Dude. How timely was my question! Apparently “I Am Legend” has been remade again, starring Will Smith, to be released 12/14/2007. How cool is that? I’m totally stoked, though I’m not even sure this is the same book where I read the middle 50 pages for an hour when I was 12. Regardless, the trailer looks pretty cool and I plan on seeing it.
Related notes–
There were at least 2 Post-WW3 Role Playing Games.
One was military-oriented, & set in Europe. I don’t recall the name.
The other was Gamma World, & although it was silly, it was fun, both to play & GM.
Twilight 2000 may have been the European-set game.
Yes, I had noticed that, but didn’t bother to mention it. I hadn’t seen the trailer for it before now; I have mixed feelings about modern movies based on classic SF, since they always seem to feel obligated to rewrite them as action movies or make massive plot changes until they bear no resemblance to the original. But I do like Will Smith as an actor, and don’t hold him responsible for the changes that were made to Asimov’s I, Robot (which I thought was a good movie, it just wasn’t Asimov’s vision).
Swan Song by Robert McCammon. If you enjoyed The Stand, then you’ll most likely enjoy this book. It’s an excellent PA potboiler, starring our old friends, Good and Evil.
I thought I was going to be the first to mention Swan Song. 
I’d also recommend Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang by Kate Wilhelm
Just on a whim I looked up the word “potboiler” because I wasn’t sure what it meant… after finding this definition, are you quite sure that’s how you intended to describe an “excellent” book that you recommend?
pot·boil·er (pŏt’boi’lər) n. *A literary or artistic work of poor quality, produced quickly for profit. *
Brian Aldiss’ Greybeard - similar plot to ‘Children of Men’.
M John Harrison’s *‘The Committed Men’ * is a rather cynical take on the ‘civilisation running down’ scenario, favourite of British 1970s New Wave SF. Long out of print and difficult to get hold of these days
The late Keith Roberts destroyed civilisation a couple of times. The Furies is a deliberate hommage to John Wyndham, an alien invasion story with giant wasps as the aliens. Well-written and atmospheric.
The Chalk Giants is a story cycle about the destruction and partial rebuilding of civilisation. Then again, it may all take place inside the protagonist’s head.
Or, how about a post-apocalyptic poem?
Well, I’d argue against “The Lottery” being PA. The ritual is clearly very long-established. The people drive cars and seem to be living a pretty standard small-town-America 20th C. lifestyle, except for the Lottery. I think it’s more about rural isolation and the persistence of (blind, evil) customs than a PA story.
Brain Wreck, if you liked Warday (which I agree is excellent), you might also like the same authors’ Nature’s End, about a near-future looming environmental disaster that’s seized upon by a messianic figure as an argument for mass suicide. Both are engrossing, chillingly plausible books.
And another vote for On the Beach. The scene with the young parents deciding what to do with their baby, realizing they’re all going to die of radiation poisoning… wow. Terribly powerful and sad.
There’s always the cheerful books of D. F. Jones, a British science fiction writer who wrote about such sunny topics as computers taking over the world (and doing a far better job with it than mankind could hope) in Colossus (3 novels), the atmosphere being poisoned by nitrogen in Denver is Missing, extra-dimensional insects that invade the Earth and drive mankind to the poles (Xeno), and my favorite, Implosion where all women are made sterile. The basic idea of Implosion was lifted by Frank Herbert in his The White Plague (though it’s hardly likely it was original with Jones, true).
I’m pretty sure the Jones books are out of print: it’s been a damn long time since I’ve seen one.
I tend to find Alternate History novels to be more dystopian than utopian, likely because a goodly number of them work on two themes: If the South/Nazi’s had won the US Civil War/WW2.
One of my favorites along these lines is, despite his limitations, Harry Turtledove’s Great War/American Empire/Settling Accounts series that has the South winning the Civil War. While his characterization isn’t the greatest and there are a few “look how clever I’m being” moments (like WW2 beginning on June 22, 1941), the overall thrust of the series is pretty depressing and is very believable in its general plot.
For what it’s worth, I’m told that they originally weren’t calling it I, Robot. But after they got through they realized it was halfway a dead ringer for the short stories, so they bought the rights to forestall a lawsuit and used the name, since they’d paid for the darn thing.
And it did actually touch strongly on the issues Asimov raised. But there were also guns. 
And really, really fast cars. Plus, Susan Calvin was way more hot than even that old lech Asimov ever imagined.
I’d heard several variations on the story behind I, Robot and at the time I was posting couldn’t remember which one was true. My biggest regret is that it probably drives the final nail into the coffin holding the screenplay which Harlan Ellison wrote, which I think would have made a terrific movie.
I absolutely agree. I read his published screenplay in a trade paperback and was very impressed. It would’ve made a great movie.
In what way could that be seen as clever? The significance isn’t apparent to me.
Hrm. I never saw LoL as a post-apocalypse one… I always sort-of imagined it as time travel, or perhaps space-travel. Then again, when I first (and last) read it, I was just starting to read sci-fi, and wasn’t very familiar with a lot of the sub-genres. Still, a most excellent book.
One thing I’m surprised no one has mentioned is The Martian Chronicles by Bradbury. It’s short-stories, but about half-way through, a war happens on Earth, and a lot of the remaining stories deal with the post-apocalyptic on a far-away, semi-unreachable colony.
That was the date that Hitler invaded Russia.
This was surprising to me. I’ve always thought “potboiler” was another word for “page-turner”, something that’s hard to put down because you’re too involved in the story – something’s always happening – as opposed to a book that you appreciate mostly because of the quality of the writing.
To keep this on topic, The Stand would be a potboiler/page turner; The Road – excellent quality but not a page-turner.
Hmmmm. Except that I couldn’t put down The Road once I started it either.
Hell. I dunno.
A “pot-boiler” is the literary equivalent of a B-movie. It can be a lot of fun, but it’s usually in spite of its flaws, not because of its merits.