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World Made by Hand and its sequel The Witch of Hebron are pretty good, albeit more slow paced then others of the genre. While we're on the subject, I really do enjoy post-apocalyptic fiction. However, I've been wondering if there are any more "optimistic" post-apocalyptic fiction. By optimistic I mean something that focuses on the re-structuring or rebuilding of society, as opposed to something like: The Road, or World Made by Hand. While World Made by Hand does come close to this, I find the rampant harping nostalgia for the pre-apocalypse world by the characters irritating. I guess I'm looking for something similar to Metro 2033 or something similar to Fallout's "begin again" theme.
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Mar 16, 2013 12:04
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I read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler in a course in college. It was more of a gender lit class so we focused on things other than the post apocalyptic setting, but at least I can say the novel worked well in an academic setting.
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Mar 17, 2013 03:53
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For the longer view, you could look at First and Last Men by Olaf Stapleton. It was published in the 30s and covers the entire lifespan of humanity, there are many apocolypses and revivals. If you're looking for movies, look at Threads which was made by the BBC. Truly horrifying.
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Mar 17, 2013 20:19
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Zola posted:You're missing Kim Stanley Robinson's The Three Californias Trilogy, consisting of The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast and Pacific's Edge. I picked up The Wild Shore from this thread and I'm almost done. It's...alright. I can't see myself continuing to the other two books unless this one really picks up in the last 75 pages. It's a very slowly-paced book and frankly the story is not all that interesting.
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Jun 15, 2013 15:39
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Argali posted:It's a very slowly-paced book and frankly the story is not all that interesting. That would be because Kim Stanley Robinson wrote it.
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Jun 15, 2013 21:47
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for ZApoc books, The Remaining D.J Molles. Three books so far, fourth in 2 weeks and A New World John O`Brien. Seven books in the series. More to come Both are mad Mil/tac type books series, very well written from a action point of view. Good lead characters, and have their own take on Zombies that is refreshing. Highly recommended
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Jun 16, 2013 13:30
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Alvie posted:I just want to second Riddley Walker. Riddley Walker needs more love. The central part of Cloud Atlas was a tribute to Hoban's book, which is interesting, and anyone familiar with David Mitchell should take one thing or another from it. Riddley Walker is a lot better, though. Most of all I love reconstructing the pieces of the broken language, which include myths, poetry, and nursery rhymes, and trying to figure out what the world was like before the 1 big 1. It's exhausting, but incredibly rewarding once you get used to the dialect. Russell Hoban posted:Pas the sarvering gallack seas and flaming nebyul eye
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Jun 17, 2013 19:07
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Z for Zachariah was mentioned earlier in the thread, and I've just started reading it again. I'm not far enough in to comment, and the last time I read it was for high school required reading, but I came across something recently that said that regarding the conflict between the two characters, while John was certainly a bit of an emotionless robot and somewhat controlling, a lot of what happened was because of Ann's overreaction to his self-defence killing of Edward, and her paranoia. She's an unreliable narrator. Thoughts?
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Jun 18, 2013 03:42
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Flatscan posted:That would be because Kim Stanley Robinson wrote it. Yeah, that will be the last time I read something by him, I think. I know he's well regarded but The Wild Shore was just awful. I trudged through it and regret wasting my time with it.
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Jun 22, 2013 15:20
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I enjoyed the Mars trilogy. Was that an exception, or could I really enjoy watching paint dry?
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Jun 22, 2013 15:59
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I felt like the Mars trilogy largely centered on a bunch of people I didn't care about with romantic entanglements etc I also didn't care about, against a really awesome backdrop of important events that I would have liked the story to focus more on. I felt very empathetic towards Nadia in the first book, where she basically thought most of the interpersonal dynamics stuff was boring and bad and wanted to focus more on the actual interesting work they were doing. That said, I gave up partway through Green Mars, so if it dramatically improved in the second ~half of that book, or in Blue Mars, I don't actually know about it. I felt overall that the pacing of the books was, as a whole, quite slow. My favorite KSR book remains the Years of Rice and Salt. It had a lot of flaws and wasn't perfect by any means, but it's still my favorite of KSR's books.
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Jun 22, 2013 18:38
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So what are some recommendations for some apocalypse stories that take place just before and during the collapse of society? Maybe not directly related but are there any Cold War gone hot stories in recent years I know it's probably impossible to find anything lacking the insane jingoism that such a story would be saddled with.
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Jun 23, 2013 01:57
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KomradeX posted:So what are some recommendations for some apocalypse stories that take place just before and during the collapse of society? Maybe not directly related but are there any Cold War gone hot stories in recent years I know it's probably impossible to find anything lacking the insane jingoism that such a story would be saddled with. Probably World War Z or The American Book of the Dead (this one is free on kindle!).
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Jun 23, 2013 04:27
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SBJ posted:Probably World War Z or The American Book of the Dead (this one is free on kindle!). Thanks, I've been thinking of excavating World War Z (its buried so deep in my library that thats the only word that really fits what I'm going to have to do to get at it) out of my library to give it a read with the movie coming out. I remember loving it back when I first read it in 2005, but well that was a long time ago now. Like I didn't think otaku becoming an awesome zombie killing samurai was bad, a bit ridiculous yes, but enjoyable, at least back when I was 17. Well free is always good I'll have to download it on my kindle app.
