Books
‘The 4: An Illustrated Guide to 4 Apocalypses’ Takes Edutainment to the End of the World [Review]
Killing zombies and wearing spiked leather jackets is cool and all, but our collective fascination with the apocalypse has more to do with the wish to be free from the stress of modern life than actually wanting to live in a nightmarish wasteland. After all, the reality of dealing with irradiated water supplies and plague-ridden settlements is a lot less fun if you take the situation more seriously. At the end of the day, it’s more likely that regular folks like you and me would end up as decorative skeletons on some raider’s war wagon than as members of a badass biker gang.
Thankfully, there are some people out there who’ve decided to turn their obsession with our species’ tendency for self-destruction into something a little more constructive. That’s how we get projects like Off Protocol’s handy guide to all things apocalyptic, The 4: An Illustrated Survival Guide to 4 Apocalypses.
An independent publishing house and semi-anonymous creative collective, Off Protocol successfully ran an international crowdfunding campaign promising a realistic instruction manual meant to get readers through an assortment of catastrophic worst-case scenarios. Appropriately titled The 4, this unique piece of edutainment contains contributions by survival specialists like Marine veteran Dr. David Powers as well as award-winning genre authors like Stella Berry and Randi Harvey, with the end goal being to instruct readers on how to survive advanced global warming, killer pandemics, nuclear winter, and even a full-blown zombie outbreak.
While personal concerns surrounding the recent explosion of AI-generated content among crowdfunded projects meant that I was initially hesitant to endorse a product sold by a semi-anonymous internet collective, I was relieved to discover that The 4 is about as hand-crafted as a book can get. Not only are all of the illustrations made by real artists (with each apocalypse scenario getting its own unique art style ranging from edgy comic-book lines to realistic Photoshop collages), but each segment is also written from a unique voice representing a different kind of survivor.
While the book repeatedly claims that the information presented here is meant for entertainment purposes only, it’s pretty obvious that Off Protocol is merely trying to make sure that their ambitious debut project doesn’t get them into trouble with lawyers and overly concerned politicians. After all, once you get down to the meat of this thing, The 4 consists of about 1/4 speculation and 3/4 genuinely useful information.
It’s extremely unlikely that readers will ever have to deal with undead enemies or even radioactive raiders, but I’d argue that knowing how to butcher wild animals or how to improvise a fishing setup can be useful in any number of less-than-apocalyptic situations. Sure, you could also easily look this information up online, but the whole point of this project is to compile this knowledge into an easily accessible format presented in a way that’ll keep it from sounding like a boring old textbook.
If you ask me, Off Protocol knocked it out of the park when it comes to presentation. From the textured lettering on the cover to the high-quality paper, the whole thing feels appropriately sturdy (and possibly heavy enough to knock down an incoming cannibal). In the pages themselves, the formatting and illustrations are all top-notch as well, and I especially appreciate the copious amounts of detailed diagrams teaching everything from how to identify edible plants to how to tie seaworthy knots.
Of course, it’s the tongue-in-cheek setup that makes this such a fun read, with even a guide to edible mushrooms being entertaining when the segment is presented by a badass survivalist with a sense of humor. This self-aware approach doesn’t always work, and I would have appreciated some more detailed stories about these apocalyptic worlds and the characters that inhabit them, but the brief blurbs about the narrators’ past lives are serviceable enough.
And while flooded cities and dead forests can be terrifying in their own right, genre fans are likely to get the most entertainment value out of The 4’s final segment about a zombie apocalypse. This is by far the least believable scenario in the book (with a lot of the “advice” here having more to do with Z-movie tropes than real-life survival), but it’s also the most fleshed out setting from a narrative point of view.
Unfortunately, while the book’s aesthetic and informative qualities are commendable, the prose itself has quite a few issues. I personally don’t mind the occasional grammatical error, but the sheer amount of idiosyncratic phrasing and strange word choices makes it clear that large portions of this compendium weren’t written by native English speakers. On one hand, this is further confirmation that the project was a genuine international effort created by people instead of generative language models, but it’s also a little disappointing when you consider the effort that went into everything else. Some additional proofreading would have gone a long way here, especially since Off Protocol is selling The 4 as a premium product.
However, despite the hiccups, The 4 is a genuinely impressive piece of edutainment that succeeds in finding a glimmer of self-sufficient hope even in the worst of possible futures. While not all of the information here is both fun and useful in equal measure, just casually skimming through the book is already a rewarding experience, and an in-depth read will likely set you up with genuinely useful life skills that might one day save a life. That’s why I’d recommend this apocalyptic coffee table book to any genre fan who wants to learn a little more about what it might take to survive inside some of our favorite movies.
The 4 is available now on Off Protocol’s official website.
Books
Urban Legends, Serial Killers, and Space Epics: 10 Horror Books We Can’t Wait to Read This June
We have entered summer reading season.
Schools are emptying, beaches are filling, and it’s a great time to pack a tote full of brand-new books and get some reading done in the shade. But even if the sun is bright, your fiction can still be dark, because June is absolutely packed with great new horror releases from rising stars and genre icons.
From a Psycho retelling to a dark twist on Peter Pan lore to a new book from a Pulitzer Prize winner, these are the horror titles we can’t wait to crack open this June.
