I second “A Boy and His Dog.”
“A Canticle For Liebowitz” Awesome
Don’t forget “The Demon With The Glass Hand” I’m not sure if it was ever in book form, but the “Outer Limits” show was amazing.
On the kid’s book side, there’s The Girl Who Owned A City, but the author had a idealogical bone to pick, so it’s a pretty pasty read for an adult. Loved it in sixth grade, though.
Wow! You guys are good! Stole ALL my thunder, so just have to give seconds to :Alas Babylon, On the Beach, A Boy and His Dog, Lucifer’s Hammer (love the surfer scene 
), and The Postman. The two I would push most are Alas Babylon and The Postman.
Kudos!
What am I thinking?
“Farnam’s Freehold” R.A.H
I’ll fourth A Boy and His Dog (although it is damnably hard to find) and also Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem.
Even if…well, you read it.
Well, there’s been plenty of talk about it in the past, so I’m surprised no one’s mentioned I Am Legend yet. I wish they had, because I can’t remember the author’s name right now. It was written a good long while ago (I want to say the 20s), but it’s rather unspecific enough that it can fit in any time frame. It was the basis for The Omega Man, all about the last man on earth surrounded by mutated people and how he goes about his day to day life trying to survive in a wasteland alone. Really good story.
Another John Wyndham PA novel: The Kraken Wakes
And IMO Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold stinks.
Richard Matheson
Correction: I just realized I gave the wrong book title in my earlier post.
The P.D. James novel I had in mind is The Children of Men (1992) – not Original Sin as I originally stated.
Many excellent choices, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Dean Ing, who pulls off a post-apocalypse TRILOGY: Systemic Shock, Single Combat and Wild Country. Unusual for a trilogy, the middle book, detailing a member of the (religious) secret police who ultimately rebels, is incredibly compelling.
Also, Ing has given us the chillingly gritty Pulling Through, an all-too-easy-to-visualize description of the attack, fearful waiting for fallout and grim aftermath.
And a hearty recommendation for David R. Palmer’s Emergence. When the first section hit as a novella in Analog, it had the same electric impact (on me, at least) as did Endeer’s Game. Both grew into excellent novels.
I have to third (fourth?) Alas, Babylon. Awesome book.
Also, try Fail-Safe.
Finally, if you’re willing to read a Young Adult book (it’s very good, though), try Children of the Dust. I found it very imaginative, and very, very good.
Battlefield Earth (the book, not the extremely disappointing movie) is pretty good. A nice, long read.
There is another book that I would like to recommend, but I can’t remember the name of it - other sf dopers, can you help me with this (vague description to follow)? It was a book about a city of the future with no people in it that is being looked after by a black android. I read it decades ago, and I would love to read it again, but I have no idea what the name of it is.
I also want to second The Stand by Stephen King. This is not much at all like his other novels; please don’t miss out on an incredible depiction of how things can go from normal to apocalyptic in just a few weeks. I’ve read this book four times, and talking about it here, I think I’m going to go read it again.
To take things in a slightly different direction (with SenorBeef’s permission, of course), can anyone recommend decent movies about this subject? I find that the movies made about this are almost uniformly like the OP described (action movies that give no thought at all to the consequences of civilization ending).
At the risk of being stoned (but I guess after a Battlefield Earth reccommendation there might be none left 
) I would like to throw in The Postman as a fairly entertaining story. Not the film, obviously, but the book iirc was good adventurey stuff.
I enjoyed the Amtrax Wars series a lot when I was small, but it’s been a while (long while). My memories of them are rather cheese flavoured.
Sure, good movies would also be good to recommend.
I never would’ve guessed my library had a subject heading like this:
End of the World-Fiction
which I learned looking up some of the titles on this thread
I’ll just chime in on the recommendations for The Postman, the novel. Actually I didn’t think the movie was bad at all. It just had the misfortune of following Waterworld
Domain by James Herbert. This is the third and last of The Rats’ series, and is nice and visceral.
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. Everyone goes blind, and genetically modified plants called Triffids are a big threat.
Is On the Beach about a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere, and how Australia is the only place left where the fallout hasn’t reached yet? I loved the book. The movie based on the novel was on last night on Finnish TV.
Wow… I remember The Girl Who Owned A City from 6th grade. And Day of the Triffids, too. I think I’ll have to read them again, now. Just to reminisce.
My favourite post-apocalyptic book is The Last Ship byWilliam Brinkley. This is the story of the only US Ship, the Nathan James, to have survived a total nuclear holocaust.
Wow, nobody’s mentioned Dahlgren by Samuel P. Delany yet?
Well, then, I’ll mention it.
Dahlgren by Samuel P. Delany. a masterpiece.
I’m also fond of The City, Not Long After, by Pat Murphy.
WarDay by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka which I remember as being very American.