Personal most liked and most hated apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic books

I personally like this this type of book. I like reading how someone thinks they can survive such events and the problems they encounter along the way. I don't like it when the book drifts to the magic or religious side...magic belongs in horror and fantasy and that is not what I view as helping my goal...I certainly like good vs evil interactions and they can be religious in nature but when there is a call to arms through thoughts and dreams (The Stand) then the wheels fall off for me...I like a little bit of religion but not where it dominates the theme.

My most liked books in this genre are as follows :

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy - extremely well written in a rather odd almost prose poetry way sometimes - a very real father/son story and well portrayed.

2. Alas Babylon by Pat Frank - dated in description but somewhat realistic on the human side.

3. Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven comet strikes off California ...still have the vision of the surfer catching the mother of a wave and riding it through the city

4. Triumph by Philip Wylie - probably the best bomb shelter scenario with a discussion about some racism

5. Farnham's Freehold By Heinlein - 2/3 of the book was quite good but his racism shows through eventually...haven;t read it in 30 years so my view might change on a reread.

6. A Canticle for Leibowitz by WM Miller - a little heavy on the religious side but overcomes it in the story

7. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson - yeah a zombie book but quite a study in trying to survive such a world alone....and the title makes sense (unlike the movie by same name with Will Smith...he has a habit of ripping off great titles)

8. The Stand by Stephen King another great book for 3/4 of the read. Probably the best description of a deadly fast acting plague I have read so far...quite realistic until the good vs evil theme starts to dominate the book and the wheels fell off for me.

9. Earth Abides by George Stewart written in the late 40's early 50's pretty old but stands up well. I have mixed feelings. Well written but I hated the characters...so lazy and did nothing but eat food out of cans {sheesh}

My forgettable clinkers are:

1. The Aftermath: A Novel of Survival by Samuel Florman - how a group of engineers on a convention cruise ship off South Africa rebuild civilization...one of the few times I gave 1.5 stars to a book and reviewed it (think I was the only one to do so)

2. Swan Song by Robert McCammon a horror book not SCI-FI disgusted with the unbelievable situations and gave up after 200 of 500 pages

3. Flood by Stephen Baxter started great but never seemed to go anywhere with the story...they seemed to travel an awful long way in helicopters with no fuel dumps to me :)...gave up and could not finish

I have more but this is a start :)

I hate post-apocalypse fiction. As I said in my Interzone review of Last Man Standing, an Italian post-apocalypse novel:

... despite ten thousand years of civilisation, the only post-catastrophe stories we tell depict brutal worlds in which violent selfishness is the only mode of survival. This is chiefly because most post-apocalypse tales are in part based on American conceptions of a world without American society. When society goes, the American Dream is over and, we are supposed to believe, the American Dream is such a noble achievement that only animalistic behaviour can exist in the vacuum it leaves behind.

Having said that, I think The Road is very good.

And one book I'm looking forward to reading is Necessary Ill by Deb Taber, which promises "hopeful glimpses of alternatives to the current cultural barrage of post-Apocalyptic savagery and regression to warlordism".

On the Beach by Nevil Shute - read this one in high school, believe there's also a movie

World War Z by Max Brooks - anohter zombie book but written in an interesting way, with snippets of interviews that tell the story

The Postman by David Brin - the book is much better than the movie

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle (and several movie adaptions as sequels)

Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt - probably one of his better books

The Passage and sequel The Twelve by Justin Cronin - this time vampires...

Pat Frank, the author of Alas Babylon also wrote a strangely post apocalyptic novel, Mr Adam. No mass deaths occur when the apocalypses happens, nuclear testing causes all males to become sterile leaving the human race nothing to do but grow old and die. He treats the subject with a lot of humor, it was written in the 1940's and nobody took a nuclear threat seriously.

His Alas Babylon is from around 1960 and described what people then thought a tactical nuclear war would be like, a war where somebody could win.

Malevil an amazing, IMHO, post nuclear war novel was written in France in the early 1970s and shows how both nuclear weapon technology and public perception of what a nuclear war would be.

When Worlds Collide and Aurther C Clarke's short story "The Star" are both great but probably just outside the genre.

I agree entirely that Farnham's Freehold and The Stand died about 2/3eds of the way through.

"Damnation Ally", the short story by Roger Zelany deserves mention as one of the worst but the movie they made "based" on it could be what dragged it down so far.

There are two more books that I want to mention as being the worst but I seem to have banished the titles from my memory as well as my library. Both are from the 1970s, one describes a "survivable" nuclear war and the other has the one redeeming grace that it predicted the AIDS epidemic, sort of.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is my favorite. Another candidate might be Gene Wolfe's Urth of the New Sun.

>2 iansales: Is it possible that non-American or even non-Anglophone authors agree about the social orders that would emerge after a large scale diaster and there is no implicit "America is gone so there is no one to preserve civilization" assumption in these books?

And, if you've read Richard Jefferies' After London, what's your reaction to that? It's written before America was a world power so can perhaps be thought not to make any assumptions about American influence. Of course, you can argue it's set far after the disaster so is not a post-apocalypse novel and is more one of those pastoral "life is better after we got rid of that nasty industrialization" novels.

I think you also have to consider a time scale. Post-apocalypse stories tend to be set in a short interval between civilization's fall and a new order -- however unpleasant -- emerges. No Blade of Grass has the fusion of two bands at the end. Lucifer's Hammer is the rekindling of civilization via nuclear power. Incidentally, there is a scene in that novel that refutes the "violent selfishness" notion of post-apocalypse societies. A senator has to decide whether to let a man into his compound. The man has no survival skills, but he's let in because of past (and now irrelevant) favors he's done. The entire story of Earth Abides is the death of the old order and institution of a new one. Dean Ing's Quantrill books, set after a limited nuclear war, postulate a fairly organized civilization existing afterwards -- it's run by a Mormon theocracy. Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka's Warday also imagines civilization surviving, battered, after a nuclear war. Communities exist, indeed it's the struggle between them, in David Brin's The Postman. The same is true of Poul Anderson's "No Truce With Kings". These all sort of acccept the Hobbesian premise that anything is better than anarchy, and survivors seek government of whatever sort. Now, you can perhaps criticize them for often assuming feudalism is the default state of human society or often showing a somewhat unrealistic love of the rural life, but I don't think you can see a persistent trend of "violent selfishness" unless of course you assume such is the basis of civilization -- because it's government and order and the wish to bring in back that moves a lot of these plots.

