Comments on: Recommend "end of the world" fiction.

Question: Recommend "end of the world" fiction.

cmonkey — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:20:04 -0800

I would like recommendations for "end of the world" fiction books.

I'm a huge fan of "last man on earth"/"total destruction of humanity" fiction books like Earth Abides, On The Beach and The Postman. Stories like I Am Legend also really appeal to me.

What other books along those lines can I pick up?

By: cheaily

cheaily — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:22:12 -0800

I hear the last book of the Christian bible is a hoot.

By: Clay201

Clay201 — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:28:25 -0800

I'm going to go for the obvious: Stephen King's The Stand.

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:37:04 -0800

Well, I almost hate to bring sci-fi into it, but it's my favorite genere ... "Childhood's End" is an amazing classic and would be well worth reading.

By: stray

stray — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:37:32 -0800

Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.

By: bshort

bshort — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:39:16 -0800

A Canticle for Leibowitz - really more of a complete destruction of civilization and subsequent dark age.

By: willnot

willnot — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:39:35 -0800

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

By: dhruva

dhruva — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:45:14 -0800

Kalki, by Gore Vidal

By: Dipsomaniac

Dipsomaniac — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:46:37 -0800

Lucifer's Hammer, (Larry Niven).

Heart of the Comet, sorta (David Brin).

The Night's Dawn Trilogy, available as 6 books in paperback (Peter Hamilton).
The Reality Dysfunction parts 1 & 2
The Neutronium Alchemistparts 1 & 2
The Naked God yes, two parts.

The Chung Kuo series (David Wingrove).

Hmmm, all sci-fi. Perhaps I don't read enough other genres.

By: dhruva

dhruva — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:57:00 -0800

also does The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham) count?

By: stray

stray — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 23:01:14 -0800

For some reason this question made me think of The End of Eternity by Asimov, which I read as a child. Not really related, but boy do I want to read it again now.

By: borkingchikapa

borkingchikapa — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 23:02:14 -0800

Why, the Left Behind series, of course.

Unless you like going to hell.

By: Drastic

Drastic — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 23:15:57 -0800

Greg Bear's Forge of God is a good little Earth-itself-ends yarn, but isn't really of the Last Man Left variety. More uneven (it being his first work) is his Blood Music, which also includes some apocalyptic themes.

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 23:26:00 -0800

Warday, by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka.

Yeah, the first guy later decided he was double plenty abducted by aliens, and it no longer applies to this post-Cold War era, but it's still pretty interesting.

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 23:41:44 -0800

Stephen King's The Stand.

Seconded. One of my all time favorite books period. I really don't think King gets his due in literary circles. The Stand and The Dark Tower series are amazing reads.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 23:46:35 -0800

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. 1950's coldwar view of a russian nuke attack.

By: pemdasi

pemdasi — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:08:46 -0800

Good Omens by Neil Gaimon and Terry Pratchett

By: NortonDC

NortonDC — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:34:44 -0800

Two examples, one of which gets an enthusiastic suggestion...

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams
I've pimped this free work before, and I'm pleased to do so again. It's gripping and bracing, with a tacit puzzle element that starts to gnaw at the reader. Very good and VERY TWISTED, obscene even.

This Is The Way The World Ends by Jim Morrow
I read this in the midst of big Morrow kick, and I don't remember it as a favorite, but if you want bleak, this one has it in spades. Well written, but it will grind you down.

By: Leon

Leon — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 01:53:18 -0800

I don't think Good Omens really cuts it for this genre.

Second Canticle for Leibowitz. Wonderful book.

Day of the Triffids (John Wyndam)?

This looks promising: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-apocalyptic but it's nowhere near exhaustive.

The Survivalist series. Heh. Man, those books are terrible. But ditto The Stand, so what do I know.

The Last Man (Mary Shelley) looks interesting.

By: Derek

Derek — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 01:57:49 -0800

I highly recommend Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank as well. I read that book in middle school and has been the one book I make sure I have with me when I make my trips to my deserted island.

By: Jairus

Jairus — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:08:26 -0800

I second Canticle for Leibowitz (which I'm in the middle of), and Forge of God (which is one of my most beloved books).

