I’ve started re-reading Robert R. Mcammon’s “Swan Song” and decided to just make a whole themed reading playlist. I already have Brian Hodge’s “Dark Advent” and Skip/Specter’s “The Bridge” queued up. I also recently read “The Conqueror Worms” (aka Earthworm Gods).
The only rules are:
Thanks in advance!
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a great post-apocalyptic movie with plenty of horrors, although I’m not sure I’d classify it as a horror novel. No sci-fi, no supernatural elements, just people trying to survive.
It’s like the best zombie shows where “the other people are worse than the zombies,” except The Road just has those other people.
If you’re a fan of Robert McCammon, The Border is another of his post-apocalyptic works, although rather more sci-fi than Swan Song, as I recall.
The Passage (and its sequels) by Justin Cronin were fun.
“I Am Legend” by Richard Matheson.
The original version of F. Paul Wilson’s Nightworld might qualify, before he revised it to fit more extensively into his Repairman Jack mythos. Although that might be more “intra-apocalypse” than “post”, and has more overt fantasy elements.
I feel like I ought to be able to think of more…
How about The Gunslinger?
I’ll toss out The Fireman by Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son). It fits your criteria, although I wasn’t a big fan - the plot got a little too convoluted for me. But it’s fairly well-liked on Goodreads and Amazon, so maybe give it a shot.
The post-apocalyptic world where everything is Mad Max is just so dull. What? You need food, water, and gasoline? Great, so does anyone broken down in Arizona. Someone tell me when this sci-fi imagination-conjured thrill ride is over.
Better are the post-apocalyptic worlds similar to our Earth, but broken in an irredeemable way. These aren’t ‘disaster’ novels, the disaster has already occurred. Nothing left to do but watch civilization unravel. Books that come to mind many years after I have read them:
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
The Night Parade by Ronald Malfi
Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky
Road, as well as I Am Legend has been mentioned, and the Stand ruled out. No Zombies…
Hmmm, I’d probably throw a mention of the Metro books, upon which the various Metro games are based.
Afterage by Yvonne Navarro is good.
Not a novel, but there’s a play called Mr. Burns that’s worth seeking out if you’re interested in a unique take at life after the end, and the script is purchasable on Amazon if you can’t find a live production.
It’s set after a global catastrophe of unspecified nature has killed off most of the human race and caused most of the world’s nuclear reactors to melt down due to there being nobody left to shut them down safely. The first act revolves around a group of survivors camped in the woods on a summer evening who decide to pass the time by reminiscing about something they all have fond memories of - the episode of The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob gets out of jail and the family joins the Witness Protection Program to hide from him. It then follows that same group years later when they’ve become a theater troupe performing reenactments of Simpsons episodes for other survivors, and the third act takes place generations later as a play-within-a-play, where the reenactment of that particular Simpsons episode has become a sacred ritual that serves as a creation myth for the new civilization that has arisen from the ashes of the old.
It’s a really interesting look at how art evolves to serve the needs of the culture within which it exists, and I highly recommend it even if you’re not really that much of a Simpsons fan.
I’ve got one that qualifies, but telling you it qualifies is a major spoiler, so be warned:
NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, starting with The Fifth Season. The trilogy is absolutely self-contained, but I don’t know if you need a single self-contained book.
There’s also Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death, heavy horror elements in its post-apocalyptic Africa.
Guillermo Del Toro’s The Strain ends up post-apocalyptic, but doesn’t start off there–is that enough?
This is excellent and well-recommended.
The Distance by Jeremy Robinson. A daughter is given a strange survival pod by her parents, who know something but won’t say what. Turns out to be necessary and she survives a planetwide cataclysm. Long tale of survival on the leftovers, etc. Really, really good book imo.
Outland by Dennis Taylor. Major yellowstone caldera eruption render most of US uninhabitable. A few who have inadvertently discovered a way to survive form a community. Also really good post-disaster tale.
