Twilightsm ([info]twilightsm) wrote,
@ 2008-04-23 21:41:00
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Hello. I need help finding Post Apocalyptic Books. Fiction or non-fiction, is irrelevant. If you know of a great "after the end of the world" or "while the world is coming to an end" book... tell me about it! I'm also interested in Dystopian societies as well (like Fahrenheit 451 or 1984)

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[info]macross_007q
2008-04-24 02:10 am UTC (link)
World War Z.A post apolatic book of a of accounts of various people who survived the zombie plaque.Author is max brooks.
http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/worldwarz/

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[info]twilightsm
2008-04-24 03:24 pm UTC (link)
zombie plague...
Like I am Legend?

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[info]macross_007q
2008-04-24 08:36 pm UTC (link)
Sorta.But The book i am legend is more about vampire like creatures.

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[info]mrmeval
2008-04-25 10:36 pm UTC (link)
I am legend is the forerunner of the modern vampire mythos.
I've only gotten bits and pieces of WWZ and will buy it soon. The author also wrote the "Zombie survival guide" which is a riot.

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/zombiesurvivalguide/

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Book for you
[info]sapphirequeen
2008-04-24 02:59 am UTC (link)
How about "Swan Song" by Robert McCammon. It's the life of survivors after the nuclear holocaust. It does have a focus of good vs. evil, God vs. Satan, but it doesn't dwell too much on that tangent. The first 25 or 30 pages give a very detailed description of nuclear holocaust, and if that doesn't give you a case of the whimwhams, I don't know what will.

You can also try an old favorite "The Stand" (the unabridged version) by Stephen King.

Hope these suggestions work for you! Have a great day!

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Re: Book for you
[info]lordjunon
2008-04-24 04:38 am UTC (link)
my mom had that book she enjoyed it. A+
Chris

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Re: Book for you
[info]twilightsm
2008-04-24 04:57 pm UTC (link)
Thank you

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[info]imtboo
2008-04-24 03:46 am UTC (link)
If you have never read WE, it is great.

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[info]twilightsm
2008-04-24 05:05 pm UTC (link)
I shall have to try it

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[info]imtboo
2008-04-24 03:47 am UTC (link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) so you can see the author's name which is difficult. :)

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[info]imtboo
2008-04-24 03:57 am UTC (link)
hmm, wrong link.
http://www.curledup.com/weclasic.htm
here you go.
:)

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[info]twilightsm
2008-04-24 05:06 pm UTC (link)
Thank you

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[info]galamea
2008-04-26 07:58 pm UTC (link)
I second this suggestion for dystopian novel. (Check that stack of books I gave you before I left, there might be a copy in there. Zimyatin is the author, I believe). It's why 1984 was written.

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[info]beccaelf
2008-04-24 04:17 am UTC (link)
The Stand; Stephen King.

A Clockwork Orange; Anthony Burgess.

"Harrison Bergeron"(short story)Kurt Vonnegut

Logan's Run; William Nolan

The Running Man; Richard Bachman (ok, Stephen King again)

hell..you could even use the Holy Bible.

I am Legend; Richard Matheson

War of the Worlds; H.G Wells

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[info]thorshammer
2008-04-24 04:25 am UTC (link)
How could I forget about the Stand?! That's one of my favorite books of all time...


I guess by that account, The Dark Tower series is quite post-apoc.

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[info]twilightsm
2008-04-24 05:14 pm UTC (link)
true... and one of my fav. Stephen King series!

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[info]twilightsm
2008-04-24 05:11 pm UTC (link)
The Stand is pretty good... I love the first half of the book (if you like the first half try White Plauge by Frank Herbert)

Thank you for all the great ideas!

I know I love I am Legend in movie form, same with Logan's Run.

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[info]galamea
2008-04-26 07:59 pm UTC (link)
Yea! for "Harrison Bergeron"!

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[info]beccaelf
2008-04-26 10:29 pm UTC (link)
Yay! Someone else knows it!

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[info]galamea
2008-04-27 09:00 am UTC (link)
Oh yes, brilliant damn story too. Even stranger though, I've seen portions of the film as well (although I was introduced to the story first). In fact, it was in a short-story class, where the teacher decided there were stories that deserved to be represented in the text that were not, along with "Harrison Bergeron" were stories written by a student in that class, "All Summer's in a Day" by Bradbury, and a story called (I think) "The Perfect Song". I absolutely adored that professor, she was a freaking genius.

