The first volume of the book, "The Escape," is available today and follows the story of two characters. One comes from the rear of train, where a lack of space and food has made life so intolerable he risks his life to sneak his way up into the higher-class cars. The other is an activist fighting for the rights of those in the tail. Eventually the two are arrested and forced to meet with the president — a lengthy journey on a train with 1,001 cars. This trek not only provides plenty of time for their story to unfold, but also lets you see the different cars and the living conditions of their residents. There's quite the discrepancy between the filthy rear and the opulent luxury cars. In some places residents fight for space and food, while in others they're more concerned with drinking the last of the world's wine and engaging in seemingly never-ending orgies.

"Now the world has become small, like a train."

Snowpiercer is also set in the future as envisioned in the mid-'80s, and it features a number of prophetic scenes. Residents are kept fed thanks to the advent of lab-grown meat (albeit of the self-replicating kind), while the theater car features a reference to Star Wars VII, a movie that isn't slated to launch in the real world until 2015. There is a religious group that worships the train’s engine and armed guards that make it impossible for the disparate classes to mingle. Even the locomotive itself exudes a sense of retro-futurism — its technology lets it run for a long but indeterminate amount of time without stopping, and its design is inspired in part by armored trains used by Russia in World War II.