Devolution by Max Brooks (Mel’s kiddo). Surprisingly good, but more along the lines of a town being cut off due to large scale earthquake/etc. events, and everyone finding out the hard way that glass windows are really just a social taboo. Some creatures aren’t phased by them. While definitely apocalyptic, it’s more local than global.
Run by Blake Crouch. Not really alien invasion, but close. The world goes insane, and a family discovers they really really really needed that gun (and other stuff). Gruesome (not for kids), but definitely global-apocalypse. Unusual source for the apocalypse though. Still a great book imo.
Gray by Lou Cadle. Hiker/amateur spelunker realizes something really bad is happening and ducks into large cave after grabbing all her supplies from the van. More survival stories and my current favorite.
Edit to add: All of these are on Audible.
Since the OP mentioned novels, I mention this more to people with similar genre tastes, but manga have a number of worthwhile examples of this genre. As a somewhat approachable example, I’d mention Seven Seeds, which while has plenty of the less worthwhile manga tropes, has multiple types of horror from body, to “humans are the greatest evil” to “the things we do to survive”. I don’t believe it was ever released in an English language edition, so you’d likely have to read a fan translation. But I very much enjoyed some of the sub chapters, especially the Ash and Hail of Corn sequences.
I can think of several others, but many fall into the ‘no zombies’ category, and/or feel like the survival is more setting than focus.
Seconded. In fact I read it based on many rave reviews by Dopers.
And for those who may not be aware, Harkaway is the son of John Le Carre.
I’ve been aware of this play since it was written, and as I possess this kind of encyclopedic knowledge of Golden Age Simpsons myself, for years I figured that’s how I’d survive post-apocalypse. Then I gradually came to realize that The Kids These Days have basically never heard of the Simpsons back when it was good, and my ability to do a little puppet show for every S1-8 episode is essentially worthless. No one will ever pay me to do this.
Anyway, for the OP:
The MadAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake; The Year of the Flood; Madaddam)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, though this one might remind you of The Stand a bit. A rollicking good tale of post-everything survivors, one of whom just happens to have some paranormal abilities.
Thanks, all. I’ve added many of these to my list (Afterage was already on there). And I just found out that Cormac McCarthy died today, so The Road is up next.
The only reason that I included the prohibition on “The Stand” is that I knew it would come up. Zombies is just because of zombie overload. I also have “Wetwork” on my Kindle already.
I know the OP specified no zombies, but if we’re bringing up Max Brooks we really do need to acknowledge World War Z. It’s the single best zombie apocalypse story I’ve ever read, and in retrospect, it made a lot of accurate predictions about how 21st century America would react to a pandemic.
The book presents itself as an oral history - the narrator is a journalist writing 20 years after the outbreak of the zombie virus, focusing on the decade when the virus broke out, society largely collapsed, and the remaining governments of the world fought back against the undead en masse and made the world mostly safe for the living again, and the text is made up of interviews with various people who played key parts in the struggle - doctors, politicians, soldiers, and the like, each with their own anecdotes about what they lived through and what’s still happening in the aftermath.
It’s really worth reading, and if anything the way it accurately predicts the way many people responded to covid makes it more readable.
(NOTE: The movie is trash. Do not watch.)
On The Beach by Nevil Shute is somewhat post-apocalyptic and somewhat apocalypse-still-in-progress.
I wouldn’t call this post-apocalyptic or horrific, and what have you got against brother Boris?
As long as we’ve gone there, I highly recommend Dusty’s Diary, by Bobby Adair. It bumps against the edges of the “zombie” genre, but only with infectious and psychotic people. No undead or the like. It’s written from the viewpoint of an unsure and confused guy who went overboard in his new prepping hobby, following a bad breakup with his wife. It turned out that building the underground bunker in his backyard was a good idea after all, and like the above, his observations on reactions to the worldwide pandemic (and political upheaval) are spot on. This is one of my favorites, and the first book is available on Audible as well. It’s a book series, but the first stands alone quite well.
Btw: WWZ is on my wish list now.
I’m adding a lot of books to my own list - this is a great thread. I’ll add Station Eleven.