Crickets.
That style of scifi is still very much a thing, but these days the term of art is “Humanity Fuck Yhea”, see: the HFY subreddit :)