Why You Can Trust CNET CNET Book Club: Max Brooks on his new Minecraft novel, The Mountain
The World War Z author talks about surviving zombies, bigfoot and Ender Dragons.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
"It's all about survival," author Max Brooks says of his work. "It could be a survival of individuals, it could be survival of countries."
That's certainly true of his groundbreaking zombie novel World War Z and its followup, Devolution, where a remote community of techies playing back-to-nature are trapped between an exploding volcano and a tribe of hungry Sasquatches.
"Pretty much every book I ever write, no matter how eclectic they seem, it's all the same theme."
Survival is also the theme of Minecraft, the granddaddy of just-stay-alive video games (not counting The Oregon Trail, I suppose). There, a pickaxe and your wits are the only constants in a sometimes unforgiving world of blocky monsters, but huge creations and new environments can also grow out of creativity and experimentation.
"When I first started playing with my son, I knew that this was not just special, but this is potentially world-changing," he says of his introduction to the game. "I'm not exaggerating when I say that I think that Minecraft has the potential to be the greatest teaching tool since Gutenberg printing press."
In a wide-ranging discussion, we talk to Brooks about his novels, but also the Prussian education model, the danger of self-driving cars, his favorite retro RPGs and our mutual love for the civilization-building games of Sid Meier.
Minecraft: The Mountain is Brooks' second Minecraft novel and a followup to 2017's Minecraft: The Island. In the new book, the same nameless protagonist navigates the game-like world and makes his way to a new land. There he finds something he can't craft, stack or deconstruct -- another person.
About CNET Book Club
The Book Club is an occasional series hosted by a pair of self-proclaimed book experts: Dan Ackerman (author of the nonfiction video game history book The Tetris Effect), and Scott Stein, a playwright and screenwriter. We'll be announcing our next Book Club selection soon, so send us your suggestions and keep an eye out for updates on Twitter at @danackerman and @jetscott.