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[info]thorshammer
2008-04-24 04:17 am UTC (link)
The Postman
Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash

ummm my mind is blanking on this.

If I think of more, I'll post them:)

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[info]mrmeval
2008-04-25 10:14 pm UTC (link)
Do NOT see the movie made from "The Postman", it's wretched tripe!!!

The book is incredible.

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[info]twilightsm
2008-04-27 02:40 pm UTC (link)
I have seen The postman movie..
So I'm looking forward to reading the book.

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[info]lordjunon
2008-04-24 04:39 am UTC (link)
Id ont know if its exactly what ye are looking for but The worldwar and the sequel Colonization series of books by Harry turtledove are good. Aliens invade earth during WW2 and the results of those. Its really good. :)
Chris

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[info]twilightsm
2008-04-24 05:17 pm UTC (link)
thank you

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[info]trochee
2008-04-24 05:37 am UTC (link)
[info]imtboo pointed me here.

Oo, clever thought: look at the post-apocalyptic LibraryThing tag. That's a good start. Off the top of that list, I would especially recommend Canticle for Leibowitz and Riddley Walker as spectacular.

Also the dystopia tag is pretty good. You must read Handmaid's Tale and Parable of the Sower.

Um, glancing at the books near my desk for a start:

Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan; an SF novel about nanotech
A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen. Non-fiction essays about the ongoing human destruction of the planet.
Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner. Definitely one of those "as the world is ending" peri-apocalyptic books. Also freakishly prescient.
Pretty much anything by James Morrow.
Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Very funny take on the Apocalypse.
Always Coming Home, by Ursula K. Le Guin: a post-apocalyptic half-novel half-anthropology of a new community after our own.
The Dispossessed, also by Ursula K. Le Guin. A classic pair of dystopian societies in second-wave feminist SF.

Comics and illustrated books:

Baaa by David Macaulay. Also Motel of the Mysteries, by the same. Both satirical with lots of illustrations.
The System, by Peter Kuper. Wordless and beautiful and very very scary. Set in Manhattan, just before the bomb goes off. Written before September 11, also freakishly prescient.
Watchmen by Alan Moore, and Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller; modern classics in their post-apocalyptic re-visionings of the superhero genre. Spoiler: superheroes are the cause and the effects of the apocalypse. (Otherwise stay the heck away from superheroes, as a rule: many of the superhero books thematically deriving from these two have degenerated into thinly veiled snuff and rape porn.)
Give Me Liberty, by Frank Miller. Vaguely Objectivist Dystopian SF. Sequels are not so vague.
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore. The comic is wordier and more subtle but not as pretty as the movie.
DMZ, by Brian Wood; protagonist is a reporter in Manhattan, the DMZ between the Free States (Michigan, Upstate NY) and the New United States Government. Most Manhattanites live in the line of free-fire. Actually, many by Brian Wood: Channel Zero, Couscous Express, The Couriers.
Glacial Period, by Nicolas de Crécy. The Louvre is rediscovered by explorers excavating the Lost Continent of Europa.

phew, that's a lot. Probably more than you need. I was going to linkify it all to LibraryThing but I think you can cut-paste into their search bar too. :) enjoy! If any of this whets your appetite in a particular direction, ask me and I'm happy to go into more detail!

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[info]twilightsm
2008-04-28 01:34 pm UTC (link)
thank you! That is very helpful!

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[info]alliquay
2008-04-24 01:37 pm UTC (link)
Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke is about the end of humanity.
Anthem by Ayn Rand. It's not quite apocalyptic, but humanity has certainly had a setback. More dystopian society.
Of course V for Vendetta and Children of Men are both awesome.
Good Omens was hilarious, and centers around the coming of the Anti-Christ.
Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut is fun, and about the end of the world brought about by misguided science.

Lots of good stuff above, too.

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[info]v_verweij
2008-04-24 02:39 pm UTC (link)
World War Z by Max Brooks
The World Without Us by Alan Weismann

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[info]luker_laughed
2008-04-25 05:37 am UTC (link)
Tanith lee writes a lot of these types of stories.

