I love post-apocalyptic fiction. I love The Stand, and there was a movie from the 80’s called (I think) “The Day of the Comet”, and in sixth grade we read a book called The Girl Who Owned a City. Has anyone even heard of the last two?
So what are your favorite post-apocalyptic books, movies, comic books etc.?
I love a good post-apocalyptic story, too.
The granddaddy of post-apocalyptic books may be Earth Abides. (The author’s name escapes me at the moment.) Written in the 40’s, the book is the story of a fellow who survives a devastating epidemic that wipes out all but a few scattered individuals. A good read, and the author put a lot of thought into what might happen under such circumstances.
Also, Alas, Babylon comes to mind. Nuclear holocaust in that one. Once again, I’m drawing a blank on the author. On the Beach by Neville Shute is a fine book as well. Australians await the approaching radiation cloud after a nuclear exchange.
Speaking of Australians, you have to list The Road Warrior, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Planet of the Apes in the movie category.
The Omega Man also deserves a mention. There were at least a couple of movies based on the story: one with Charlton Heston, and an earlier black-and-white version with Vincent Price. I’m not sure of the titles of the films. I think the Heston vehicle was actually The Omega Man, while the Price film may have been “The Last Man on Earth” or something like that. I actually liked the old black-and-white version better. By the way, I would like to read the story upon which these films were based. Does anyone know the author? Was it a book or a short story?
Lucifer’s Hammer, by Niven and Pournell is quite good if you like gritty stuff (surf downtown LA!). Damnation Alley is fun but kinda light on the science, and it was a silly movie as well.
Dear God forgive me!! How could I have forgotten Mad Max?
Oh yeah, then there’s the not-exactly-post-apocalyptic movie, The Quiet Earth, about a fellow who suddenly finds himself more or less alone on the planet. Pretty interesting film. I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it.
Then of course, Kevin Costner made not one but two crappy post-apocalyptic Mad Max ripoffs: Waterworld and The Postman.
My favorite post-apocalyptic comic, when I was a kid, was Kamandi, by the immortal Jack Kirby. Doomsday + 1 was another short-lived favorite.
For the sake of completeness in the movie department, we must include Logan’s Run.
Also, The Terminator has some post-apocalyptic themes, though set in the present.
The first show that came to mind when I saw the name of this thread was the Twilight Zone episode where Burgess Meredith is in the bank vault when a nuclear attack comes and ends up being the last man on earth. What a classic and cool story.
How about “The World, The Flesh and The Devil,” where Inger Stevens, Harry Belafonte and Mel Ferrer were the last three people left alive?
Think how CUTE that new race would turn out!!
Anyone seen La Jêtée, the film that Twelve Monkeys was (extremely loosely) based upon? A brief, but overwhelmingly intense burst of cinema.
I love Alas, Babylon. There’s also one titled Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham, that no one seems to have heard of. Umm…Warday is another post-nuclear book(with all these, I have never read On the Beach) When I was younger, there was a series of books about alien destruction that I liked. Jean E. Karl was the author. Strange Tomorrow, The Turning Place, and** But we are not of Earth**. There was also a Arthurian style series by Pamela F. Service, set 500 or so years after a nuclear war…don’t remember the name of the books though.
Alas Babylon was written by Pat Frank.
Earth Abides was written by George R. Stewart
Found it. Here is a link to The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price. The novel upon which this film and The Omega Man are based is I am Legend, by Richard Matheson.
Now I’ll have to track that down and read it.
Oh yeah, one other film I missed is A Boy and His Dog, a quirky little tale featuring a pre-Miami Don Johnson.
Eve, it’s surprising to see you mention a “talkie”. 
One of my faves is A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller.
And although they take place at some more future point after an apocalypse, you’d have to include Buck Rogers (takes place in 2491, 500 years after a nuclear holocaust) and Star Trek (Zefram Cochrane develops warp drive in 2063 after WWIII (the Eugenics Wars?)).
I don’t know if this counts, but Stephen King’s Dark Tower fantasy series seems to take place in a wayyyy post-Apocalyptic setting. Little bits of modern culture remain (the song ‘Hey Jude’ is still well known, oil [Citgo] refineries can still be seen, even though no one knows what to do with the oil anymore), but the entire world has reverted back to technology about on a level with the Middle Ages.
Cool reading.
Like the OP, The Stand is one of my favorites. There’s also Swan Song, by Robert McCammon.
I think this one may be a bit obscure, but Blakely’s Ark by Ian MacMillan is another “what happens after a killer disease hits” novel. I only found the author’s name by looking on Amazon; it’s been out of print for a while.
