One of his best IMHO.

I liked it when I read it many years ago.

And the characters are very interesting.

I try to re-read it about once a year and enjoy it every time.

M-O-O-N. What does that spell?

was a good 'un.

and it hasn't aged too well (or I've changed too much).

It's like Niven and Pournelle made everyone who didn't share their politics into cannibals (whose code is even scarier than their diet -- any hint of class social or racial prejudice is severely punished) or suddenly reacknowledge their place in the natural order. For example, the main character muses that "The only good thing about Hammerfall, women's lib was dead milliseconds after Hammerstrike." And there is more than a strong hint of distinct racial divides between the good guys and bad guys...

Then you have the Hippie Commune, whose attempts to live off the grid of course was more or less a big fat failure till the brave and masculine (almost libertarian) ranchers showed them how they were doing it wrong.

And the big battle to save the nuclear plant at the end was too obviously a metaphor rooted in the authors' opinions regarding 70's anti-nuke sentiments.

It's still on my bookshelf, but Sharknado is still on the DVR too and kind of for the same reasons....

It might be interesting to reread it and see what I pick up this time. Then again, I have too many books I haven't read yet...

I still like the premise, it's just dated and the clinkers are more jarring than they used to be.

I think Onyx and Crake by Margaret Atwood would qualify.

Thanks for the rec..it will encourage me to move it to the "next" column.

Really explores a pharmco/profit-driven hell



Also Alas, Babylon although it may already be mentioned below...

oRyx and crake. D'uh!

I knew what you meant

More good stuff here in DU SF Post apocalyptic fiction

to check out our SF group.
Had not even thought of it.....

It's part 2 of a loose series but works as a standalone. A fast, enjoyable read that would make a terrific film.

which went into detail about what would happen, title was One Second After.
Not the best writing in the world, which probably makes it even more accessible.

in his imagining:

1. Older cars with out electronics would still operate. ( yay old Beetles!)
Of course, then gas would be a problem sooner than later.
And local governments would probably commandeer the cars that did run.

2. Bullets became the medium of exchange.

3. People who needed heart meds, even blood pressure meds, and insulin, etc would die within 90 days when re-fills
became unavailable. Drugstores would be looted pretty quickly but after that, since our medicines are made overseas.......
And imagine millions of people in Prozac withdrawal.....


4. the country side would be swarming with human grasshoppers, and every bit of food would disappear pretty quickly.
Unless country towns prevented entry, and could maintain that.

Alas, Babylon

The Windup Girl

World War Z

Earth Abides

I read Alas Babylon over and over. Wonderful book as a whole, but I have an issue with them not being able to produce some electricity, at least enough to run a radio.

I think sometimes in more recent post-apocalyptic books, movies, etc., the people left get electricity and other stuff up and running.

In reality, I think that would be very hard to do. It would really take some strong leadership to get that done, as well as technical
knowledge.

very small research (could have been done at a library) and you could charge a car battery up fairly quickly. 12 volts could power a dome light, a radio, even a fridge. Wind and water could be used to run the alternator. With a little more research a steam engine could be modified to create electricity.
Complete plans for a lawn mower engine generator are available online today that would provide minimum power for a family.



But I still liked the book

you mean by 'post apocalypse'...)

Pre-apocalypse, but a great read.

First published in 1960, it's never been out of print.

Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the Southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the fictional Albertian Order of Leibowitz take up the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it..

An achingly beautiful, soul-crushingly sad book. When I finished it, I cried like a baby.

Then I started looking for a window to jump out of.

If it doesn't cause suicidal ideation, it definitely causes depression.

Worth reading, but still...

And it has come to mind a lot since fukishima.

Don't Panic

A towel, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.

it was a fanstastic introduction.
Now I have all of Adam's books, and understand why he and Neil Gaiman and Prachett and Stephen Fry were friends.

...very underrated SF writer. This is from the 50s, and reads it...but hey, so does *On the Road*. Still fun...if a bit grim...also--David Brin's *The Postman*, Heinlein's *Farnham's Freehold*, though it will infuriate you, Kornbluth's *Not This August*--about a Communist occupation of the US, handled very well...Algis Budrys' *Some Will Not Die*...all great books

...before the publishers made him change it. Maybe you can guess what he intended...

It's alternative history about a series of devastating
comet strikes across a wide swath of Earth.

They kinda fall into the whole apocalyptic type novels.

The Rift is semi-apocalyptic (nasty New Madrid earthquake cascading into several other eco-disasters).

Personally, I find a lot of fantasy to be apocalyptic. One of my favorites is Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, which revolves around an informational apocalypse in a world based closely on the early renaissance Italian States.

I also enjoyed Jeff Hirsch's The Eleventh Plague (it's newish and YA) and Sherri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country. Both are more post than cataclysmic, but both are well developed. Tepper writes strongly feminist work, and it can be triggering.

A buddy and I watched it once when it was 1st released on DVD. We had some beers and just ranked on it the whole time. It's become a tradition of sorts to rewatch it once or twice a year now. We live for when Tom Petty appears!