Is it maybe that you see post-apocalypse novels as having characters too easily resorting to violence to solve problems in these stories, Ian?

Also, has anybody read Andrew Offutt's The Castle Keeps? It's supposedly a satire on the idea of survivalists. I have a copy but don't know if it's worth reading.

I think those are my favorite :

• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller

• Divine Endurance by Gwyneth Jones

• The Masters of Solitude by Marvin Kaye

• Radix by A. A. Attanasio
Well, most of it, except the "Kill Foozle"-type end.

• I am Legend by Richard Matheson

• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Though except for the last 2 they happen after some sort of order has re-emerged, rather than immediately after whatever catastrophe occurred.

The worst of the subgenre I read was probably The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, great Lovecraftian horror in the first half, but otherwise so many things of the "nearly threw out of the window" variety.

Warday was one of two that I considered worst but could not remember the title of. Thank you for jogging my memory.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

2> That axe ought to be plenty sharp by now. ;)

I rather enjoyed The Postman and remember liking Lucifer's Hammer, though I'll be damned if I remember many of the details at this point. I've re-read David Palmer's Emergence a couple of times, so I must clearly like that one. Eternity Road I read and don't recall hating, but then I don't hate anything McDevitt's written, though some of his endings are weak.

How about Peter F. Hamilton's Greg Mandell books for a non-American take on a post-apocalyptic situation?

Last Man Standing is Italian, so it was doubly disappointing in that regard :-)

I'm not sure what the answer is. I do know that the post-apocalypse novels I've read mostly expect a descent into warlordism and savagery. Yet it strikes me that cooperation is a more effective survival strategy than violence. Are people really so shallow and thoughtless that despite knowing full well that slavery is immoral... they'll start trading slaves again as soon as they can?

No doubt there are plenty of novels that don't follow this template. I've read one or two that don't - such as The Wall Around Eden - but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

I have no idea what you might possibly mean (he says in all innocence)...

Not sure I'd classify either Divine Endurance or Radix as post-apocalypse. Their worlds were created by catastrophe, true; but it was centuries before the action in the story takes place.

This list is from most to least favorite:

The Postman This is one of my all time favorite books.
The Walking Dead The television series was responsible for me reading this. Only graphic novel I have read.
Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer Good reads.
Blindness I found this book terrifying.
The Road The book grew on me. It started slow, and not enjoyable. At one point I wished some of the parts were exchanged with "they walked and walked and walked" and, when they met up with someone, the story be written as is. By the end it was a page turner.

Apart from the issue of how well or poorly imagined the world that ultimately emerges from apocalypse, I enjoy following characters' attempts to handle the immediate catastrophe. The possibility is so vivid in my own life, that the trope has energy to me.

Something about A Canticle for Leibowitz makes me feel comfortable. My wife talks about comfort food, this book is my comfort food. I cant count how many times I have read it.

The City, Not long After Pat Murphy deserves a mention.

> 4 I was not aware of another Pat Frank book on an apocalyptic topic...Mr. Adam sounds like something I'd like....thanks. I vaguely recall once reading a book titled Malevil but I don't recognize it from the LT description and reviews.

I am a Philip Wylie fan and have read When Worlds Collide as well as its sequel After Worlds Collide I read it in my youth and I vaguely remember liking the first more than the second...I highly recommend Triumph if you have not read it.

I did not like Warday either too fractured in its story...did not finish it.

I will add another to my "like List"

The Last Canadian by William C. Heine - a story about a super plague released on North America by a foreign power which kills 90% of people leaving survivors to be carriers. I won't add any spoilers but it is quite a good light read

I don't understand what's so surprising that people would expect others to act uncivilized after the fall of civilization. Just look at people rioting now. And it's not just America but the UK, plenty of countries in Europe and across the world. Just today there was a riot in Cairo that left 30 people dead. What were they rioting about? They were pissed because of a court sentence given to their relatives - for rioting.

It's an age-old philosophical/psychological/sociological debate about what keeps people "civilized." And it's certainly not a debate owned by America. It has nothing to do with the American dream. I feel like it has much more to do with the fall of ancient civilizations such as Rome, Persia, or the empires of the Americas. And often it has to do with people's popular perceptions of the fall of those civilizations even when historical fact might not back it up.

The reality is that in western civilization, most of us have very little to do with protecting ourselves from crime. We rely on the safe society we live in and the institutions that keep it that way. Occasionally we have third, second or even first hand brushes with how unsafe we can be when our number comes up in the lottery. Having personally had a loaded gun pointed at my chest and being told to hand over my wallet, I have come face to face with the fact there even with all the trappings of civilization, there are still some people willing to simply take rather than to earn.

Given all that, why wouldn't one be pessimistic of how civilization would fare - at least in the short term - after a widespread apocalypse? How strong is your faith in the high ratio of earners to takers and the ability of the former group to protect themselves against the latter?

Yeah, What bright said. Unreal how quickly slavery, genocide, warlords and stuff like "child armies" spring up so quickly- even without a world wide apocalypse.

The post-apocalyptic tradition we're discussing here - ie, the books - are almost all American. So it's fair to talk about it as a response to US society. If there were another tradition - a French one, an Egyptian one, a Chinese one - and we knew how similar it was, or how different, then perhaps we can extend the argument to other nations.

People rioted in the UK because they were not told they cannot have what they can plainly see other people having. It was a not a lack of law that caused it, but a prejudiced implementation of it. Here we don't believe it is our responsibility to stand in readiness to rise up against a tyrannical government. It's not in our culture or character. We don't routinely own guns, either. In fact, only special units of the police are even armed.

As for countries that currently practice warlordism, slavery and field child soldiers... they don't have two or more centuries of battling slavery. It's not in their history. Just like guns aren't in British history.