The Children by Melissa Albert – June 2
A blend of dark fantasy, Gothic family saga, and horror novel that’s received rave reviews from Stephen King and more, The Children follows the adult children of a legendary fantasy author who died when a fire consumed their home. Now, living their own creative lives, Guinevere and Ennis must revisit the secrets from the night of the fire, the darkness surrounding Ennis’s new art installation, and the truth of their family legacy in both fact and fiction. It sounds like a wonderful twisted nest of secrets and magic, and I’m eager to dive in.
Marion by Leah Rowan – June 2
Just when you thought we’d run out of interesting ways to riff on Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Leah Rowan comes along with Marion. As the title suggests, it’s the story of the Bates Motel’s most famous victim, but this time, she doesn’t die in the shower. She takes control of the knife and the narrative in this daring retelling of a proto-slasher classic. The story we know is just the beginning, and I can’t wait to find out the end.
Headlights by CJ Leede – June 9
Through her first two novels, Maeve Fly and American Rapture, CJ Leede emerged as one of the most exciting new horror voices of the 2020s, and she’s just getting warmed up. Leede’s third novel follows an FBI agent on the brink of retirement, running from his past and from the unsolved case that haunts him most, as he’s slowly pulled back into a gruesome serial killer narrative. Victims start turning up again, wearing someone else’s skin like a cape, with no memory of how they got that way, or how they got a lone strand of unidentified hair tied around their tongue. Both a riff on The Shining and a journey into the dark Colorado night, Headlights is one of the year’s most exciting horror lit events.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo – June 9
Cynthia Pelayo‘s novels have always felt like dark fairy tales, and with her latest, she’s taking things into the realm of one of the most famous children’s stories ever. It Came From Neverland follows a version of Wendy Darling who, while working as a schoolteacher and as an aid to rehabilitate World War I soldiers, finds old fears returning when a student goes missing. It seems that an entity Wendy knows only as “Peter Pan” is back on the prowl, and unlocking her memories might be the only way to stop it. That’s right, it’s a dark Peter Pan retelling as only Pelayo can do it, and you know you want a piece of that.
The Other by Annie Neugebauer – June 9
Annie Neugebauer’s The Extra ranks as one of the most clever and frightening horror novellas in recent memory, but that was only the beginning. This June, Neugebauer returns with the next book in what’s been dubbed “The Outsiders Sequence.” This time, Neugebauer’s strange world of doppelgangers and mimics turns to a couple on a hike who run into their exact duplicates, setting off a chain of events that will test their understanding of each other in terrifying ways. Neugebauer’s one of horror’s finest rising stars right now, so if you haven’t jumped on board The Outsiders Sequence yet, pick up The Extra and get ready for The Other.
Marla by Jonathan Janz – August 18 (Editor’s update: Release has now shifted from initial June 23 publication date)
Speaking of rising stars in the horror world, we’ve got Jonathan Janz, whose work has hit another level in recent years thanks to work like Children of the Dark and Veil. Now he’s back with Marla, the story of a local woman surrounded by urban legend, and her possible connection to a string of crimes in the community of King’s Branch. Is Marla a witch, a killer, a victim, a helpless child? We’ll have to read and find out in what feels like a perfect jumping-on point for new Janz readers.
The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus – June 23
Daniel Kraus has long been a favorite among genre readers, but thanks to his recent Pulitzer Prize win for his brilliant novel Angel Down, he’s more visible than ever, and all that visibility comes as he’s about to unleash a space epic with all the hallmarks of epic sci-fi and horror alike. The Sixth Nik promises everything from a sentient spaceship to a rogue planet full of plague to a nine-year-old “cultist” with an enhanced brain. This is Kraus playing in a brand-new sandbox, and genre readers everywhere won’t want to miss that.
Slasher Summer by E.L. Chen – June 23
E.L. Chen‘s latest novel is described as a love letter to ’80s slasher films, and anyone who’s taken a dive into the meta-horror of Scream or My Heart is a Chainsaw will want to sit up and take notice. The book follows a group of friends who grew up in a town famous as the location of a slasher movie, where they frequently played the characters during midnight shows. As adults, they return to their hometown, and to the location of the slasher movie, only to find that someone’s out to get them, someone wearing a very familiar mask. This sounds like a blast, and the latest in an ever-growing strand of slasher novels reinventing the genre on the page.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay – June 30
Modern horror master Paul Tremblay‘s latest novel sounds like his most ambitious yet, and that’s really saying something. Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep follows Julia, a former pro gamer who gets an offer she can’t refuse: For a hefty payday, she must pilot a man named “Bernie” across the country for her mother’s tech company. The catch? Bernie’s in a vegetative state, and his mobility comes from the AI chip in his head. As Julia moves Bernie’s body, Bernie’s mind moves through an unfathomable nightmare world, but where are they heading, and what’s Bernie really meant to find? Every new Paul Tremblay book is an event, and this one feels particularly special.
Red X by David Demchuk – June 30
This one’s technically a reprint, but David Demchuk’s Red X is so revered among the horror community, and particularly other horror authors, that it feels worth highlighting, especially during Pride Month. Complex and metatextual, Red X is about a series of disappearances and a demonic entity plaguing the gay community of Toronto, but it’s also an autobiographical sketch of an author navigating death, survival, queer culture, horror as a means of expression, and more. In short, it’s an essential, and this new edition, complete with fresh writing by Gretchen Felker-Martin and Anthony Oliveira, is a must-have.
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