I’ve really gotten an itch in my bonnet for post-apocolyptic/dystopian stories. I recently reread “Alas, Babylon” by Pat Frank, which I absolutely adore, maybe because it’s rather positive about what we could do. I also recently read “A Handmaid’s Tale” which pretty much convinced me we are screwed. I also really, really liked the movie “Children of Men.” Oh yeah, I read “Altered Carbon” also which had some neato premises.
So what of this genre tickles your fancy? Do you prefer the “we are all screwed!” views or the more optimistic ones? What makes the difference between a good example of the genre for you?
Interesting note: Alas, Babylon was written in the 50’s and holds up shockingly well today.
Post Apocalyptic books I’ve read in the last few years:
The Road
Lucifers Hammer
Canticle for Leibowitz
The online Day by Day Armageddon (now available at Amazon, no longer online)
Earth Abides
The Walking Dead (comic book/graphic novel)
The Dies the Fire Trilogy
The Stand
That’s all I’m remembering off the top of my head.
The Walking Dead and Day by Day Armageddon are Zombie books.
Lucifers Hammer is the tale of the discovery, impact, and after effects of a comet strike on Earth.
All good, though the writing style of “The Road” took me a bit to adjust to… post nuclear war, written in an almost stream of consciousness style… no quotation marks for speech. Very odd, but decent.
Hiero’s Journey and Unforsaken Hiero; do those count? Incomplete without the never-to-be-completed third book, but not bad (if not in the same class as those above).
Unbelievably difficult, as books go. But it is pretty creative and I do admire it. I only grumble about how difficult it is occasionally. And I took a college course on it.
I’m reading two PA books now – Our American King by David L. Martin and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I’m not confident in recommending the Martin (yet), but Butler’s book is excellent.
The Rift by Walter Jon Williams posits another New Madrid earthquake. It’s pretty much by-the-numbers, like a TV movie, but it’s not bad and the science (as far as I know) is accurate.
The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett is from the 50’s and might be hard to find, but it’s worth it. It starts after the apocalypse (breakdown of technology) so if that’s the part you like best – watching things falling apart and the immediate aftermath – you might not care for it.
The Pest House by Jim Crace is sorta like The Road (which I also loved), only Crace’s book has punctuation, more characters who speak, and stuff happens. It’s also a bit more hopeful. I think the PA event was that the world ran out of oil, but it’s not spelled out.
There’ve been a couple of previous SDMB threads on postapocalyptic fiction. One of my favorite such books, mentioned elsewhere, is William Brinkley’s The Last Ship, about a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer which survives WWIII between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (the book is set in late 1988) and tries to find safety. Meanwhile, the captain has to deal with a looming mutiny among his crew. A few farfetched things in the book, but overall very good.
If you liked the film Children of Men, you might want to give the book a try. I read the book, and thought it was OK, but still one of P. D. James’ weaker efforts. Now I have to watch the movie to see whether it was really one of those rare occasions where a movie is better than a book.
I still haven’t run into anyone who has seen the movie and read the novel.
“By the Waters of Babylon,” Stephen Vincent Benét (1937) Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (the middle sections) Dr Bloodmoney, Philip K. Dick
More mid- than postapocalypse, but I love John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up.
For movies, I’ll throw in 12 Monkeys and A Boy and His Dog.
That’s the one I was going to mention. I love that book.
I don’t know if Gerrold’s ever going to finish the damn series, but I love his Chtorr series. I’m afraid I’ll never get to find out how it ends.
Another book, which I’m not sure quite fits this genre, is Hothouse. It takes place in the very distant future, when plants have taken over the Earth. The science is kind of weak, but I really enjoyed it.
Completely emphatically disagree. “The Postman” is one of my favorite movies in the genre.
I also love “Testament” about life in a quiet northern California town after a nuclear attack. (Yes they don’t show ACTUAL nuclear fall out but it shows the effects quite well)
Dystopian – would White Lotus by John Hersey count? If I remember right, the Chinese are the superpower, controlling the world, etc. It’s been years since I read it, but I liked it enough to get a second copy when I lost the first one. I keep meaning to re-read it.
I hated Testament, it could just as well have been about the family after the dad died in a car crash or something like that. It was wholy unrealistic.
Yeah with the family slowly dying off due to radiation sickness… them running out of food… watching piles of dead bodies burn… JUST like if the dad had just died in a car acident.