It's not about earners versus takers. After an apocalypse, no one is an earner. But cooperation is a more successful survival strategy, and this has been proven repeatedly throughout history. When a village is cut off by snow, one person doesn't go out and rob his neighbours so he can weather it. Everyone works together. And should the nation and its infrastructure collapse, for whatever reason, I find it implausible that people will start following a single man and rounding up everyone else to enslave.

Favorites are The Road, The Stand, and (probably doesn't count, unless we're talking about way, way, way post-apocalypse) Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique tales. I seem to have been able to avoid the truly godawful crap in the genre (and I have no doubt that there's a lot of it out there), so I can't say there's been anything in it that I've read that I really hated, although I confess I found I Am Legend to be somewhat disappointing.

While we're on the topic, can anyone explain to me why there seems to be such frequent conflation amongst readers of the post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction genres? I'm not talking about the conflation of these genres in the actual work (e.g., the graphic novel V for Vendetta), but rather when readers (or viewers) take a work that is clearly exemplary of one genre (sometimes even archetypally so) and think it's the other (e.g., calling 1984 a post-apocalyptic novel, or films in the Mad Max franchise dystopian). This frankly annoys the shit out of me.

There are some UK perspectives on post-apocalyse societies, and some of them are quite old. Day of the triffids for example. Sections of H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come cover the recovery from apocalyptic war (although the novel is written in quite a 'textbook' style and the better realisation of the post-apocalyse society is in the Alexander Korda film). And for real early thoughts on the subject, there's always that frightening novel of a future England in the distant year of futurity, 1984: namely, G.K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill...

Arthur, I suspect some people think of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as "post-apocalyptic' because they seize on the point in the novel that Oceanea is at war and London has been bombed. But most of the time, not knowing the difference between those two things is just carelessness or ignorance.

22> I tend to agree with you, Ian. As a Canadian, we don't have the gun culture of the USA in Canada. I look at natural disasters in the USA (hurricanes mostly) and the aftermath is usually a stint of looting and lawlessness with the National Guard sent in to protect property and combat looters.

We don't have the same problem in Canada. During floods or ice storms where power lines are down for long periods of time (thinking Quebec several years ago) we did not have issues with looting or theft any more than usual. Our military is usually sent in to help with the restoration of services or in the case of floods help in the building of temporary dikes. Our stints of vandalism here revolve usually after a championship hockey or football series and there it is just an outpouring of emotion of drunken louts. LOL

We have our share of gangs and gang violence in Canada and I am not that naive to think that in a total apocalypse that they will not play a role as they are an organized body. I am sure that faced with a life/death situation one would have to be prepared for protecting what little you had. But I do not see little fiefdoms sprouting up in Canada as pictured in many books.

It is a cultural thing....look at Japan and the disasters there with the recent tsunami and flooding of the Fukushima nuclear plant...no violent riots there...peaceful protest...resigning of gov't officials but I did not hear of much in the lines of looting and such. Same in the Thailand tsunami situation and others.

Most of what we read in North America on this subject is written in the USA, It would be interesting to compare authors from other countries and their views of surviving such an event.

My view of a coming apocalypse is that it will be a natural event...not a man made one as such. It will be a major disease, a super killer but not one released on purpose or accident from a military installation.

I view the earth like an agar plate in a Bio lab. If you put bacteria on such a plate and incubate it...the bacteria spreads to all edges of the plate...then it will feed on itself. Humans are the bacteria of the world IMHO. With overcrowding and fast transportation I can envision a super plague sweeping the world in days. SARS was a test 5-6 years ago and we were lucky it was not as easy to catch as it could have been. Frankly I was in Asia when it broke out, returning to Canada through Vancouver and I was disgusted at how unprepared we were. In Singapore, you filled a document stating where you could be located, your temperature was taken as you got off the plane and suspect people were quarantined, Masks woren everywhere, not to prevent getting the disease particularly but to help stop the spread the problem through coughing.

Arrive in Canada, the only checking done was a policeman and a drug sniffing dog, no requirement to advise where you would be staying and Vancouver was a hot spot for SARS in Canada and a major point of potential entry.

Yeah we got lucky that time IMHO

you guys are forgetting the brit Death of Grass aka No Blade of Grass. Been forever since i read it but it was clearly an english descent into gun violence and fiefdom. attributing this to an american attitude is very naive. a great many americans are anti-gun.

but like others I just don't buy the slavery / warlord / violence etc rebirth as the way of things such as what I just read in Marcel Theroux's Far North. and he's not american.

I've not read Death of Grass, so I can't say how it fits in. True, Marcel Theroux is a Brit, but that doesn't mean he's not writing in the US tradition of post-apocalyptic fiction. And that's not the only problem I had with Far North. For example, the Russians open Siberia to colonisation by the US. Really? And do those US settlers adopt Russian culture or transplant their own? Because the book itself doesn't seem sure...

Also, attributing it to an "American attitude" is not naive. The UK, for one, doesn't have that same fascination with firearms the US has. When a man walked into a school and shot up a bunch of kids in Scotland in 1996, we banned handguns completely. Result: no more kids shot in school. It strikes me as more naive, if not completely mistaken, to attribute US attitudes to firearms to the rest of the world.

Taken as a whole Cloud Atlas is a pre and post apocalyptic story. One of the things that I liked best about it is that it illustrated what I believe to be the unvarnished truth about human nature and how it does not change over time. Heroism is part of human nature, but so is greed and so is slavery. History repeats because human nature does not change.

This whole "in the US tradition" is a weak circular argument. Basically, you've defined a certain type of post-apocalyptic fiction you don't like as "the US tradition". Then anytime anyone gives you examples from someone in another country writing PA fiction with similar themes, you say "well, he may just be writing in the US tradition". Neat.

And plenty of examples here are NOT in your theoretical "US tradition". In Alas, Babylon, there was some outlaw action but for the most part there was order and a continued civilization. The book even ends with the US government getting things back together. And Earth Abides also has some outlaws, but for the most part it centers around a group of people who came together to live in a peaceful commune. Are these seminal American novels not allowed to define the "US tradition"?

