Final Great War
 | This article is a work-in-progress because it is incomplete and pending further input from an author. Note: The contents of this article are not considered canonical and may be inaccurate. Please comment on this article's talk page to share your input, comments and questions. |
| |
| Author | Mychal Geronato |
|---|---|
| Country | Urcea |
| Language | Julian Ænglish |
| Genre | Epic post-apocalyptic science fiction |
| Publisher | Enterprise Publishing |
| Published | 19 July 2007 – present |
| Media type | |
Final Great War is a series of epic post-apocalyptic science fiction novels by the Urcean novelist and screenwriter Mychal Geronato. He began writing the first volume, also called Final Great War in 2002, publishing it in 2007. The series depicts a post-apocalyptic setting brought about by a digital great war between Caphiria and Levantia, and deals with themes of loss, personal core values, endurance, and divergent perspectives. The conclusion of the series conveys Geronato's sense of the inevitability of human behavior and a total rejection of presentism as well as the notion of a man-made apocalypse. Within this setting, survivors of the great war struggle on an individual and societal level at varying scales, ranging from individuals trying to stay alive to groups of survivors attempting to rebuild civilization.
The series is well known for its unique narrative structure, which combines a nonlinear narrative with unreliable narrators to convey an uncertain sense of events within the world it creates. This format, now known as Geronatic literature for Final Great War's author, has become widely emulated throughout Urcean and global literature.
As of 2032, more than 200 million copies have been sold. The series was adapted into a 2025-2030 made-for-streaming television adaptation that proved extremely popular. The success of the books and series resulted in an additional set of movies written within the world of Final Great War by Geronato, the first of which debuted in February 2032.
Plot synopsis
The events of the Final Great War series generally take place after the events of the Third Great War. Through the narrative, it is revealed the Third Great War took place roughly between 2096 and 2099 and was fought between an alliance primarily based around Caphiria on one side and an alliance centered around an entity known as the Levantine Social Republic (generally thought to be a consolidated Levantine Union) on the other. In the pre-war world, most people were fitted with consumer brain implants, allowing a great range of new abilities as well as wireless connection between consciousness and the rest of the world at all times. During the Third Great War, most of the conflict was fought using digital hacks and viruses of brain implants rather than actual force of arms, though it is implied some limited traditional fighting occurred. At the end of the first novel, it is revealed that the continued use of hacks and viruses created a worldwide digital plague, which functionally killed every single person whose brain implants were exposed to the plague, and that the implants then took motor control of human bodies, creating a very huge number of cybernetic zombies. This plague functionally destroyed all human civilization and most governments. Throughout all of the novels, the protagonists struggle against the cybernetic zombies, but their inability to spread the plague to non-implanted individuals leads to a significant decline of the zombie population by the end of the fourth novel, Presented On High.
Against a destroyed world civilization and large numbers of cybernetic zombies, the novels focus on the efforts of humans to survive and eventually move past the events after the Third Great War. The first novel primarily deals with small numbers of survivors and individual survivors; the focus gradually scales as new alliances, tribes, and social institutions are built among survivors, such that by the end of the third novel, Into Ploughshares, the main conflict shifts from survival from hunger and cybernetic zombies to conflict between groups of survivors and, eventually, newly formed states. By the time of the fifth and final mainline novel, Next Great War, most cybernetic zombies are gone and society has largely rebuilt, and thematically the novel depicts the so-called "Final Great War" and apocalypse as just another event in human history as the post-war states shed their "survival alliances" of convenience and prepare to resume war and conflict.
The series makes references to places and events in Sarpedon and Ultmar, particularly in the prequel Beast of Seven Heads and finale Next Great War. The primary narrative, however, takes place in the lands formerly of the Levantine Social Republic, largely modern Urcea, Burgundie, and Rhotia. Several post-war polities in modern Fiannria and Faneria are named in Next Great War, and some characters from those places are introduced in that novel. Geronato has stated he intends to write several spin-off movies focusing on post-war events in other countries and places.