Eva Fairdeath
Don't bite the sun

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[info]mrmeval
2008-04-25 10:33 pm UTC (link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Farnhams Freehold
"Very good, very dark, very politically incorrect"
and
The 1951 novel
The Puppet Masters
Robert A. Heinlein

Footfal
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell
"Absolutely fabulous *especially* the Orion spacecraft"

Caliphate
Tom Kratman
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416555455/1416555455.htm?blurb
The author defines politically incorrect. This is what may happen soon.

The Day of the Triffids
by John Wyndham

A Hymn Before Battle which is part of the Posleen invasion series. This series is all I recommend by this author. This is one of the best reading alien invasion series I have ever read. His latter work is lacking.
John Ringo

The Jupiter Plague
Harry Harrison before his brain rotted. ;)

The incredibly timely and supremely horrifying
Blood Music
and
The Forge of God and it's sequel
Greg Bear

The 1932 novel
When Worlds Collide
by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer
there is a sequel but I do not know who wrote it.

1898 novel
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

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Ooh, Ooh, Let me help!
[info]galamea
2008-04-26 08:45 pm UTC (link)
Ok, here's the list of books from my Utopia/Dystopia class.

"1984" by George Orwell, which we read with "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, they are essentially the same book, different authors, different times (I think "We" was written 30 years earlier).

This is a weird one "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare. The professor threw it in as for the "utopia" part of class because the exiled guy tries to create the perfect world.

"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood (remember me trying to get you to read this one during the book club). It's a definite dystopian novel.

"The Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. you could put it in both categories.

"Neuromancer" by William Gibson, think "Hackers" in a dystopian world.

Holy shit, digging this up let me find that paper I thought I didn't have a copy of, that's so damn cool. Anyway,

"Utopia" by Thomas More. It was kind of dry, but short, and the whole point of the novel was look how dumb these people were, except, as I was reading it I was like, Yeah!

"Herland" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, that's the chick who wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper".

OK, that's what I can remember/find of that class book list. As for me, (Goddess, I left a lot of books in Michigan)

If you haven't started the "Uglies" series by Scott Westerfield, I need to get up there and beat you. And that's just for your profession, not just pleasure reading.

I want to suggest "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" by Milan Kundera. I don't know why. It almost fits. But so doesn't, except for that one section. Just read it.


And whoever suggested Robert Heinlein was good, I can't remember what novel I read, but you get a definite dystopia feel.

And why didn't anyone suggest "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, which is like one of the important starter dystopian novels. (There's a sequel apparently, but I haven't gotten that far).

Since I'm running through YA, "Among the Hidden" by Haddix (I can never remember her name).

"Feed" by M.T. Anderson. I started listening to it, but it gets REALLY confusing, I needed to finish it with the book in my hand.

One of my friends has been reading that comic "Y, the Last Man" and swears she'll let me start when she can find the first copy again.

Oh, can't believe I forgot "Galapagos" by Vonnegut. It's very, very, strange. Don't go into it expecting something.

On my to-do book list is this series called "The Bar Code Tattoo" that fits what you want too.

And of course, if you're feeling really morbid, I have a whole slew of Holocaust books that are really good reads.

Aww, hell, now you're making me look at my book list. Damn, I just needed a break from cleaning my house for a second, and then all this.

Thanks for the distraction, babe ;-).


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Re: Ooh, Ooh, Let me help!
[info]twilightsm
2008-04-27 02:16 pm UTC (link)
I do what I can! And thank you for all the great ideas!

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[info]satedbuffalo
2008-04-26 09:21 pm UTC (link)
I'll second Canticle for Leibowitz and even give the sequel a nod.

If you're thinking about dystopia, you might consider Walden II. It's not exactly billed as a dystopian novel, but you could certainly read it that way if you find radical behavioralism disturbing.

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[info]galamea
2008-04-27 07:37 am UTC (link)
Three other ideas.

"Left Behind" (OK, religion aside, my Dad still liked it).

"The Omega Man" by Issac Asimov (again, Dad suggestion)

"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy (suggestion by Aaron, pulitizer prize winner 2007)

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