Even in The Stand, you basically have two groups of people who reform civilization. The only real difference is that one is more of the martial law type. But it's balanced by another which is basically founded on the same ideals of modern society. Actually, probably a bit more fair than modern society even.

You're also mixing up short term with long term. A lot of novels only deal with the short term. In the short term after any disaster you're going to often see the breakdown of civilization. You'd have to be someone who never reads the news to honestly think otherwise.

>23 artturnerjr:

I suspect some people think of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as "post-apocalyptic' because they seize on the point in the novel that Oceanea is at war and London has been bombed.

Yeah, I had forgetten about that. The events of the novel are actually set after a nuclear war, thus technically making it both a dystopian novel and a post-apocalyptic one.

Actually, come to think of it, I was a little bit harsh in my post above (#23). As is commonly the case between the various speculative fiction genres, there isn't really a clear demarcation line between dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction; fictional dystopias often arise after apocalyptic events, and most post-apocalyptic tales are set in what could broadly be defined as a dystopian or anti-utopian society.

***

I forgot to mention above two works in the genre that I liked a lot but did not quite find to be worthy of five-star status: Jack London's The Scarlet Plague and Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence.

>11 iansales:

Are people really so shallow and thoughtless that despite knowing full well that slavery is immoral... they'll start trading slaves again as soon as they can?

Well... yes, they are actually, at least some of the time; people will engage in some pretty fucked-up activities when they feel like their backs are against a wall. Worse things than enslaving people, too; look at Germany in the 30s and 40s.

>25 Lynxear: This is an interesting point. While you can't absolutely extrapolate from local natural disasters -- the survivors know that their unscathed countrymen will help them, I suspect different cultures will react differently to an apocalypse with homogenous populations faring the best. American sociologist Robert Putnam came to the reluctant conclusion diversity erodes social capital, and it would seem you would like as much social capital as possible after a disaster.

Does anybody know any post-apocalypse Japanese novels -- besides Virus and Inter Ice Age 4? I would be curious as to how they depict themselves behaving.

I haven't read Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow so I don't know where that fits in this argument. Anybody have an opinion on that?

As for Canadian responses to an apocalypse, there is H. A. Hargreaves' interesting "2020 Vision" in North by 2000+. Set in 2035, it has Canada wracked by 15 years of national and international wars and political disasters. It's an interesting Cold War piece from 1980.

In The Long Tomorrow, the United States turns to Amish ways, to keep things going but not return to the technologies that led to the apocalypse. Civilization continues but in a muted form. The pros and cons of this are dealt with much more intelligently than other American SF of that time.

Australia, Canada, Italy, France, the UK, plus the Catholic Church (A Canticle for Leibowitz was first published as a serial in the Catholic Telegraph newspaper) are all represented in our favorites. Perhaps these novels illustrate something more universal than the "American Dream" or, perhaps that more universal than it is given credit for?

I think there's also another big reason why certain themes dominate post apocalyptic fiction. It's pretty hard to write novels without strong antagonists and without some danger. It can be done well, as Arthur C. Clarke often showed us. But it's a lot more rare. It also shouldn't be mistaken that harder = better, though. Even in Clarke's novels where the ideas were at the forefront and there was little conventional drama (e.g. The Fountains of Paradise, Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama), he did have to insert some danger to keep it from otherwise falling flat (e.g. the failure on the elevator, the last man's watching the Earth destroyed, the BDO taking back off again).

It may be possible that people would stay civilized and would quickly form up post apocalyptic communities, maintaining democracy and freedom. But those stories may be about as interesting as reading the minutes of a council meeting. In fact, that was sometimes a problem in Earth Abides.

Now, as far as slavery is concerned, I'm a little more undecided in opinion. I grew up in the American Deep South and I can tell you it may not be as far-fetched as you think there. I feel like it's getting more plausible rather than less. And as Europe currently struggles with multiculturalism, many people are already fragmenting into "tribes."

#13 "Not sure I'd classify either Divine Endurance or Radix as post-apocalypse. Their worlds were created by catastrophe, true; but it was centuries before the action in the story takes place."
-- I think of those kind of stories as post-apocalypse; it doesn't matter to me how long it's been since the world changed radically, just that it did. In fact, I suppose the ones where it's happening during the story should be "apocalyptic" and the ones well afterwards "post-apocalyptic"

Jarandel's list items were all ones I loved; we must have very similar taste!

#37 by @rshart3> Does European literature post-1350 count as post apocalyptic? :D Okay, okay, it was a very localized apocalypse rather than world-wide. But I don't think it mattered much to them that Japan wasn't in the throes of the Black Death...

>36 brightcopy:

More to the point - slavery is still very much in existence - it's just not legal anymore:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Present_day

Besides ones mentioned already, I'd also mention:
(two from my post on the other thread)
Engine Summer, John Crowley
Starfish and sequels, Peter Watts

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - Kate Wilhelm
The Crystal World - J.G. Ballard
Greybeard - Brian Aldiss (not to mention his classic short story, "Who Can Replace a Man?")
Wolfbane - Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth
Davy - Edgar Pangborn (who also wrote an old favorite of mine, A Mirror for Observers, which does have a pandemic but isn't really apocalyptic)

#38 Hi Bright -- yes, I think more of situations involving the total collapse of civilization -- the Black Plague changed things, but didn't result in total collapse (i.e. loss of most previous knowledge and social structure). Loss of morale, now, that's a different thing.....

(separate issue) I guess Wolfbane in my previous post might be considered more an alien invasion tale -- but having the Earth towed away from the sun certainly could be counted as apocalyptic. ;-)

Most of my favorites Earth Abides, Alas Babylon, On the Beach. World War Z have already been mentioned, but here's a few others...

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Bracket

The Long Loud Silence by Wilson Tucker

By the Waters of Babylon by Steven Vincent Benet

Midnight at the 31st of March by Case.

Worse things than enslaving people, too; look at Germany in the 30s and 40s.

I believe you have just Godwinised this discussion.

Except Far North has an American cast, who behave culturally like Americans. They may be in Siberia, but they're from the US. Interestingly, the protagonist's town was settled by Quakers, and they responded to the catastrophe in a much more civilised fashion... until they were attacked by other Americans. The local Tungu, otoh, carry on pretty much as they did before.

