Fallible wrote:And the 'prequel' Oryx and Crake, if I haven't recommended it already.

+1

I really enjoyed this book.

I guess I'm a little late to this particular party, but I saw this from Salon.com's Laura Miller, and thought I should post a link here.

“After the Apocalypse”: The end of the world, without heroes

In nine visionary stories, a tough-minded writer imagines what the fall of civilization would really feel like

The post-apocalyptic adventure story, in the American imagination, at least, is a wish disguised as a fear. Feigning horror at the notion of civilization razed to its foundations, we can indulge in the fantasy of remaking it from the ground up. Finally, we’ll get it right because we Americans — despite not knowing about stuff like, say, Libya — abound in native common sense and gumption. And that’s all we really need, right?

“After the Apocalypse,” a new short story collection by Maureen McHugh, amounts to a merciless dismantling of this delusion. The first story, “The Naturalist,” is a zombie yarn (the only one in the book), set in the ruins of Cleveland, a fenced-off no-man’s land where convicts are impounded in the unspoken hope that the zombies will finish them off — or vice versa. Whittaker, the inevitable self-appointed leader of the cons, likes to make speeches about “how they were all more free here in the preserve than they’d ever been in a society that had no place for them, about how there used to be spaces for men with big appetites like the Wild West and Alaska — and how all that was gone now.”

Complete article is here: http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/after_the_apocalypse_the_end_of_the_world_without_heroes/singleton/

--GA

Sounds interesting...



I just read Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. 1950s story of a devastating nuclear attack on the US by the 'Soviets', and its aftermath. Also a snapshot of 50s attitudes to race and women. Enjoyable.

Oooh. I forgot about this thread. Some interesting additions people. I'll get to them once I've finished the Song of Ice and Fire series and the Mars trilogy.

I don't know if anyone's read "The Last Vampire" by T.M. Wright (not the one by Christopher Pike). It is a small book (around 275 pages) and a very quick read. But it's quite a weird book and haunted me days after reading. Definitely recommend it. http://www.amazon.com/Last-Vampire-T-M- ... nskepti-20.
I think Mr.Wright is one of the most underrated horror writers.

Disclaimer
1. "The Last Vampire" by T.M. Wright was my first Post-Apocalyptic fiction as well as my first surrealistic horror. Not having read/seen anything like this before (these kind of concepts are rare in India), it really amazed me. I can't say it will have the same impact on someone who is used to this kind of works.
2. I read this when I was young (around 22 years old) and the fact that I was staying alone in an unfamiliar place, first time in my life definetely compounded the impact.
Even then, very few books had such kind of impact on me, before or since.

Cool! I hadn't heard of that one.

Hunger Games triology for sure and perhaps the Old Man's War trilogy also count as earth is pretty dire in both.

All fast reads and the Scalzi of Old Man's War is very similar to Heinlein who is hero but Scalzi has a unique voice and vision of his own.
Black humour at times....Starship Trooper at times.
Much fun,

Hunger Games some interesting echoes. GF stayed up all night reading the first one. Unique vision and perhaps not too far off the mark for the US

•••

BTW Long Sun is truly worth the effort - it perhaps rings most truth as the future - even tho human - being very alien and the language shifting. Good imaginative reach.

MacIver wrote:

j.mills wrote:You don't think The Road measures up? Psheesh, some people are hard to please.

Oh, I thought it was a fantastic book. But it centred on the father and son's relationship, and their struggle for survival. What I want in apocalyptic fiction is to see society crumbling and maybe the struggle to start a new one.

Thanks for all the suggestions, they're all added to my Amazon wish list.

Don't know if it has been mentioned in the part of the thread I was too lazy (late night, long day) to read.

But if you are looking for society crumbling and new ones starting up I can recommend "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven.

Edit...
Oh... I see that Lucifer's Hammer have already been recommended.
Well can't been recommended too much. I've read it a few times, being a big fan of Niven, and I usually take a full day out of the calendar and start in the morning, because it is so hard to put down.