By: damn yankee

damn yankee — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:22:26 -0800

I second Oryx and Crake. Atwood's best since The Handmaid's Tale, I'd say.

By: misteraitch

misteraitch — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:10:08 -0800

The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel.

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:12:23 -0800

I have to add another vote for A Canticle for Leibowitz. If you like that one, you also should read Pavane, by Keith Roberts. (It's more of an alternate history, but it struck me as very similar in tone. And there's something about it I won't give away. Well worth reading.) Avoid Miller's post-humous sequel to Canticle -- it's just nowhere near the original.

John Christopher's No Blade of Grass is out of print but worth seeking out. In it, a virus that kills all grass -- and remember, wheat is just a type of grass -- is loose. I leave the results to your imagination (until you can find a copy of this book, anyway).

Alas, Babylon is oh so dated now, but I still love it.

Armageddons, a short story collection edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, is an OK collection of tales along these lines. It includes Niven's "Inconstant Moon" which is one of my favorites.

Keep the recommendations coming, folks... this is one of my favorite genres as well, so I'd like to get some ideas from this thread too. :)

By: argh!spiders!

argh!spiders! — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:18:42 -0800

I would just like to reiterate I Am Legend. Incredible story.

By: tetsuo

tetsuo — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:37:24 -0800

Farnham's Freehold

By: mek

mek — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:53:54 -0800

Douglas Coupland 's Girlfriend in a Coma fits into this category, though in its own peculiar way. Think Breakfast Club, but everyone else on earth is dead.

By: mek

mek — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:54:34 -0800

I should also mention that only 1/3 of the book is post-apocalyptic, does that count?

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 04:06:58 -0800

My favorite of this genre is the collection of short stories called The Last Man on Earth, edited by Isaac Asimov, though with no stories by him. It's gotten mixed reviews, but I really enjoyed it since it contains many variations on the same theme. I also second Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke which I re-read every few years or so and always get new stuff from it.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 04:28:43 -0800

The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner - more of a slow-burn apocalypse-in-progress than a post-apocalypse, and looking less and less farfetched every year.

Check this out, too.

By: i_cola

i_cola — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 04:31:32 -0800

mek beat me to it but it is a great recommendation. A different take on the standard apocaplyptic vision.

By: Chrischris

Chrischris — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 05:03:03 -0800

For a non sci-fi take: Wittgenstein's Mistress, by David Markson.

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 05:11:09 -0800

Douglas Coupland is obsessed with the end of the world. Read Gen-X for an intro into his "worrying about the end of the world" theme, and move onto "Life After God" for a great atomic destruction story.

Most end of the world books are science fiction though. Wyndham is great. Day of the Triffids has already been mentioned, but I think both Web and the Trouble with Lichen have some kind of apocolyptic theme going on in them. My memory is vague on this though.

There's also a great book about a strain of grass taking over the world, but could not pin down what it was called. I did find out about a book called "The Death of Grass" which is also post-apocolyptic, but this wasn't what i was looking for.

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 05:15:48 -0800

Plus.... If only... someone else had put together a handy amazon list of "end of the world" novels.

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 05:19:06 -0800

Plus... I'm quite proud of todays google-fu.

By: thomas j wise

thomas j wise — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 05:25:34 -0800

There's always Mary Shelley's The Last Man.

By: saladin

saladin — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 06:07:37 -0800

Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle deals in part with the end of the world, and is amazing to boot.

By: skwm

skwm — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 06:15:45 -0800

I second "This Is The Way To World Ends" by James Morrow - it's one of my favorites.

By: Leon

Leon — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 06:29:18 -0800

Just had a thought - Alfred Bester plays with the last-man-on-earth theme (and a bunch of other cliches) in one of his shorts... "5,271,009".

There's also a neat Vernor Vinge story where the end of the world comes with a whimper - like widely-spaced pearls on a necklace. Google says Marooned in Realtime/Across Realtime/The Peace War, but I've only read one of those (Peace War?).

Would books such as Lord of the Flies count? They explore many of the same themes (specifically what happens to personal morality when the correcting influences of society are removed).

Also, I was expecting this thread to touch on one particular book that hasn't come up yet...