Ah! I forgot all about J G Ballard, The Wind from Nowhere, The Drowned World. Could his world view have been shaped by the childhood experiences he wrote about in Empire of the Sun?

Going through other books I've read not too long ago in the genre though they didn't remain as favorites, for another examples of behaviors during and after the "apocalypse" in non-US environment/writing.
Here are two french ones.

Le Monde Enfin depicts the catastrophe as a worldwide epidemic. Most people are too busy being sick and dying to be up to much. The survivors are very few and immediately set out to explore and find each other. They engage in some looting as needed, but it is essentially victim-less as they're taking from people who won't be needing anything anymore, it's quite obvious things won't be coming back to what they were anytime soon if ever, and there's nowhere to expect help from. Two of them find the time to free the animals from the Vincennes zoo.
The groups that form eventually are for the most part benign or indifferent to each other and travelers. It does help that the country remains quite liveable for those who are willing to put some effort into it, or even those who are not as the longer-lasting spoils of the earlier consumer society will presumably outlast them all.

La Compagnie des Glaces takes place some centuries after a flash glaciation buried most of the planet under thick ice that will not go away because the sky is now permanently shrouded in dust. The new order revolves around the railroads that crisscross it and the (often power-hungry and amoral) companies that manage them ensuring trade and supplying of the domed settlements, replacing former national or multinational governments.
Most people depend on them simply to remain warm enough not to die, and there are increasing hints that the major companies ruthlessly obliterate any possible threat to that dependence, including any attempts to improve the climate or obtain more self-sufficiency for groups of varying sizes.
Long series, on the pulpy side with often unsubtle characterization or plot devices, but the world is interesting.

>43 iansales:

I believe you have just Godwinised this discussion.

That may be the case, but surely you take my point. Also, as I pointed out in #39, slavery is still in existence, and to my knowledge it has not been precipitated by an apocalyptic event.

#44 ???

Marcel Theroux is not an American. I think it would be difficult for an author to change their world view simply by creating characters with a different history. If it were that easy we would have much better aliens in science fiction.

For instance the word "looting" has been used several times in this thread and, as someone born and raised it the USA I am unsure what is meant by it in this context. Normally we use "looting" to describe the activity of taking advantage of a temporary loss of order to enrich yourself. Finding substance after a catastrophe is either "foraging" of "looting" depending on the people's complexion. Are people from outside the USA aware of the nuances that arise in our culture? I assure you that we are not aware of the the nuances in other cultures.

Could it be a difference between urban and rural cultures that you are seeing? There is a scene in the French novel Malevil, a few months after the event, the rural survivors have planted a small field on wheat which is a few inches tall when starving foragers, identified as possibly being from Paris, find that field and begin eating the immature shoots. I think someones background might play a big part in how they understand that scene.

I didn't say he was. His father is, though.

>47 artturnerjr: You could argue that white depradations in Africa constitute "an apocalyptic event".

>50 iansales:

Yes, you certainly could. I have no doubt that it has seemed that way from the African's point of view.

(Hey! Did we just agree on something? :D )

These are the ones that come to mind first and so I'll put them in my "best" category:

A Canticle for Lebowitz (first read this as part of a university course)

The Day of the Triffids (group read here back when we tried that)

Lucifer's Hammer (probably in part because these are local writers writing about locations I know well. Even the street I lived on at one time was mentioned)

I don't tend to stick with something I'm not liking so it doesn't stick in my mind, and if it did I wouldn't feel right to comment on a book I didn't finish.

I'll probably think of others I've read and liked as soon as I post this, but a top three is good enough. I also realized that while I've like both movies of I am Legend, I don't think I actually ever read the novel.

Side note - I might even find some new ones to read when I go through the list already posted! Just what I need, more TBR!

EDIT: Regarding Lynxwear's comment about the surfer - I believe it was that surfer that went past the big building with a "B" on it, which was Barrington, the street I lived on and that building was down the street from me. How could I not like this book, lol. But really it was indeed an engaging read.

The mere fact that we have a word that specifically means "stealing stuff when there aren't enough police around to stop you because of a disaster/riot" should tell you something about what will happen in the event of an apocalypse...

(And let's be realistic here; when people talk about "looting" they're talking about stealing TVs, not TV dinners.)

One of my favorite sub-genres.

I hope you are all tagging: http://www.librarything.com/tag/TEOTWAWKI

My kids and I had a hard time finding enough copies of Ice! by Arnold Federbush to populate each of our shelves. It's a rousing good adventure with a touch of philosophy.

>48 TLCrawford:,53 I don't hear the word looting as specific to peoples' fear of what may happen in the event of suspended order, tomb-looting has been going on presumably since people have begun burying their dead with items valuable to the still living, often in societies that were not presently undergoing exceptional turmoil and which often had rather stiff punishment for the activity. Armies have looted under orders or tolerance of the people or groups they answered to, and it wasn't always in a "sacking a taken city" scenario, see widespread grabbing of artworks by the Nazis.

I see it more like a reference to the man-made or man-placed nature of what is taken, its ownership by someone who isn't the looter(s) or its having a proper place in the eye of some group of people. Appropriating what's not yours in a city where almost everyone died, even when taking only things useful to survival and to which no living person anywhere near has a claim, is still looting even if it can be entirely morally justified.

Calling it "foraging" would IMO be dehumanizing to the dead, and indirectly to the living. I associate "foraging" with finding resources in the wild, either in an entirely natural environment, or one loosely tended to by a collective in which the forager has a stake.

So "foraging" in a city or of otherwise obviously man-made or man-placed items could only really happen once enough time and events have passed to sever any emotional connections to the people that lived there, when consensus considers the city (and the dead within, which may complicate the picture) as some now indifferent part of the landscape and other resources available in the area.
And IMO that can be a lot of time even if hardship or lack of cultural transmission could presumably shorten it significantly.
Most people today would, I think, manifest some negative emotional response at the idea of an archaeological (esp. burial) site, not matter how old, being treated with anything less than respect and proper scientific process, and any "loot" from it taking any other way than preservation, study and display for the cultural enrichment of the community.

