Apocalyptic reading?

June 27, 2008 11:43 AM

Bookfilter: I am currently entranced with books about the end (or near end) of the world/civilization. But lately I've been ending up with some real junk. Can anyone recommend good books on this topic? Examples inside.

The good books (IMO) I've read so far related to this are: "The Road," "Cell," "World War Z," "The Stand," "Phantom," and have been searching for a copy of a new compilation "Wastelands." In searching for other books on this topic, I have been perusing random Zombie books, which have been pretty terrible, though it did prompt me to get a library card. (Unfortunately, the librarian was of no help with this.) Sorting through Amazon's list and google has availed me much of the aforementioned garbage, but it could be I'm just terrible at searching.

Era or particular genre is unimportant, and any help with this would be greatly appreciated, as I will be having some extended free time on my hands soon.

posted by Debaser626 to media & arts (14 comments total)

WTF.... Seriously... that's some weird crap. Please delete this, and I'll use the other posts answers.... wow... I am seriously creeped out by this...
posted by Debaser626 at 11:46 AM on June 27

Did you see this question, posted shortly before yours, and covering much the same topic?
posted by Tomorrowful at 11:46 AM on June 27

I have not read this, but Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower is said to be quite good.

there is also a recent comic series - Y: The Last Man which I really like.

Moving beyond collapsing society right into fully collapsed and rebuilding, A Canticle for Leibowitz is, of course, classic.
posted by jb at 11:50 AM on June 27

Did you see this question, posted shortly before yours, and covering much the same topic?



Unfortunately, I did not... I was looking up the titles of the books that I've read on this topic, and didn't refresh before posting....
posted by Debaser626 at 11:51 AM on June 27

"Galapagos" by Vonnegut is my personal favorite end of civilization type story.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 11:58 AM on June 27

Huh. A post on looking for fiction about lost civilizations and two looking for post-apocalypse books. I wonder if this indicates some kind of broad cultural fear or shifting zeitgeist.

I'm going to go invest in canned food and ammunition.

Also, Cat's Cradle, more for the way it happens then the happenings after it. Yikes.
posted by The Man from Lardfork at 12:06 PM on June 27 [1 favorite]

Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland... And there's a set of books by Joe Haldeman starting with The Forever War, that certainly covers some of what you're after (well, the third one has that feel). I think I liked Forever War, but I'm not sure.

I'll second Y: The Last Man, worth reading before they ruin it with a crappy movie adaptation!
posted by opsin at 12:07 PM on June 27

Something that's apocalyptic rather than post - Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead, in which an Antarctic expedition sponsored by Coca-Cola goes terribly wrong, and humanity quietly comes to an end in the background.
posted by ormondsacker at 12:19 PM on June 27

The comic series Wasteland "takes place in a devastated, post-apocalyptic future America. Set one hundred years after a catastrophe known as the ‘Big Wet’, it's the story of Michael and Abi, two characters with unique and unnatural powers, as they search for the fabled land of A-Ree-Yass-I; which legend says is where the Big Wet began."

Read the first issue online.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:37 PM on June 27

alas, babylon
on the beach
earth abides (i didn't like this one though)
posted by misanthropicsarah at 12:40 PM on June 27

Canticle for Lebowitz
posted by cjorgensen at 12:52 PM on June 27

Since you mentioned "The Stand" you may also want to check out Stephen King's Dark Tower series.
posted by mehum at 1:04 PM on June 27

cjorgensen is correct in recommending Canticle for Lebowitz, but let me just say that it deserves a more fleshed-out recommendation.

A Canticle for Lebowitz is the finest science fiction novel I've ever read, and I've read and loved a lot of science fiction and fantasy. It is probably one of the most tremendously influential science fiction novels ever written; before Canticle, science fiction was the stuff of aliens and space-ships and space-men and creepy monsters. There was the full breadth of such gothic horror and fantasy as Lovecraft, but science fiction never reached up so high to tinker with political thought and societal morphology before. It's most direct and obvious heir is Frank Herbert's Dune series -- Frank must've read Canticle dozens of times -- but it's still unique in its poetic power, its breadth, its beauty and greatness.

It was the one and only complete novel ever written by Walter M. Miller. Miller was 16 when World War II started, and he studied engineering in college before serving as a tail gunner in the Army in Italy. The dust jacket bio of him two pages after the end of Canticle mentions pointedly that he helped destroy the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino during one of those bombing missions. I'm certain that he made sure that was mentioned; it seems to have been a traumatic event for him. In any case, it doesn't seem to be a real coincidence that, fifteen years later, he ended up finishing a long, beautiful novel about the three-thousand-year history of a monastary trying to cope with apocalyptic and catastrophic nuclear war.

Miller never wrote another novel, though he wrote short stories. It's tremendous in its multifaceted treatment of science, faith, war, politics, and the prospect of total annihilation. And it's my belief that it's the first, and so far the greatest, contribution to literature that science fiction made.
posted by koeselitz at 1:09 PM on June 27 [1 favorite]

What koeselitz said.

Thanks.
posted by cjorgensen at 1:26 PM on June 27