Post, in N California. Fewer than 15% of men survived the collapse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_Road_(novel)

My personal favorite. Very realistic portrayal of the aftermath of a plague that wipes out almost all of humanity. It's more than 60 years old, but it still packs a punch.

http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Abides-George-R-Stewart/dp/0345487133

having read it in his youth. (He started reply #39 to this thread, and came back to it after reading other stuff, while you posted!)

Our small library's catalog database said they had a copy, but the book was never actually there, so we finally got it from inter-library loan. It is quite haunting, and I think about it quite a bit.

Earth Abides is a 1949 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer George R. Stewart. It tells the story of the fall of civilization from deadly disease and its rebirth. The story was set in the United States in the 1940s, in Berkeley, California. Isherwood Williams emerges from isolation in the mountains to find almost everyone dead.

I read it fifty years ago, and read it again two years ago. I was amazed how much I remembered from the first read and how much I thought and reflected on the book over the years.

thanks!

All I got to say
I'm alive and feeling fine
Should you come my way
You can share my poison wine
Chorus:
No marigolds in the promised land
There's a hole in the ground
Where they used to grow
Any man left on the Rio Grande
Is the king of the world
As far as I know

I won't take your bread
I don't need your helping hand
I can't be no savage
I can't be no highwayman
Show me where you are
You and I will spend this day
Driving in my car
Through the ruins of Santa Fe

Chorus

I'm reading last year's papers
Although I don't know why
Assassins cons and rapers
Might as well die

If you come around
No more pain and no regrets
Watch the sun go brown
Smoking cobalt cigarettes
There's no need to hide
Taking things the easy way
If I stay inside
I might live til Saturday

Chorus

Songwriters: BECKER, WALTER CARL / FAGEN, DONALD JAY
King Of The World lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

FWIW, if there was a situation like in "The Stand" where the vast majority of the population died, I figure being a trucker has its advantages. I know where the food is! It's in the reefer trucks and at the cold storage warehouses and I can drive the tractor needed to move a shitload of those trailers, plus the fuel to run the reefers to my place!

But good luck finding a copy!

Rural France after nuclear apocalypse.

challenging words to a librarian...

Seems it was also a movie.....
Seems there are ways on the net to get both....

Hubby loaned it to someone and I haven't read it in years. It was one of my favorites.

If you can find a copy...

I read the book years ago and watched some of the movie last year. It stars Michel Serrault who played Albert the drag queen in La Cage Aux Folles but is a little cheaply made. Been too long since I read the book to tell how faithful it was.

and its sequel, The Witch of Hebron. This series is lyrical and somewhat gentle, more realistic than sci-fi. Apparently there will also be a third installment entitled A History of the Future coming out later this year.

From Amazon:

In World Made by Hand, an astonishing work of speculative fiction, Kunstler brings to life what America might be, a few decades hence, after these catastrophes converge*. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is nothing like they thought it would be. Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally at great expense of time and energy, and the outside world is largely unknown. There may be a president, and he may be in Minneapolis now, but people aren’t sure. Their challenges play out in a dazzling, fully realized world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers, no longer polluted, and replenished with fish.

*edit to add: the terminal decline of oil production, combined with climate change.

Also I highly recommend Into The Forest by Jean Hegland:

The tale is set in the near future: electricity has failed, mail delivery has stopped and looting and violence have destroyed civil order. In Northern California, 32 miles from the closest town, two orphaned teenage sisters ration a dwindling supply of tea bags and infested cornmeal. They remember their mother's warnings about the nearby forest, but as the crisis deepens, bears and wild pigs start to seem less dangerous than humans.

I am somewhat addicted to post-apocalyptic imaginings. So many good suggestions here... heading over to my library website to check the unfamiliary ones out.Thanks for the OP, dixiegrrrrl!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Wylie


When Worlds Collide (1933) (with Edwin Balmer) – Earth is destroyed in a collision with the rogue planet Bronson Alpha, with about a year of warning enabling a small group of survivors to build a spacecraft and escape to the rogue planet's moon, Bronson Beta. Filmed, with major changes to the story, as When Worlds Collide (1951).

After Worlds Collide (1934) (with Edwin Balmer) – Continues the story of When Worlds Collide, with both exploration of Bronson Beta and conflict with other groups of survivors.

The Disappearance (1951) – An unexplained cosmic "blink" splits humanity along gender lines into two divergent timelines: from the men's perspective, all the women disappear and from the women's, all men vanish. The novel explores issues of gender role and sexual identity. It depicts an empowered condition for liberated women and a dystopia of an all male world. Wylie's setting allows him to investigate the role of homosexuality in situations where no gender alternative exists.

Triumph (1963) – Nuclear war story involving a worst-case USA/USSR "spasm war" where both sides empty their arsenals into each other with extensive use of "dirty" bombs to maximize casualties, resulting in the main characters (in a very deep bomb shelter) being the only survivors in the entire Northern Hemisphere. An excerpt from this novel (or perhaps the whole thing) was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post magazine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Bear

Greg Bear's Forge of God duo

The Forge of God (1987) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forge_of_God

Anvil of Stars (1992) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_of_Stars