Young girl lives alone in a valley which, by pure chance of geography, has avoided the worst effects of WWIII. One day, a man wearing some kind of NBC suit and pulling a cart full of supplies walks into the valley. The book is the story of the fraught relationship between the two of them. May have been written phonetically - I'm not sure - but almost certainly written first-person from the girl's PoV.

Does this ring bells with anyone? I'd love to read it again.

By: Leon

Leon — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 06:34:12 -0800

Never mind - should have googled.

Z for Zachariah - Robert C. O'Brien

Good book, or at least it was when I was a kid.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:09:29 -0800

The Three Californias series by Kim Stanley Robinson is worth a read. Not all post-apocalytic, but all about what it might be like if the world changed radically. Plus, he's a good writer.

By: Shane

Shane — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:13:00 -0800

If you're a Dick and/or Zelazny fan, Deus Irae is a fun book. It's all wacked out post-holocaust. You can play "who wrote this, who thought of that?": the religion elements are probably Dick, the slightly rambling poetic descriptions probably Zelaz, etc. Not mind-blowing, but a fun read I thoroughly enjoyed as a kid.

If you love I Am Legend, you must have seen Omega Man, eh? A VERY loose adaptation, but still fun (and then of course there's the older Vincent Price version The Last Man on Earth, too.) Tangentially related, Andy Summers wrote the song Omega Man on the Police album Ghost in the Machine, obviously inspired by the film.

By: ook

ook — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:19:56 -0800

In a way, all of J.G. Ballard's books are about the end of the world, but early on he wrote a set that were explicitly so: The Crystal World, The Wind From Nowhere, The Burning World, and The Drowned World. (Earth, air, fire, water. Get it? Get ?) Brief, reductive reviews here.

By: crush-onastick

crush-onastick — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:20:36 -0800

i recommend womack's random acts of senseless violence which is more an end-of-civilization than an end-of-world scenario. i didn't much care for anything else i read by womack, but random acts was very good. the evolution of the narrative voice as the primary character changes through the book is phenomenal.

By: Shane

Shane — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:32:00 -0800

Harlan Ellison wrote a short-story you'd probably enjoy too, but the name of it escapes me (I think it was originally in Alone Against Tomorrow.) It's pure metaphor and captures perfectly that feeling of being completely alone in the world we all sometimes feel; isolation, alienation, feeling lost in the numb routine of life. A man finds himself the last person left on a chunk of the Earth that has broken off and drifted away into space, yet life just goes on: there's food in the supermarket, for example, and the milk appears there each day fresh as usual.

You really can't ignore the appeal of post-holocaust tales as metaphors...

By: Marit

Marit — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:51:42 -0800

Jack Vance's The Dying Earth.

By: kenko

kenko — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:29:18 -0800

Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker is phenomenal, and another endorsement for A Canticle for Liebowitz.

By: cass

cass — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:33:38 -0800

"Swan Song" by Robert McCammon. Kind of "The Stand"-ish, but still a good read, IMHO. I also read this fairly new book by Dean R. Koontz, "The Taking", which could sort of be a post-apocalyptic story, but I think he ended it too soon.

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:33:52 -0800

Emergence by David Palmer, if you can still find it.

By: redneck_zionist

redneck_zionist — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:53:08 -0800

J.G. Ballard's short story The Garden of Time will resonate in your mind for a very long time.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:16:46 -0800

Arslan by M.J. Engh is an amazing read. It's a charming tale of an infiertile humanity from the persepective of an inmate in a forced labour camp. I can still hear the narrator's voice in my head, fifteen years later.

By: Juicylicious

Juicylicious — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:27:50 -0800

I love post-toasties! Most of my favorites have already been mentioned (Swan Song, I am Legend, Alas Babylon, Warday) Here are a couple more:

Mister Touch, Malcom Bosse
Into the Forest, Jean Hegland
On the Beach, Nevil Shute (I haven't read this one yet)

This is such a great genre. Do you have any recs for us csmonkey?

By: rtimmel

rtimmel — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:50:14 -0800

I second Hoban's Riddley Walker. A great, but often overlooked piece of post-apocolypse fiction. Also, I don't think anyone mentioned Delany's The Einstein Intersection. Its very surrealistic. I loved it back in the 70's, though I don't how well it has aged.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:56:47 -0800

Michael Moorcock's Cornelius Chronicles: the world ends a few times in these.