> 55

I agree that "looting" is a misused word. Looting to me is theft...taking advantage of a short term event to make some money in most cases.

After an apocalypse though it becomes scavenging or foraging in order to survive...that is unless you enter someone's property who is still alive and it becomes theft again. But taking food from an abandoned supermarket for example after a major disaster is not looting IMHO it is foraging. Every major city has at best 2 weeks supply of food within its borders normally so this is a major concern. Taking diamonds from a jewelery store or money from a bank in the same event is probably more stupidity than anything as if it were truly an apocalypse those items are useless and barter of goods/services would be better currency.

I also agree that in the event of an apocalypse people would seek others, for companionship, for defense of their "property" (by that I mean survival goods) and sharing of skills. Later once established in their own area I can see further exploration to find other pockets of survivors for trade and possible alliance.

I find it interesting that no one has mentioned SM Stirling with Dies the Fire...I read this book after his "Nantucket" series where a chunk of the earth (around Nantucket) is somehow sent into the past. I liked the Nantucket series in the first 2 books but then events moved rather fast and as the series progressed it seemed to be down to who could invent a better weapon.

I thought the "Emberverse" series of which "Dies the Fire" was the first book would be a good series but I lost interest in undeveloped characters and battle after battle. I did not continue with the rest of the books.

Anyone else feel this way?

re: looting
That reminds me that back in the late 70's, when the federal government was just beginning to think along the lines of a full government response to a disaster, some of what they came up with was pretty bizarre. I worked for the USDA. Our field offices were charged with securing food sources in the event of disaster. That meant feed lots, grain elevators, grocery stores, the whole shindig. We were supposed to do so with just our government ID card (which didn't exist) and our official-ness. No indication of how or with what. No weapons training. No weapons. Just clipboards. We were just supposed to step up and take charge. And perhaps in the 1950s that would have flown in many communities.

I've been working on getting through the Emberverse series. Occasionally, the writing soars.

Yeah, I don't think anyone would label taking food from an abandoned post-apocalyptic out supermarket as "looting". In a PA scenario, the looting would be of things that other people have that are in scarce supply.

Enjoyed:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller.
The Stand by Stephen King.
Earth Abides by George Stewart.
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany.
The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett.
The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Vanishing Point by Michaela Roessner.
Edenborn by Nick Sagan.
Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan.

Cannot imagine reading again:
Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt.
Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem.
City of Darkness by Ben Bova.

Current favorites:
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway.
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sing by Kate Wilhelm.

Contemplating reading:
Plague Year by Jeff Carlson.
Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre.
The Breaking of Northwall by Paul O. Williams.
At Winter's End by Robert Silverberg.
Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen.

The Stand was, in my opinion, a terrible book that lasted 300 pages too long.

Dhalgren I chiefly remember as being discussed at a Midwestcon, with people competing as to how long they read the novel before giving up on it.

Yes," cooperation is a more effective survival strategy than violence" but because "people really (are) so shallow and thoughtless" the situation will become violent with a good dose of savage behavior thrown in. Why would you have to ban handguns if people defaulted to being nice to one another and willing to sit around singing Kum Ba Ya? I just don't have that much faith in humanity

#61 by @BruceCoulson> Would that be The Stand or The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition? If it was the latter, then that makes sense. If it was the former, you really don't want to read the latter. X)

>61 BruceCoulson: I've read Dhalgren four or five times. It's one of my favourite novels.

#63

It was the basic edition, and so you are most certainly right.

Since I have liked other King novels (The Dead Zone in particular), it's not a bias against the author.

Well, a lot of people must have liked Dhalgren; but neither I nor any of those fen at Midwestcon were in their company.

Tomorrow by Phillip Wylie was liked enough to be...umm... researched by Heinlein for Farnum's Freehold.

#45 I think a number of people have remarked that about him. Anyway he loved "end-of" tales. Not satisfied with one way, he had to destroy the world via all four traditional elements.

#46 (La Compagnie des Glaces)
That reminds me of another series: The Amtrak Wars, starting with Cloud Warrior, by Patrick Tilley. Quite pulpy, but I enjoyed the first couple. After the fourth, I lost interest & didn't continue.

#60 I meant to include Kathleen Ann Goonan, but got distracted. Very well done bio-apocalypse!

#59

I'm just reading The Furies by Keith Roberts and early on the protagonist does refer to getting supplies from a corner shop as looting. I guess it depends a bit on just how recently things went bad.

> 57 ... I didn't think about SM Stirling - I guess in my mind's eye it's more alternate history (the Nantucket series threw me that direction), but you're absolutely right.

Should add:
Folk of the Fringe by Orson Scott Card
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

One of the worst books in this sub-genre written is Battlefield: Earth by the ultimate hack, L. Ron Hubbard.

> 68

I read Folk of the Fringe by Orson Scott Card and was not all that thrilled about it. A series of 4 short stories of which I think one had me mildly interested and the last was boring...Mormon faith and Sci-Fi wasn't a match for me.

I'd say Cat's Cradle is way more "apocalyptic" (if any label applies) than "post-apocalyptic". There's practically no story after the apocalypse, as I remember it.

> 61, 64

I'm super-overdue for a Dhalgren re-read. I remember when I first finished it thinking that it was in the tiny class of novels I would read repeatedly.

In keeping with the title of this thread, Dhalgren was the first science fiction novel I ever hated and probably the first one that I didn't finish. I couldn't tell you how far I got because this was back around 76-77.

off topic post!

> 73 I fail to see how this is related to an apocalypse??? Just asking...

#74, Aha! I was involved some time ago in a discussion about zelazny in another topic {recommendations for an out-of-date SF fan}where the topic had wandered a bit as they are wont to do and posted in the wrong area. My apologies! and thanks for pointing that out. ::blush::

One of the major reasons I like reading about the apocalypse be it a nature event, alien attack or inter-country attack is that I am interested in how the author perceives the event and how he believes it is survivable.

The good versus evil themes that run through many post-apocalypse books wears thin if that is all there is to the book.

That is why I like Triumph by Wylie...it is the only novel I read where he knows that to survive a nuclear attack you have to stay under ground for 3-6 months and he describes how he would design the fallout shelter and the psychological problems associated with limited room.