Well, going back to Mary Shelley's The Last Man... I have read it, and really would strongly advise against making the effort unless you're a serious Shelley nut. I'm not, and I did, and aside from the promising opening I'm afraid I found it absolutely turgid and about three times longer than it needed to be. There's a very good reason why she's known for the book about the guy with the bolts in his neck rather than The Last Man.

I've read a few detailing primitive societies long after some huge disaster - Brian Aldiss' Hothouse, van Vogt's The Book of Ptath, Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories - all great but possibly not quite what you're after. I believe Will Self's The Book of Dave is set in a post-apocalypse world but haven't read it and could be mistaken. David Louis Edelman's Jump 225 trilogy is set long after some massive collapse of society brought about by AIs and remains one of my favourite lengthy sagas of all time but er... again not sure that quite fits the bill.

Wool is excellent - not sayin' a damn thing about it - just get it. Cheap on Kindle too $5.99 for the entire set.

MacIver wrote:Any one as big a fan of this sub-genre as me?

I love the classics; I am Legend,Death of Grass and On The Beach.

But I've never found a modern book that quite lives up to them....does anyone have any good recommendations? I've read The Road and just started Flood.

I guess it makes sense that the best post-apocalyptic/apocalyptic fiction came from the height of the Cold-War.

Now this is my bag. How modern do you mean? I'm doing my PhD on the work of John Wyndham. As ar as I am concerned he is the greatest writer we produced in the Twentieth Century. I recommend you get everything he has written. You might also want to try Trinity's Child by William Prochnau. There is a superb film called By Dawn's Early Light that is adapted from the book if you're interested.

The Madman wrote:

Varangian wrote:
Hardly.

Hardly? You clearly haven't read the book, or seen the movie. The movie wasn't advertised to evangelical churches for no reason. What do you think the 'fire' is about? Why does he call his son the Word of God? Hardly?

One really ought to avoid claiming to know what a book is definitively about.

campermon wrote:

MacIver wrote:I love the original 70s version!

The remake they did a few years ago was shite however. But that's hardly surprising, the BBC haven't done good sci-fi for decades.

Other good 70s/80s BBC post-apocalyptic stuff;

Threads
Day of the Triffids (again, they did another shite remake in the 00s)

Aye!

The remakes were shockingly bad.

Haven't seen 'threads' for a while...might watch it later!

Really? I thought the remake of Triffids was very good. Could you be feeling a tad nostalgic? Plus, has nobody mentioned Nineteen Eighty Four for a book? Also try Panet of the Apes, The War of the Worlds.

For related film and TV, Blake's Seven is great, plus I mentioned By Dawn's Early Light earlier. I'd argue that Lost is post apocalyptic. Just be prepared for an absolute turkey of an ending if you haven't seen it. It's a deus ex machina and it stinks.

The one thing Wyndham did brilliantly with his stories is end them. That might sound odd, but think of how many TV shows of the genre there are that just ran out of steam. Survivors (both versions), Lost, Terra Nova, Outcasts etc etc etc. The list goes on. Post apocalyptic science fiction is a tremendously difficult narrative to write. The opening is easy, the shock and awe of the apocalypse, but sustaining the narrative and concluding it well are very, very difficult skills to master. Wyndham did it best in my view. The Walking Dead is the best show on TV now and even that has gotten pedestrian to the point of agony in season two. This show is, incidentally, Day of the Triffids updated. They don't even try to cover up Wyndham's influence. The opening is almost plagiarism it's that similar. Not that that is a bad thing.

If you'd like to see some good apocalyptic theatre keep your eyes peeled for a production of Sarah Kane's Blasted. The mini-apocalypse occurs halfway through and we see the narrative fall apart in tandem with the form and the story. Brilliant theatre.

SevenZarkSeven wrote:

MacIver wrote:Any one as big a fan of this sub-genre as me?

I love the classics; I am Legend,Death of Grass and On The Beach.

But I've never found a modern book that quite lives up to them....does anyone have any good recommendations? I've read The Road and just started Flood.

I guess it makes sense that the best post-apocalyptic/apocalyptic fiction came from the height of the Cold-War.

