There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread that I started: Suggest some awesome science fiction books. I also was looking for good post-apocalyptic stories, and there are many good ones listed.
All of J.G.Ballard’s early science fiction is apocalyptish. It didn’t occur to me in the context of this thread because it’s usually about a small band of humans having to survive after some *natural *apocalypse: in Drowned World, the earth’s temperatures have risen and survivors have to get from mountain top to mountain top; in Crystal World, IIRC, all the plant life is crystallizing or something. Brilliant stuff, all of it, and what sets it apart from most such SF is that it’s not always about how the plucky humans win out over a harsh environment. It’s truly apocalyptic, in a way, in that it’s more often about how the last remaining people eventually succumb to the disaster.
Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny is lots of fun.
I just recommended “Earth Abides” to someone at the library, to be read in conjunction with Stephen King’s “The Stand”. I know the OP mentioned it - but I all you other fans read it too.
my recommendation for the thread is Heinlein’s “A Boy and His Dog”
I’ve always loved this little short story by Fritz Leiber called A Pail of Air, about a huddled, desperate family trying to eek out an existence in a small cubby after the earth’s been ripped away from the sun and the atmosphere has frozen, fallen, and formed layers of nitrogen and oxygen dozens of feet thick all over the earth. Very short, but fun read!
In short fiction, Steven Vincent Benet’s By The Waters of Babylon is a classic.
World War Z by Max Brooks is good, although the “apocalypse” is a zombie infection. Society still falls apart, though.
(bolding mine)
Wasn’t that a Harlan Ellison story?
I just came in to post a recommendation for Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold. It’s a different breed of post apocalyptic fiction, in that it skips right over the messy immediate PA, straight to a family surviving in the wilderness story a la Verne’s Mysterious Island.
Ah, my favorite genre. Most of my favorites have been mentioned already, so I’ll second…
The Stand (greatest book evar!)
World War Z
Dies the Fire (and its sequels, although the original is the best)
Might I also suggest…
Gone by Michael Grant
A teen book where everyone over 14 disappears. A little juvenile, but fun
Cell by Stephen King
Don’t listen to the naysayers, it’s great. It just can’t compete with The Stand.
The Long Walk by Stephen King
The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
A non-fiction companion to World War Z that lays out just how to survive a zombie uprising.
The Taking by Dean Koontz
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Sorta OT
I loved “I Am Legend” and was dying for my husband to read it, which of course, means he’ll never read it it.
I’m also a fan of Bob Marley, which I’ve never been able to get my husband to tolerate.
Will Smith makes “I Am Legend” and plays lots of Bob Marley. Now it is ok for my husband to like Bob, but he still hasn’t read the book. The fact that I have a few more intimate responsibilities towards my husband than Will Smith does, I think I should have a bit more sway over what influences him.
Back on T
Sites such as LibraryThing.com, Bookmooch and paperbackswap all have great lists. As you can tell by the postings here, some books definitely stand out more than others. I have to agree with furt The Road was probably the most gut wrenching, perfect description he had, btw.
I’m always tickled when these threads pop up, invariably, I find more things to read. Justin Bailey I’ll be looking over your list pretty closely. A reader after my own heart.
Thanks, Rhubarb, for fighting ignorance. Yes, “A Boy and His Dog” is by Harlan Ellison. My bad, as the young folk say.
Thanks. I haven’t read them yet, but I’ve heard good things about The Living Dead short story collection (about zombies, obviously) and The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway.
Wouldn’t Lucifer’s Hammer more properly be called apocalyptic fiction, since we see before and during the apocalypse in the course of the narrative? Yes, we see what happens after as well, but this sets it apart from things like Canticle for Leibowitz, which are entirely after (or even long after) an apocalypse, right?
Yet another supporter of this one–after The Road, I’m not sure I can read another so-called “post-apocalyptic” novel in which there’s something left after the apocalypse. If society is rebuilding, if there’s any hope, it wasn’t much of an apocalypse, was it?
(Sort of kidding. I love the genre, it can be a lot of fun. But McCarthy took that shit seriously).
Daniel
I just read The Road over the winter holidays, and was not prepared for my reaction. While I was reading, I was thinking “hmm…this is kinda…thin. I’m not sure I like this writing style.” However, I did finish it in one session, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Some of the imagery and phrases just stick with you. I totally recommend it.
Well, I came in to recommend The Stand but of course got beat.
As much as we spar, we have this in common. Even though I’m a atheist, The Stand is my all-time favorite book by anybody. If I could only take one book to a desert island, it would be this one (original version though), because no matter how many times I read it, and I read it at least once a year, it never gets stale. The characters are like old friends.
The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen, is coming soon to a theater near…a lot of people. It doesn’t have a release date because they’re still tweaking. I’m hoping for the best.
Most stories available for free on the net suffer from Sturgeon’s Law - squared. But the occasional gem does appear. Al Steiner’s “Aftermath” (free registration required) is set in a world after a comet has crashed into the Pacific off the coast of California. It’s on an erotica site, and there is a lot of sex (eventually) and a considerable amount of violence, so if you’re not into that, don’t read it. But I’d pay to buy this as a book.
Quintet.
McCarthy’s stuff always sounds interesting , but I’ve never been able to get past his ridiculous prose style. Does it stop getting in the way after awhile?
Guess we should mention Lot’s Daughter, by Ward Moore. (He also wrote “Bring the Jubilee”, a great alternate-history story following a Union defeat.)
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip)
So far (I’m at about the middle point of it) I can tell you that that review is accurate, It does not dwell on the disaster but on the aftermath: less people, but technology will remain and continue evolving.
It could be called a “slice of life” tale of a Robot Girl that runs a cafe outside Yokohama, but it is more than that.