# Favorite Post-Apocolyptic/Dystopian Books/Movies
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [September 12, 2007, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894 "2007-09-12T13:35:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Auntbeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Auntbeast)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/1 "2007-09-12T13:35:11Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/2 "2007-09-12T13:46:02Z")
I like all sorts, personally.
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.
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### Author:  [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/3 "2007-09-12T14:29:07Z")
Gotta give some credit to Aldous Huxley’s _Brave New World_ from 1932, which I reread semi-recently. Amazing how that book has resisted dating!
Also I still love _Fahrenheit 451_ by Ray Bradbury. Amazing how prescient that book was (the seashells in ears, the wall of TV, etc.)!
I know, a couple conventional dystopian classics, but I love them.
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### Author:  [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/4 "2007-09-12T14:37:11Z")
_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).
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### Author:  [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/5 "2007-09-12T14:39:58Z")
[\*Emergence, \*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence_(novel)) by David Palmer is one of my all time favorites.
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### Author:  [@Eltanin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eltanin)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/6 "2007-09-12T14:42:55Z")
I haven’t read many in the genre, but I thought that _Riddley Walker_, although very difficult technically, is brilliant.
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### Author:  [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/7 "2007-09-12T14:45:49Z")
Really good Post Apocalyptic book:
The Postman
Really bad Post Apocalyptic movie:
The Postman
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### Author:  [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/8 "2007-09-12T14:50:19Z")
I loved _The Last American_, a late 1980’s post-nuclear war comicbook.
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### Author:  [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/9 "2007-09-12T14:51:19Z")
I came in here to mention \*Dies the Fire \* and _Lucifer’s Hammer_ but **Tristan** beat me to it!
For a dystopia how about Heinlein’s _I Will Fear No Evil_?
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### Author:  [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/10 "2007-09-12T14:53:33Z")
[QUOTE=Tristan]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Any of Cormac McCarthy’s books that I’ve read are like this.
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### Author:  [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/11 "2007-09-12T14:55:28Z")
[QUOTE=Eltanin]
I haven’t read many in the genre, but I thought that _Riddley Walker_, although very difficult technically, is brilliant.
[/QUOTE]
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.
Sailboat
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/12 "2007-09-12T15:29:45Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/13 "2007-09-12T15:33:18Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Lunar\_Saltlick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lunar_Saltlick)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/14 "2007-09-12T15:41:44Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Ichbin\_Dubist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ichbin_Dubist)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/15 "2007-09-12T15:54:32Z")
“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._
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### Author:  [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/16 "2007-09-12T16:04:57Z")
[QUOTE=SmartAleq]
[\*Emergence, \*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence_(novel)) by David Palmer is one of my all time favorites.
[/QUOTE]
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hothouse_(novel)). 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.
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### Author:  [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/17 "2007-09-12T18:56:12Z")
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin]
Really bad Post Apocalyptic movie:
The Postman
[/QUOTE]
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)
For cheesy fun I like “Def Con 4”.
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/18 "2007-09-12T19:20:48Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/19 "2007-09-12T19:21:18Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2007, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-post-apocolyptic-dystopian-books-movies/418894/20 "2007-09-12T19:33:02Z")
[QUOTE=An Gadaí]
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.
[/QUOTE]
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.
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