Now this is my bag. How modern do you mean? I'm doing my PhD on the work of John Wyndham. As ar as I am concerned he is the greatest writer we produced in the Twentieth Century. I recommend you get everything he has written. You might also want to try Trinity's Child by William Prochnau. There is a superb film called By Dawn's Early Light that is adapted from the book if you're interested.

To my shame I've never read any Wyndham. DOTT is on my list of to-reads but as I've seen the adaptations it's fairly low down I'm afraid. Trinity's Child is also on it.

It's true that people generally seem shit at writing endings. I'd say the majority of books I've read and shows I've seen have seriously anticlimactic endings. It must be pretty difficult. And with post-apocalyptic stuff, as you say, it's even more difficult. All the excitement and horror happens at the beginning, with bursts through the rest of the text, but unless you're going for a 'and then he woke up and found out it was all a dream' type ending, a book about a post-apocalyptic world could just stretch on and on, as the generations go about re-building civilisation. It's hard to create a climax in that kind of situation. Incidentally, wasn't the idea behind the graphic novel of The Walking Dead that it just carried on ad infinitum, chronicling the struggles of the protagonists in the new zombified world?

On John Wyndham, I read The Midwich Cuckoos, as I suppose most have.

MacIver wrote:

SevenZarkSeven wrote:

MacIver wrote:Any one as big a fan of this sub-genre as me?

I love the classics; I am Legend,Death of Grass and On The Beach.

But I've never found a modern book that quite lives up to them....does anyone have any good recommendations? I've read The Road and just started Flood.

I guess it makes sense that the best post-apocalyptic/apocalyptic fiction came from the height of the Cold-War.

Now this is my bag. How modern do you mean? I'm doing my PhD on the work of John Wyndham. As ar as I am concerned he is the greatest writer we produced in the Twentieth Century. I recommend you get everything he has written. You might also want to try Trinity's Child by William Prochnau. There is a superb film called By Dawn's Early Light that is adapted from the book if you're interested.

To my shame I've never read any Wyndham. DOTT is on my list of to-reads but as I've seen the adaptations it's fairly low down I'm afraid. Trinity's Child is also on it.

The Chrysalids is another post-apocalyptic one, well worth a read.

Fallible wrote:It's true that people generally seem shit at writing endings. I'd say the majority of books I've read and shows I've seen have seriously anticlimactic endings. It must be pretty difficult. And with post-apocalyptic stuff, as you say, it's even more difficult. All the excitement and horror happens at the beginning, with bursts through the rest of the text, but unless you're going for a 'and then he woke up and found out it was all a dream' type ending, a book about a post-apocalyptic world could just stretch on and on, as the generations go about re-building civilisation. It's hard to create a climax in that kind of situation. Incidentally, wasn't the idea behind the graphic novel of The Walking Dead that it just carried on ad infinitum, chronicling the struggles of the protagonists in the new zombified world?

On John Wyndham, I read The Midwich Cuckoos, as I suppose most have.

I've never read the graphic novels sadly. I do know that when I saw the opening episode I looked straight over to Lady SevenZarkSeven and asked if she knew what she was watching. She's no Wyndham fan and even she spotted the influence. It is unmistakable.

The best ones leave it open-ended, sometimes with a nice twist (Planet of the Apes, Chrsyalids).

Also, if you don't mind 19th Century then Erewhon is a good story.

SevenZarkSeven wrote:
I've never read the graphic novels sadly. I do know that when I saw the opening episode I looked straight over to Lady SevenZarkSeven and asked if she knew what she was watching. She's no Wyndham fan and even she spotted the influence. It is unmistakable.

28 Days Later used the same plot device. It's an ingenious way to drop the hero into a full blown disaster situation with no frame of reference, but it is starting to become a little cliched.

BlackBart wrote:

SevenZarkSeven wrote:
I've never read the graphic novels sadly. I do know that when I saw the opening episode I looked straight over to Lady SevenZarkSeven and asked if she knew what she was watching. She's no Wyndham fan and even she spotted the influence. It is unmistakable.

28 Days Later used the same plot device. It's an ingenious way to drop the hero into a full blown disaster situation with no frame of reference, but it is starting to become a little cliched.

It also creates a long term mystery that can be spun out whilst the short term plot, i.e. survival can engage the reader.