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Post-Apocalyptic! End of the World books

lenny nero said:
There's a show right now on The History Channel over here in the States called Life After People, about what the world would be like if something wiped us out.
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I think the series was inspired by the book The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.
 
I haven't read the entire thread so I don't know if someone already recommended this, but The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a good post-apocalyptic novel. It's about a father and his son and their journey to reach the coast. Practically everyone is dead and of those who aren't, some have formed gangs that kill and eat people. The father and the boy have to find food and avoid these gangs in order to survive. It's really good. I didn't think I would like it but the story really draws you in. It takes a bit of time to get used to the writing style though.
 
Sapper41 said:
Alas Babylon - Pat Frank Russians nuke USA and its about A guy in his little town that survived the attacks very good.

The Postman - David Brin ( I think) Like the movie but WAY better!

Earth Abides A disease kills of most of the people in the USA and a few band together and try to survive :)

Sorry i'm not good at the summary / review thing.
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I agree: the Postman novel is Soooooooooo much better than the film.:innocent:
 
I have a few favorite post-apocalyptic novels.

A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Earth Abides by George Stewart
Blindness by Jose Saramago

The Road by Cormac McCarthy was just so-so and The Stand by Stephen King I didn't enjoy at all.
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned "novel of the change" series by S M Stirling which starts with Dies the Fire.
 
'A Scientific Romance' (Ronald Wright) is good. He actually explores the post-apocalyptic world, which so few ever seem to. And I know many of the locations (London, Edinburgh, the route between them).
 
Just finished Susan Beth Pfeffer's The Dead and the Gone, a sort of sequel to her great young adult novel, Life As We Knew It. Whereas that one took place in the burbs, this one takes place in New York City, where 17 year old Alex must keep his 2 sisters alive and safe after the cataclysmic event. In these books, the world doesn't come to an end in a one second event, it's a long slow process filled with food shortages, disease, and death. This one sets up the just released third book, This World We Live In.

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I'll be buying The Windup Girl as soon as it comes out in paperback. Bacigalupi is a good short story writer too. One of his better post-apocalyptic stories is in Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse.
 
Just read James Van Pelt's Summer of the Apocalypse. In it, a 75(!) year old man sets off from Littleton, CO to walk to Boulder, CO to see if there are any books left at the university library, as his community over the past 60 years has slid into illiteracy and scavenging as a way of life. Along the way, he reflects back to his teen years, when a plague broke out that killed 99% of the world's population.

Not the best representative of the genre, but still worth a look for fans of it.

:star3:

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I read that a few months ago myself and I'd give it the same rating. Two and a half stars if I could be more precise. It might be more fun if you live in the area the book is set, but by no means one of the better post-apocalypse books I've read.
 
I just read Flood by Stephen Baxter which ended up being really good. It took a while to get going, but the extreme rise of the world's oceans is ultimately a really terrifying idea and made for a good story. As usual Baxter mixes in plenty of science into the story and the event itself is unrelated to global warming and polar ice cap melt so you needn't worry about any kind of scientific polemic if that is something that might concern you (there isn't enough ice on the world's surface to accomplish what happens in the book). This is the first in a series of two, so far.
:star4:
 
I've got a similar book on my tbr pile called The Deluge by Marc Morris.

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