The plot, as near as I can remember, is this: most of humanity has been wiped out by some virus, I think they call it “The Ceph” for short. It hit in cycles; there are frequent references to “the first wave,” “the second wave,” and so on. At some point, a lottery was held to select the lucky few who would be allowed to move into “The Complex,” a domed city supposedly free of disease. A teenager named Dave, one of the few survivors in his upstate New York town, has a lottery ticket; the book follows his travels by bicycle to The Complex and what happens after he gets there.
It’s been years and years since I read it, and in retrospect more becomes clear. I think The Complex is New York City. Anyone else remember this one?
Dang. My favorites have already been mentioned.
My all-time favorite p.a. movie is On the Beach. Low-key and very human-oriented. A Boy and His Dog is high on my list, too. Lots of dark humor. Got it on DVD and it finally struck me how much Mad Max looks and feels like ABAHD.
Yep, I remember La Jetee. Very haunting, captivating film. It’s amazing how effective one long slow montage of b&w stills can be.
Funny (or sad) thing about Kevin Costner’s terrible The Postman: it was based on an excellent book by David Brin. Costner really wasted the ending.
For a fun role playing experience, try to get your hands on a copy of Twilight: 2000. It’s set in the year 2000 (like that’s spooky anymore) after a nuclear war that started around 1991 or so. Your NATO unit is trapped in Poland, behind enemy lines while pockets of fighting continue to occur all around you. Countries that used to field armies in the hundreds of thousands if not millions, are now fielding armies of thousands, if not hundreds. Finally, you get the radio message from your headquarters: good luck, you’re on your own.
Thrill to the adventure of trying to find parts for your APC in the middle of war blown Eastern Europe. Go crazy with excitment as you scratch around in the dirt for your bullet casings after a firefight because the only way you’re ever going to get more ammo is to repack it yourself. Learn true giddiness as your GM leafs through the radiation and disease sickness tables to find out what happens to you after you ate that four day old dead horse to prevent starving. Build a crossbow out of a rifle stock and truck spring to hunt with or a still to make the alcohol you need to run your vehicles.
It was actually a fun game in its own way. Exteremely gritty and realistic (perhaps too much so as the mathmatically heavy rules and tables bogged down play) and gave you a good idea of how not fun that situation would be.
This is my second favorite genre, and of course, you guys bring up quite a few I hadn’t heard of. I stumbled on a good P/A fiction site several months ago, but can’t find it now.
But here’s a fairly comprehensive list someone posted on the Stephen King alt.books site – just last night in fact. Must be that time of year.
The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett
The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick
The Genocides by Thomas Disch
This is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow
The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson
Steel Beach by John Varley
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Out of the Deeps (Wyndham)
No Blade of Grass by John Christopher
The Long Winter (Christopher)
A Wrinkle in the Skin (Christopher)
Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle The Postman by David Brin
On the Beach by Neville Shute
Alas, Babylon byPat Frank
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller
Earth Abides by George Stewart
The Drowned World, The Wind from Nowhere by J. G. Ballard Farnham’s Freehold by Robert Heinlein
Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick
The Dream Millennium by James White
Malevil by Robert Merle
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
God’s Grace by Bernard Malamud
The White Plague by Frank Herbert
Emergence by David Palmer
Blood Music and Eon by Greg Bear
The Xenogenesis Series(Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago) by Octavia Butler
The Folk of the Fringe by Orson Scott Card
Aftermath by John Russell Fearn
Manton’s World (Fearn)
Warday and Nature’s End by Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka
Ill Wind by Kevin Anderson and Doug Beason
The Shore of Women by Pamela Sargent
The Millennium Quartet by Charles Grant
Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt
City of Bones by Martha Wells
Gee, that was stupid. That list isn’t very helpful to anyone, is it? Just titles and author’s names.
The Long Tomorrow is from 1955, cities have been outlawed and technology is forbidden. (Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?) POV is two young boys who go looking for a legendary place where machines are running again. Leigh Brackett is great – she wrote the screenplay for “The Empire Strikes Back”, as well as lots of noir.
The Wyndham and Christopher books are fine (from what I remember, read them as a teen, not sure if they’d hold up.)
I recall really liking “Malevil” but don’t remember a single bit of the story.
Kate Wilhelm writes beautifully and “Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang” is (I think) the book she’ll be known for.
Would John Hersey’s “White Lotus” fit in this category? Or is it more of an alternate history? Whatever, it was great.
I don’t know why there aren’t more P/A stories. The story possibilities are unlimited, it would seem.