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Jun 23, 2013 05:33
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Just finished Z for Zachariah, and how anyone could think the narrator is unreliable to the point of bringing what happened on herself is truly  .
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Jun 23, 2013 16:50
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Walh Hara posted:
Wool is good. Second shift kind of went off the rails IMHO. If you are not shying away from zombies (I am legend) I'd stick The Remaining on the list.
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Jun 24, 2013 01:30
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Fog Tripper posted:I'd stick The Remaining on the list. Seconded. Also Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse series by Shawn Chesser, 5 books as of this week. Starts off on the 0 day or the day prior.
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Jun 25, 2013 09:18
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Seeing as this thread has devolved from answering the original request to suggesting our favorite post-apocalyptic stories, I'd like to recommend something I like that I haven't seen here: There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson. It's about the life of a guy who was born with the ability to jump through time, and about others like him, and it's extremely fun - it reads like a boy's adventure novel. Best of all, it somehow manages to not be ludicrously corny despite involving gallantry and time-nazis. I'd consider it post-apocalyptic because the book is very concerned with the rebirth of civilization during the thousand years after the Nuclear War that Killed Everybody in 1975 (lol). It reminds me of Canticle for Leibowitz a bit, with the sympathetic characters set against the backdrop of a millennium of cultural change; biggest difference is that There Will Be Time is very creative with its future societies - the main inheritors of power are a noncentralized state of Pacific Islanders. This is a great post-apocalyptic read if you can please forgive the title.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:21
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Sionak posted:Ray Bradbury has a short and sweet story called, "And Soft Rains will Fall." http://www.dennissylvesterhurd.com/blog/softrain.htm There is an animated version, but I couldn't find it with a quick youtube search. This one, presumably: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LNHYz89sNc
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Jul 7, 2013 00:15
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OntologicalWarfare posted:It reminds me of Canticle for Leibowitz a bit, with the sympathetic characters set against the backdrop of a millennium of cultural change; biggest difference is that There Will Be Time is very creative with its future societies Anderson used that general future history, or versions of it, in several different stories (not all involving time travel). For example Orion Shall Rise which I recall was a pretty nifty read back in the 80s.
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Jul 7, 2013 06:15
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I enjoyed Day by Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne. It was a quick fun read about the early days of a zombie apocalypse. The sequel was pretty good as well. I haven't gotten around to the third book in the series, if anyone knows if that was any good please let me know.
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Jul 15, 2013 21:35
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Project1 posted:Just finished Z for Zachariah, and how anyone could think the narrator is unreliable to the point of bringing what happened on herself is truly
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Jul 16, 2013 11:26
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"The Brief History of the Dead" by Kevin Brockmeier is an excellent novel. The first chapter stands well on its own, and I think was an award-winning short story. Basically, after you die, you go to The City, which can grow or shrink to fit as many dead people as necessary. There you live your life pretty much just as you did when you were alive. But then a virus starts killing off everyone and The City's undergoes drastic changes. I don't want to give away too much, as the nature of The City is one of the book's central mystery's. There's also a parallel plot that takes place in Antarctica, where a small group of researchers piece together what's happening back in civilization. Edit: Here's the stellar first chapter, it was published in The New Yorker, for anyone who's interested. PostNouveau fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 08:23
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KomradeX posted:So what are some recommendations for some apocalypse stories that take place just before and during the collapse of society? Maybe not directly related but are there any Cold War gone hot stories in recent years I know it's probably impossible to find anything lacking the insane jingoism that such a story would be saddled with. Dies the Fire is pretty much entirely set during and right after the collapse of society. After a universe altering event combustion doesn't really work anymore, and so melee weapon reigns supreme again. The medieval life style makes a resurgence. It takes place mostly in the Willamette valley and Portland, OR. Pretty excellent book about the collapse. The later books are much further ahead time wise. Good read though.
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Aug 26, 2013 03:50
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KomradeX posted:So what are some recommendations for some apocalypse stories that take place just before and during the collapse of society? Maybe not directly related but are there any Cold War gone hot stories in recent years I know it's probably impossible to find anything lacking the insane jingoism that such a story would be saddled with. Since it got bumped anyway I'll recommend Things We Didn't See Coming which fits this premise quite well. It's not a novel, but rather a series of interconnected short stories. I enjoyed it a lot and gave it to my dad, who normally doesn't care for science fiction.
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Aug 26, 2013 17:39
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It sounds very interesting I'll have to pick it up.
