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Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


elbow posted:

Not all of these are technically post-apocalyptic, as some are on a smaller scale, but off the top of my head these novels don't fall into the categories you mentioned:
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
The Flame Alphabet, by Ben Marcus
The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller
Sweet Tooth, by Jeff Lemire
Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

Galapagos by Vonnegut as well, although Cat's Cradle is a favourite of mine

ETA: more about aftermath iirc but its been a while since I read it

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Jul 7, 2014

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ClearAirTurbulence
Apr 20, 2010
The earth has music for those who listen.
Galapagos is a good one. I love the far future ending the narrator witnesses - after a couple of million years of humanity adapting to being confined to the Galapagos Islands, they have evolved to become unintelligent semi-aquatic creatures not unlike seals. The only thing that betrays their ancestry is that when one of them farts while they lay on the beach, all the others start laughing.

Rocksicles
Oct 19, 2012

by Nyc_Tattoo

ClearAirTurbulence posted:

Galapagos is a good one. I love the far future ending the narrator witnesses - after a couple of million years of humanity adapting to being confined to the Galapagos Islands, they have evolved to become unintelligent semi-aquatic creatures not unlike seals. The only thing that betrays their ancestry is that when one of them farts while they lay on the beach, all the others start laughing.

Wicked! That's gold.

ClearAirTurbulence
Apr 20, 2010
The earth has music for those who listen.
I took my kid shopping for books at a Barnes & Noble and saw the strangest thing. Apparently the children's book publishers have combined the popular trends of "dog/cat story with cute animal photo on cover" and "post-apocalyptic/dystopian future drama" so there is a whole section devoted to books about pets living in post-apocalyptic situations. She ended up with the first two novels in a series called "Survivors" about dogs learning to live on their own after all the "Longpaws" fled the city after an earthquake the dogs call "The Big Growl". Such a strange and specific genre.

savinhill
Mar 28, 2010
^^^^That subgenre could lead to some of the most depressing books if it ever hits a grimdark phase.

Anyway, I remember people earlier in the thread saying they wish there were more books that happened as the apocalypse was going down instead of entirely post-apocalypse and I recently read Will McIntosh's Soft Apocalypse, which is exactly that. It also has people banding together and helping eachother out, which is another thing I remember someone in here saying they'd like more of in these type of books.

savinhill fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Jul 26, 2014

ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


I'll second that, Soft Apocalypse was pretty good.

specklebang
Jun 7, 2013

Discount Philosopher and Cat Whisperer
I am at about the 80% mark of World Of Trouble, the final book of The Last Policeman trilogy. I liked book 1, not so much book 2 but this final book is so intense that I had a massive anxiety attack triggered by this final episode and ended up calling a crisis line and finally knocking myself out with a larger than ever before dose of alprazolam last night.

It is so heart wrenching and yet, even at this point, I cannot even begin to guess the outcome. So, recommended with a warning...I'll try to finish it tomorrow.

ClearAirTurbulence
Apr 20, 2010
The earth has music for those who listen.
Anyone ever read "Hiero's Journey" by Sterling E. Lanier? I read it as a teenager in the 1980s and it was kind of old them (I just checked and it was published in 1973), and it really stuck with me. I've never heard of it listed among the inspirations for Gamma World but it's world full of psychics and bizarre mutated animals really reminded me of it. The main character is a priest/assassin from Canada who rides a psychic moose, it's set 5000 years after the bombs drop, and though scientifically it's wildy unrealistic (and the author admits to this in the preface), it's incredibly imaginative and fun. There was a sequel written about 10 years later that I remember liking but not as much as the first one.

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Rocksicles
Oct 19, 2012

by Nyc_Tattoo

ClearAirTurbulence posted:

I took my kid shopping for books at a Barnes & Noble and saw the strangest thing. Apparently the children's book publishers have combined the popular trends of "dog/cat story with cute animal photo on cover" and "post-apocalyptic/dystopian future drama" so there is a whole section devoted to books about pets living in post-apocalyptic situations. She ended up with the first two novels in a series called "Survivors" about dogs learning to live on their own after all the "Longpaws" fled the city after an earthquake the dogs call "The Big Growl". Such a strange and specific genre.

This is worth a gander, i thought it was hilarious

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