Similarly The Road by McCarthy was enthralling as I felt it was an accurate portrayal of a father's love for a son while trying to escape to a better place after an unmentioned apocalyptic event and the dangers along the way.

The Stand by King...at least the first half of the book was the best representation of a deadly disease totally out of control that I have read (too bad the ending was flakey)

I see many books here that may fit my interest and I am grateful for the contributions ... I have a lot of reading ahead of me :)

I like post-apocalypse books because it's like looking at the corpse of civilization and seeing how all the social and technological and environmental factors fit together. If it's a good post-apocalypse book.

BTW the way, there is an entire post-apocalypse literature group on LT. But it's been moribund for months.

Too busy fighting off zombies and scavengers, I guess.

I think PA fiction also appeals to the side of us that's tired of the modern world, commitments, etc. To some degree it's an escape fantasy. Granted, the reality would probably have most of us wishing to escape back to pre-apocalyptic times. :D

lol @brightcopy....but I think you might be onto something.

It might also be an escape fantasy where you can perform a heroic action or vitally needed action necessary to the immediate survival of a group. Even if we feel we play a vital role in society today, the feedback is usually delayed or a few degrees removed. (unless maybe if you are currently caring for young children).

>79 brightcopy: & 80

Then, of course, there's the whole "cozy catastrophe" sub-genre (aka "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine))":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction#Cosy_catas...

ETA See also:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/nov/25/cosy-catastrophe-fiction

I think this speaks to the notion of "cosy catastrophe" being sort of a British answer to the American post-apocalyptic paradigm that Ian was talking about in #2.

Perhaps, though the line from the article "Cosy catastrophes are very formulaic - unlike the vast majority of science fiction. You could quite easily write a program for generating one" doesn't exactly make it sound that appealing.

I think this is another area where reality would seem far less appealing to us than the fantasy. First off, there's a very real psychological impact to billions of people dying around you. Then there's your friends and family. Then there's the practical reality of all the dead bodies in most scenarios. And then there's when your appendix bursts...

>82 brightcopy:

First off, there's a very real psychological impact to billions of people dying around you.

Well, that could be very appealing if you're a misanthrope. Just sayin'. :D

Currently reading Adrift in a Boneyard, which begins with everyone in the world (apparently) dying in a mysterious massive electrical storm of some kind. Primarily satirical and I'm enjoying the first half on those grounds. Might be considered "cosy."

> 82 "And then there's when your appendix bursts..."

Ouch that really hits home....not the appendix...I divorced that as it was cancerous (squeaky clean now though) but medical issues in general.

I am type 2 diabetic and have just degenerated to the point where I am starting to take Insulin. I have read a couple of books where type 1 diabetics are left for dead so to speak....after looting drug stores hahaha....

But there are ways to mitigate diabetes sugar issues....It seems that mint tea lowers blood sugars in me I have just found out, especially over night but that might interfere with the Basal insulin I take so I have a pint beer glass of mint tea at Lunch and it helps.

But so far I see no sympathy from Sci fi AP writers on the subject. Most treat medical dependent survivors as write-offs. They should research herbalist approaches to disease :)

Yep...insulin supplies and making insulin would be high on my list of priorities...I was a former chemist so I would be head drug maker in my area...lol

I learn something new every day.

I'd never heard of a "cosy catastrophe" before. The only book I can think of that I've read that was like that was the planned apocalypse in Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy. It didn't work out the way it was planned and that was about the last Clancy book I ever read too.

Frankly, I fall in to the "Nature, red in tooth and claw" camp. Brutality following an apocalypse makes a lot more sense to me, though I would hope with the history showing the advantages of cooperation that civilization would reappear quickly and not take the thousand years from the Foundation books let alone 30,000 years. :-)

>81 artturnerjr: I think Walton and Aldiss are a bit glib with the "cosy" bit. Plenty of trauma and shock in Wyndham and Christopher even if the dead bodies conveniently take themselves off somewhere. The tv show Survivors (the first one) based on Terry Nation's Survivors actually did make the issue of dead bodies a major part of it plot. Its characters had to stop looting cities because of the danger of disease.

>79 brightcopy: Another attraction, besides a big reset button, is how "the last shall be first" in the post-apocalypse order. It's kind of like the villain in the movie adaptation of Brin's The Postman (the novel I liked except for the silly super survivalist villains). He used to be a copier saleman then he became a warlord.

> 82 "And then there's when your appendix bursts..."

Have you read Malevil? Burst appendix come to play in its plot.

No, but burst appendices often come to play in a plot. :D

>87 RandyStafford:

I think that both The Stand and The Scarlet Plague also play around with this notion of the cream (or, in the case of the bad guys, the sludge) rising to the top in the new post-apocalyptic world order in interesting ways.

>90 artturnerjr: I agree with you on The Stand I haven't read the other book. It wasn't until you felt the steam roller of the religious good/evil side to story that the book fell flat to me...the prison recruiting felt real to me.

I enjoyed Shiel's The Purple Cloud
Also Aldiss's Greybeard. Superb
Its more pre- apoc but Forge of God by Greg Bear was really good.

>91 Lynxear:

The Scarlet Plague is available for free at Gutenberg if you're interested:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21970

While we're on the subject, here are a couple of "best of post-apocalyptic fiction" lists I've found on the interwebs:

http://entertainment.time.com/2010/06/08/top-10-post-apocalyptic-books/

http://www.abebooks.com/books/apocalypse-end-world-armageddon/post-apocalyptic-f...

Just started Lights Out by David Crawford. So far it has been a good read. Not recommended for those who do not want to read about people that might use a gun to defend themselves or their family in the event that social order breaks down.

I found another book that looks promising but will have to search for it - Summer of the Apocalypse by James Van Pelt one of the plague type aftermath books

36, 39> On the subject of slavery, I have thought about it and can see this happening in a post apocalyptic world under this scenario. Manpower for manual labour would be at a scarcity, so I cannot see wholesale executions for anything but the most heinous of crimes such as obvious mental deficient bad guys sociopathic murder or sexual predatory behavior. So whether you see it as a simple prison situation or slavery, I can see the use of prison labour for earning freedom / rehabilitation.

