Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Dont be at yourself

I've recently read Brooks' World War Z and Matheson's I Am Legend, and though both books are very different stylistically, I enjoyed both.

Does anyone have other recommendations in the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction? I read Z For Zachariah when I was younger, but don't remember very much of it.

Dudess

You gotta read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It's told in flashback by a guy who's one of the few survivors of some terrible catastrophe. Prior to this, the world is getting more and more ****ed every day due to global warming, largescale abuse of science, and multinationals controlling the US. It's fantastic - one of the best books I've ever read.

John

I recommended a book called Black Rain by Mauji Ibuse when somebody asked for Japanese literature. It also applies here, it's a fictional work based on first hand accounts of the Hiroshima bombing. You don't get much more apocalyptic than that. Apart from an actual apocalypse of course but by its very nature no one would be around to experience it

Tree

blade runner, by the legend that is phillip k dick

Dudess

Or, to give it its original title, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Yep, fabulous book indeed. The film is stunning to look at but nothing beats the book.

Valmont

I read a great one years ago called 'brother in the land' I can't for the life of me remember who it was by. But it was a post nuclear holocaust story about a small society trying to grow crops and fend off bandits and the likes, brilliant if you liked World war Z, which was awesome! I hope Max Brooks writes another zombie book

BossArky

Looking forward to getting some of these books based upon what you folks are saying.

Dont be at yourself

You gotta read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It's told in flashback by a guy who's one of the few survivors of some terrible catastrophe. Prior to this, the world is getting more and more ****ed every day due to global warming, largescale abuse of science, and multinationals controlling the US. It's fantastic - one of the best books I've ever read.

I read this a few years ago, and remember not liking it at the time. The memory if it has almost completed faded in my mind, so I can't really remember what I didn't like about it!

Dudess

NBM, give it a shot again. It was only published in 2004/05. Is it definitely the one you read?

Dont be at yourself

I'm pretty sure. I read Cloud Atlas at around the same time, but I think I have them all mixed up in my memory. It was about a biosphere type place in a world full of genetically engineered animals or something, right?

(God, my head is like a sieve!)

Ho-Hum

I'd reccomend Cormac Macarthy The Road, a fantastic read that is utterly dismal yet shows the compassion and love needed to get through such an event.

Some reviews

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Road-Cormac-McCarthy/dp/033044753X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-8815069-9342012?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178311134&sr=8-1

luckat

Got in ahead of me there with The Road. (I didn't believe the ending, and yet it worked even so.)

Short foray into movies: the anime Grave of the Fireflies, set in Japan during and after World War II as two children starve to death.

Stephen Kings "The Stand".
Amazed no one said this already.

johnnyskeleton

The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy deals with what happens to the last human after the world is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass. However, it is probably not what you're looking for.

I did enjoy Oryx and Crake but that was because it dealt with a current issue (exploitation of children in the 3rd world) rather than being apocalyptic.

If you are talking about distopian future rather than post apocalyptic fiction, then my top tips are:

1) 1984 - George Orwell
2) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
3) A clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
4) The man in the high castle - Philip K Dick
5) The forever war - Joe Haldeman

All of which highlight the social problems of the time they were written in, while presenting it in an extreme future. Also, I hear Fahernheight [sic] 351 is pretty good.

Earthhorse

Is Do Androids...? really a post apocalyptic book? Don't remember much about an apocalypse in it but it has been a while. Ditto Fahrenheit 451. They're both great reads though, you won't go wrong picking them up.

To contribute, Dr. Bloodmoney, also by Phil K., is a really great read. I usually struggle with his longer works, because I think they lack direction and momentum, but he manages to keep the pace throughout the piece and it reads well throughout.

2040

it's kind've post apocalyptic. everyone is gone to offworld colonies cos the planet's severely poluted and everyone left is defective in some way.

Johnny Storm

Earthhorse wrote:

Is Do Androids...? really a post apocalyptic book? Don't remember much about an apocalypse in it but it has been a while. Ditto Fahrenheit 451. They're both great reads though, you won't go wrong picking them up.

To contribute, Dr. Bloodmoney, also by Phil K., is a really great read. I usually struggle with his longer works, because I think they lack direction and momentum, but he manages to keep the pace throughout the piece and it reads well throughout.

IMHO Dr Bloodmoney (or How We Got Along After the Bomb) is PKD's most perfectly post-apocalyptic novel. And that's really saying something as he is a bit of a master of the 50s/60s post-apocalyptic nuclear-war-paranoia genre. It's a minor masterpiece. The book is given an added poignancy when you think PKD had a twin sister who died at birth.
The ash-filled post-WWIII world of mutants and confused survivors is the highly effective background to many of his early short stories also.

Tim Powers' Dinner at Deviants Palace is an unusually upbeat post-apocalyptic novel and pretty readable.

Secretpint

I just finished The Road/Cormac mcCarthy myself, great read, very Atmospheric

film on the way apparently....the guy who directed The Proposition is making it, John Hillcoat