Olaf Stapledon's books Last and First Men and Starmaker deal with the end of worlds and the universe in passing, but that's not really the main focus. Still, utterly fantastic books ( available in an omnibus edition).

By: Luther Blissett

Luther Blissett — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:05:11 -0800

Peter Verhelst's Tonguecat is in this territory, though more abstractly so. Still worth a look.

Ha, and the Cornelius Chronicles reminds me that Grant Morrison's The Invisibles is about the end of the world too. Though also not in the typical fashion.

By: Juicylicious

Juicylicious — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:07:32 -0800

And here are some links for lists and reviews of this genre:

The Best Links
Post Apocalyptic Media
Listmania! Essential Post-Apocalyptic Books
A Reader's List

By: RikiTikiTavi

RikiTikiTavi — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:12:09 -0800

Just for the fun of it, I'll throw in my recollection of a book in the genre I remember reading long ago. A sci-fi book, female protagonist who pilots an ultralight later in the book. I believe the end-of-the-world process winnowed out a "homo superior", which explains the survivors. H. Superior had advantages of strength/speed (I think), and some IR vision, I believe.Protagonist skilled in martial arts. Not exactly a deep book, but I remember liking it as a kid. One word title, I believe.

By: rorycberger

rorycberger — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:15:57 -0800

I'll second the recommendation for Cat's Cradle.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:18:03 -0800

Try Notes from the End of the World. It's certainly the first novel I've seen written and published on a LiveJournal.

By: painquale

painquale — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:25:51 -0800

Martin Amis's London Fields, but be forewarned that the post-apocalyptic element is very subtle. Many people I speak with who have read the book don't even realize that it's post-apocalyptic!

By: floanna

floanna — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:30:39 -0800

Z for Zachariah - Robert C. O'Brien
Good book, or at least it was when I was a kid.

Second the above and I also read that at school age as part of the curriculum. It left an impression anyway.

By: Specklet

Specklet — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:38:37 -0800

A Gift Upon The Shore. I know, I know, the title is spectacularly awful, but it's pretty well written and a page turner.

(Yay for the Grant Morrison nod, Luther.)

By: cmonkey

cmonkey — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:34:27 -0800

Wow, these all look fantastic, thanks everyone! My hold queue at the library is bursting at the seams now.

This is such a great genre. Do you have any recs for us csmonkey?

My favourite last-man-on-earth movie is The Quiet Earth. The plot's a bit confusing, and the ending is downright bizarre, but the shots of the protagonist roaming around a deserted New Zealand are wonderful.

Although it's clearly dated, I couldn't stop reading Warday.

I read Alas, Babylon and Farnham's Freehold as a kid, and several times since then, and even though they're dated, they're both up there on my list of favourite books.

In The Country of Last Things was great.

An interesting twist on the theme is A Brief History of the Dead.

By: elwoodwiles

elwoodwiles — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:41:08 -0800

Sailor's song by Ken Kesey
Arc d' X by Steve Erickson

Both excellent, unconventional stories.

By: Roach

Roach — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:54:47 -0800

Good News by Edward Abbey is excellent.

By: advil

advil — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:59:30 -0800

this thread is amazing.

By: LairBob

LairBob — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 13:32:13 -0800

Gotta love "Riddley Walker".

By: EatenByAGrue

EatenByAGrue — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:16:16 -0800

seanyboy, you may be referring to Genocides by Thomas Disch.

By: deborah

deborah — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:32:09 -0800

Dammit, Kindall beat me to it. Although it's aimed at juveniles, I read Emergence in my 20s and absolutely loved it. I need to find a copy of it.

By: RikiTikiTavi

RikiTikiTavi — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 23:08:47 -0800

Ah, I didn't recognize Kindall's comment for what it was, and deborah reminded me. I was, in fact, thinking of Emergence (despite my misleading description), which was one of the many books I surrepitously read from my father's stash when I was a kid. Fun times.

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 02:04:31 -0800

Further research reveals that Not a Blade of Grass and The Death of Grass are the same book by John Christopher. The former title is the US version. Apparently a terrible movie was made of it under that title as well.

By: weston

weston — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:24:07 -0800

Greg Bear's The Forge of God and The Anvil of Stars