Whether this be cruel or benign but harsh would remain to be seen.

>96 Lynxear:
'Summer...' wasn't bad. 3 - 3.5/5

>96 Lynxear: Re "Summer of.." Okay, middling, not bad, not especially memorable.

It occurred to me that Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge and The Harvest by Robert Charles Wilson could both be considered post apocalyptic stories. The former is set after the Singularity has left an Earth devoid of anyone other than those who unwittingly passed through it sealed in stasis bubbles. The latter involves an rapture-by-aliens.

I think they're both unique among PA in that you have an environment where most of the humans on the planet are gone, yet neither involve that happening through a mass dieoff (though it's never explained why it happened in the former).

Greg Bear's Blood Music would also fit that, if it wasn't mostly Pre- and just plain Apocalyptic with very little Post-Apocalyptic content. In some ways, it's very similar to Childhood's End.

Most p.a. books that have any semblence of society left (or reformed) accept a retreat from current standards; slavery, strongman rule, fuedal-type societies, etc.

Marius by Poul Anderson (short story) is one of the few that suggests a possible re-start with learning from the prior mistakes.

What makes me the least optimistic for conditions in America following an apocalypse from nuclear war: demographics. The main target would be all large population centers. And I read too many exit polls (not to mention grew up and still visit relatives in a small town) to be very optimistic about the aftermath given the likely survivors.

Well, they could be Amish, ala The Long Tomorrow.

But I suspect No Truce with Kings, The Long Loud Silence, and The Lost Traveller by Steve Wilson are more likely outcomes.

From what I know of the Amish, Mennonites, etc., they'd just be happy they could finally be left alone. ;)

>99 brightcopy: Post-apocalyptic story with most humans gone but no mass die-off. Vanishing Point by Michaela Roessner was one and though I haven't read them, I'd bet the Left Behind series was one as well.

>101 brightcopy: Demographics. As someone who lives in fly-over country, I've got to like our chances and opportunities better than people in large population centers. One obvious reason is that it's easier to be neighborly with your neighbors when you actually know them which is a start to rebuilding society. Of course, I only lived in a metropolitan area for a few years. I much prefer seeing farms out my window.

I'm glad I'm not the only one here who rates Sheil's Purple Cloud it is an utterly compelling book. One of the first in the genre too.

My most hated Post-Apocalyptic book has to be The Survivalist No. 6: The Savage Horde - Jerry Ahern
actually this has to be THE single most awful book I think I have ever read right through to the end - and I include many self-published awfulnesses - The Savage Horde has 59 chapters spread over 208 pages (that's 3.5 pages per chapter - though some are actually less than a page long). 208 pages of porny gun-wanking in which our 'hero', John Thomas (Fnaaar!) Rourke, shoots people. Lots of people. He must kill at least hundred people in this book. He doesn't ask many questions before shooting them either, but it's all right really, this is Post Apoc America and the people he kills with relentless and boring frequency are all 'brigands' or 'wildmen', hairy ill-shaven (and therefore amoral) targets for clean shaven and God-fearing him to gun down page after page after page after page.

Quote:
“He already had the target-a man about six-foot four, unshaven, his black leather jacket mud-stained, a riot shotgun in his hands, the pump tromboning* as the twelve-gauge, roughly .70 caliber muzzle swung on line.”

To break the monotony reading about John Thomas shooting people in the head page after page we are often treated to fetishistic descriptions of guns being reloaded; the hero's weaponry: a pair of chromed Detonics Combat Master .45 pistols in Alessi shoulder holsters, Colt Python and Colt Lawman revolvers, an A.G. Russell Sting 1A knife, and a shoulder sling with a CAR-15 assault rifle; and, occasionally, a parallel story in which John Thomas' wife shoots hairy amoral, would be rapists in the head with either an M-16 assault rifle or .45 automatic - even their 8 year old son gets in the act and shoots the occasional hairy ill-shaven biker in the head - though he has to make do with an antique lever action .30-30 Winchester rifle.

There are twenty-nine! books in the series.

Four books after this one (according to Wikipedia) the united Rourke family get themselves cryonically frozen and wake up 500 years later - by which time the human race will have presumably bred enough targets for them to bother getting up again.

*'Tromboning' is, apparently, a genuine shooting term and nothing to do with the male gay sexual act of the same name. (Don't look it up.)

>105 TheOtherJunkMonkey: You are absolutely correct about The Survivalist.

A friend and I tried to read one of these in the 1980s when it came about.

We both liked guns. I'm even an NRA member. (And, no, we are not going to argue gun control here.) But we were both disgusted by the writing and the constant fetishism about guns. "We're tired of hearing about your stainless steel .45 Detonics and Pachmayr grips. Shut up about them and tell me a story." was our reaction. And, yes, the part I read also had at least one rape scene.

Years later I found out that Ahern was a writer of non-fiction articles for gun magazines. I guess dropping in gun descriptions was all he could bring to the act of novel writing.

He co-wrote some other science fiction series too.

Just stay away -- well away -- from Ahern fiction.

>105 TheOtherJunkMonkey: Michael Dirda also did a recent review of The Purple Cloud here: http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Library-Without-Walls/The-Purple-Cloud/ba-...

>105 TheOtherJunkMonkey:

Yeah, that sounds pretty wretched, all right.

PS I was going to compliment you on the most excellent neologism awfulnesses, but as I see it is actually a valid Scrabble word, I don't know if I would be correct in doing so. :D

Another very strange possibly Post Apoc book that I love is Wilson: a Consideration of the Sources by David Mamet. It is a bewildering, confusing mess of a book. Set some ill-defined post-apocalyptic future where the collective memory of western civilisation has been lost (probably literally - someone may have put it down and forgotten where they left it) The book attempts to reconstruct the 21st century from the few fragments that remain without ever telling us what the fragment. Basically the book is a post-modernist attack on post-modernistic academia stuffed full of incomprehensible footnotes with sub-footnotes and sub-sub-footnotes. I don't understand ANY of it but it makes me laugh.