Your best post-apocalyptic recs please?
- Thread starter Raventongue
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I am recommending Hugh Howey's Wool Omnibus to everyone. One of the best stories I've read in the last 2 years.
Just actually went and bought that. Read the first section and a half free and got sucked in hard. Very nice writing, deep and sympathetic characters, intriguing glimpses of larger issues.
I second this with all my heart and soul. I could read The Road again and again, and I do. Then I start to question my mental health and try to step away for awhile. Then I return for more.
Note for Raventongue, this one does involve quite a bit of wasteland and some fiery badness, so it may not be your post-apoc cup of tea.
Also can't resist mentioning The Old Man and the Wasteland by Nick Cole. As you can probably deduce, it too involves...a wasteland. And it's a pretty dry wasteland. But the author is self-pubbed and the book was GOOD. Really, really good. I randomly found it on Amazon and downloaded it based on the reviews. Thought it worth mentioning just in case you hit a phase where dry and barren sounds as delightful to you as it does to me.
Great topic, by the way!
Just downloaded this a few weeks ago but hadn't really started it yet. I have chronic book download syndrome now that I caved and got a Kindle, which means I have lots of books getting lost in the shuffle.
Thanks for the prompt about Wool Omnibus. That'll be next after I get through Gulliver's Travels (don't ask).
Oh dang. Got overly excited about The Road before reading through all the posts. Raventongue, having just learned of your propensity toward weepiness when it comes to losing dads, I have to retract my recommendation. Or at least don't read it until your ovaries are feeling really, really powerful.
Maybe you can try the postapocalyptical comedy Jinrui wa Suitai shimashita. I haven't read it, but the anime is hilarious. It's something like South Park but with girls and fairies.
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"Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang"by Kate Wilhelm is pretty good, iirc. There is a nuclear holocaust, but it's offscreen, and the remnants of humanity try to keep going by cloning themselves again and again. It's creepy and thought-provoking.
If you are in the mood for very weird, and comics are okay, Hayao Miayazaki's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" is absolutely mind-blowing. The world has collapsed in eco-catastrophe and nearly everything is covered by forests of giant toxic mold, except for a few kingdoms which are the last of humanity. The scope is enormous, and it's really well-written and drawn.
Paul Auster's "In The Country of Last Things" - I don't recall the nature of the apocalypse (it may have been a disease) but it's bleak and beautifully atmospheric.
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Davy, by Edgar Pangborn. Hilarious and heartbreaking.
also
The Land Of Empty Houses, by John L. Moore. An amazingly dark Christian novel, reminiscent of The Road (but published years earlier), showing America after the "whatever" has happened.
also
The Land Of Empty Houses, by John L. Moore. An amazingly dark Christian novel, reminiscent of The Road (but published years earlier), showing America after the "whatever" has happened.
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I also vote for The Stand. And the Islands In The Sea of Time trilogy and the Dies The Fire multiology (how long IS it going to be?).
I recently read The Passage, the first of a Vampire Apocalypse trilogy - it's the only one out so far, but very good. The vampires are medical-military experimentation gone very wrong.
Oh, and Lucifer's Hammer, too.
Was wondering the other day - is Post-Apoc a 20th century thing? Previous centuries had Castaway stories, but I can't think of any pre-20th stories where the writer felt the need to destroy the entire civilization. Maybe because there WAS once wilderness, and now it has to be created by some sort of catastrophe?
I recently read The Passage, the first of a Vampire Apocalypse trilogy - it's the only one out so far, but very good. The vampires are medical-military experimentation gone very wrong.
Oh, and Lucifer's Hammer, too.
Was wondering the other day - is Post-Apoc a 20th century thing? Previous centuries had Castaway stories, but I can't think of any pre-20th stories where the writer felt the need to destroy the entire civilization. Maybe because there WAS once wilderness, and now it has to be created by some sort of catastrophe?
Far from a 20th century phenomenon - there are ancients texts which can be interpreted as apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature, and it hasn't really gone away (as a genre) since people started writing it. I'm not certain what would count as the single oldest, but parts of the Old Testament probably count as being of the genre.
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Finally, something I can contribute to!
Myself and a couple of other women blog about the apocalypse, you see, and we get book reviews as well.
So.
Kings The Stand, again.
Shades of Grey (No, not 50) by Jasper Fforde is dystopia but is implied to be set post-apocalypse
The Strain and The Fall, by Guillemo del Toro
Roil is a grim fantasy apocalypse
I also quite liked Echo City. It's fantasy again, but a lot of the stuff in it hints at it being a post-apocalyptic world.
Myself and a couple of other women blog about the apocalypse, you see, and we get book reviews as well.
So.
Kings The Stand, again.
Shades of Grey (No, not 50) by Jasper Fforde is dystopia but is implied to be set post-apocalypse
The Strain and The Fall, by Guillemo del Toro
Roil is a grim fantasy apocalypse
I also quite liked Echo City. It's fantasy again, but a lot of the stuff in it hints at it being a post-apocalyptic world.
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Biased and not the genre I read, but a recently deceased cyberfriend of mine spun a good tale.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1569759774/?tag=absowrit-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1569759774/?tag=absowrit-20
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Earth Abides - George R. Stewart
The Stand -Stephen King
Wool - Hugh Howey
Dust - Charles Pellegrino
The Stand -Stephen King
Wool - Hugh Howey
Dust - Charles Pellegrino
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller
Level-7, by Mordecai Richler
After London, by Richard Jefferies (one of the first, and a vastly unknown classic)
Darkness and Dawn, by George Allan England
and, as Tezzirax has already posted, Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart.
caw
Level-7, by Mordecai Richler
After London, by Richard Jefferies (one of the first, and a vastly unknown classic)
Darkness and Dawn, by George Allan England
and, as Tezzirax has already posted, Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart.
caw
You might try Brian Aldiss' Barefoot in the Head. Reading it is more an experiment in how far you get. It's set in a Britain devastated by a psychodelic war. It's the acid-head apocalypse. The longer it goes on, the less sense it makes. It's better to have read it, than to read it, but on the other hand, you've probably never read anything like it, and - who knows - you might be one of the people who love it. (They exist.) Do I sound negative? I'm not. I actually like this book. But it's a trying read.
Great suggestions so far. Post-apocalypse fiction is my favorite. You should definitely read Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, it's a classic. Canticle for Leibowitz might be a bit too hot and barren for you, but it's another classic. I love all the modern stories too, but I think it's important to start at the beginning. 
Just finished reading Into the Forest by Jean Heglund and I can't recommend it enough. It's extremely dark in some places, but never without reason. It's also one of the few post-apocalyptic books I've read that is entirely focused on the characters and their present struggle rather than the downfall itself.
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I don't know how well it would fit your parameters about dry wastelands and nuclear explosions (that's the end of the world as we know it in this book), but Robert McCammon's Swan Song is pretty good. It has a few oogey bits (as does The Stand), but I really liked it! I soon forgot about the explosions...
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Oh man, I nearly forgot: Vic and Blood: The Chronicles of a Boy and His Dog, by Harlan Ellison and Richard Corben