Novels
Final Great War (2007)
Final Great War was published on 19 July 2007. As the first book in the series, it introduces the post-apocalyptic setting and establishes the main groups, individuals, and tribes that serve as the narrative focus for the remainder of the series. The novel demonstrated what would inevitably become Geronato's literary staple, employing a nonlinear narrative to show the story in the "present day" (approximately 2120 according to most of Geronato's statements) and the events of the Third Great War (2096-2099), as well as other expository events. Every three or four chapters of First Great War recounts a first person narrative of events that occurred during or just the War, sometimes from the point of view of established characters and sometimes from characters that only appear in one chapter.
In Final Great War's sequential narrative, six present day individuals are introduced, and tell their story from a first-person point of view. In addition to their recountings being presented somewhat out of chronological order, their narratives contradict in several places. Almost all of these characters struggle against the world's cybernetic plague zombies as well as against basic human needs like shelter and hunter. By the end of the novel, three of the individuals meet eachother and bind together to establish the Survivors Union. Two of the remaining three die by the end of the novel, with the final character's fate undetermined.
In 2021, The Time of War was published as a collected version of Final Great War and the 2020 prequel Beast of Seven Heads. The Time of War was curated by Geronato, removing several original Final Great War chapters that focused on one-off characters that took place during the Third Great War; Geronato sought to remove duplicative expository information about the worldbuilding of the series. The Time of War also removed various character foreshadowing and other potential spoilers about main characters that appear in both original books, with some minor editing done to make the overall narrative more cohesive. The Time of War Revised was released in 2024 with further Beast content removed, especially some unpopular or controversial portions. Taken together, The Time of War is generally considered to be a strong entrypoint into the series by critics even if the narrative is more disjointed from the original, and The Time of War was used as the basis for the first season of the television series rather than the original print of Final Great War.
All That Remains (2011)
Presented On High (2017)
Beast of Seven Heads (2020)
Beast of Seven Heads was published on 19 October 2020. It is a prequel to the rest of the books, and provides an in depth treatment of the events of the Third Great War as well as a survey of different characters and the kinds of people that would ultimately survive the Third Great War. The novel reveals that most of the survivors of the war were largely marginalized people, preppers, or otherwise extremely remote rural people, none of whom had brain implants in large numbers. Controversially, Beast of Seven Heads included sequences wherein the protagonists of the previous novels, or their ancestors, kill, steal from, and otherwise commit violence against those who had once been their "social betters" (the rich, politicians, etc.) in an act of vengeance rather than of survival.
Beast of Seven Heads was the worst received of the Final Great War series. Critics described the vengeance sequences as "gratuitous", with several arguing that they introduced extreme moral ambiguity and subversion of moral expectations into a series that heretofore excluded both. Geronato, as well as some more positive critics, argued that these introductions were necessary to make the characters "more interesting", and Geronato extensively quoted the Pauline Epistles ("for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God") on social media and in interviews without further elaboration. Nevertheless, the events which occur within Beast of Seven Heads are not referenced again in the follow-up novel, Next Great War, beyond some general occurences of the Third Great War as described within Beast. When the series was adapted for the 2025-30 television show, the content of Beast was largely omitted.
Next Great War (2022)
Themes
Coping with loss
Value divergence
Subjectivity of history
The continuity of time
A major focus of the latter Final Great War novels is the continuance of human history. Beginning with Into Ploughshares and culminating in Next Great War, the characters and world of the series begin to lose the general importance of the cybernetic plague and third great war. The characters begin to focus more on contemporary issues with other survivors and the future, with the organizations and states they create entirely moving past it by the end of Next Great War. Geronato explains that his intention was to explicitly reject the notion of a man-made apocalypse as being possible entirely, instead stating that "So long as man persists, history continues...there are no chapters or books of history, only a continued thread of those still living". Geronato also stated that "The eschaton will be a divine event, not a human one, and humans will continue as we always have and always will until that day." Scholars have noted that Geronato's novels reject both presentism and some of the implications of Whig historiography by demonstrating a consistent human nature.