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Oct 5, 2013 09:13
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I have enjoyed many post-apoc novels and stories, but one of the one which stands out as very different is a 1960s book titled The Wall by Marlene Haushofer. Its premise is that an invisible but impenetrable wall appears overnight and traps a lone middle-aged woman in the Austrian Alps. Everything on the other side of the wall seems to have died. I enjoyed it for its loneliness, and the slow psychological development through the novel. The protagonist re-evaluates some of her values/priorities and has to struggle every day to achieve what we think of as basic things- how to feed herself, etc. It also reads as distinctly feminine, not in the sense that the character's motivations are feminine things but because her psychology is that of a woman in a modern (1960s) society, which has suddenly been removed from her. It's also clearly a woman author's voice and I liked that. Some of my friends have found the book boring or frustrating but I quite liked how, if the end of the world is a very personal and lonely thing, it becomes very internal in many respects and your world does start to revolve around things like how the beans are growing. If there are a few living things which rely on you (like a cat), to what length will you go to be responsible for them? Things like that.
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Oct 9, 2013 21:41
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Chillmatic posted:Are there any good post-apocalyptic novels that don't involve: Gordon R. Dickson's Wolf and Iron is a good post-apoc book centered on a financial collapse. He wrote in in 1990 IIRC, and it used to be one of my yearly re-reads until I lost my copy while travelling.
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Nov 20, 2013 12:22
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I just finished SOFT APOCALYPSE. It was a pretty good book about the end of the world as brought on by slow economic collapse. The protagonist is a bit of a douche and a large part of the book is about him trying to get with girls, but the writing is solid. On the other hand, ONE SECOND AFTER is a piece of poo poo with some laughable writing.
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Nov 22, 2013 19:15
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I've started to notice what looks like a micro-genre developing of apocalypse noir - hardboiled-ish mysteries set in an ongoing apocalpyse. Charlie Huston's Sleepless fits in here, and so does Ben Winters' "Last Policeman" series. I've really, really enjoyed both of those - the noir aesthetic works surprisingly well when it's overlaid on a slow social collapse. I've been looking for other examples of this kind of thing, but I haven't come across any yet.
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Nov 23, 2013 00:58
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There are some good short stories too. Arthur C Clark has a few, some only a handful of pages long. There are some good short stories in Harlan Ellison's 'Dangerous Visions' collection that fit the bill to varying degrees, although most stories in that are definitely of their time. My partner is an apocalyptic fiction nut (although she wasn't really aware of the whole Mad Max/Judge Dredd future barbarian thing) and wrote her dissertation on it. I'll talk to her and edit in her thoughts later, but the likes of JG Ballard's 'The Drowned World' features heavily. Even something like 'High Rise' depicts a microcosm of an apocalypse and shows how thin the membrane between order and chaos is, a theme that's apparent through almost everything by Ballard that I've read including 'Empire of the Sun'. In a similar vain, Jose Saramago's 'Blindness' deals with similar concerns and illustrates that we're just one bad day away from being animals. The prose is magnificent too. Forgive me if this one has been posted, but I didn't see George R Stewart's 'The Earth Abides' posted. I couldn't finish it as the hero was a bit of a 'Brick Manjaw' type, but worth considering. Edit: Just noticed it posted in the list on the last page, but still worth expanding on a little. i am a bee fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Nov 23, 2013 |
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Nov 23, 2013 14:19
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i am a bee posted:
Seriously? The story is about a guy that completely fails to rebuild society after the apocalypse. 'Brick Manjaw' type is the last thing I would use to describe him.
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Nov 23, 2013 14:39
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Alhazred posted:Seriously? The story is about a guy that completely fails to rebuild society after the apocalypse. 'Brick Manjaw' type is the last thing I would use to describe him. Hmm, that's what I get for not finishing it! I didn't make it more than a little way in, but I'll add it to the pile for another attempt.
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Nov 23, 2013 14:47
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Anything that's kinda like Last of Us?
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Nov 23, 2013 15:05
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i am a bee posted:Hmm, that's what I get for not finishing it! I didn't make it more than a little way in, but I'll add it to the pile for another attempt. ravenkult posted:Anything that's kinda like Last of Us?
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Nov 24, 2013 15:07
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Mojo Threepwood posted:Also, if you have any ideas for in class videos or short excerpts, that would also be appreciated. I am thinking of recommending mentioning the Fallout universe, and maybe clips from the movie "The Day After." La Jetée is in interesting, short post apocalyptic film with the benefit that most of the students probably won't have seen it.
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Dec 27, 2013 15:37
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When I was younger I enjoyed Children of Morrow by Helen Mary Hoover.
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Dec 28, 2013 07:46
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Paddyo posted:I read a pretty good one back in the day called "The Last Ship". It was about a US Navy destroyer participating in a nuclear strike and dealing with the aftermath. As you can imagine it had a tone very similar to "On the Beach", but that's not a bad thing. This might be the worst book I've ever read. I made it a little over halfway through, and it was just terrible. I dont stop reading books, but I had to stop this one.
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Dec 30, 2013 21:10
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Rocksicles posted:for ZApoc books, I hate bumping this thread again, but I just read The Remaining by Molles and it was very good. It isnt a long book, but it's a normal Kindle book which has maybe 50 pages or so. I am halfway done A New World and it is also very good, but maybe 50 pages too. A New World isnt nearly as well written as The Remaining, the dialogue is laughable, and explaining every 3 pages his new 'plan' which is usually: cover the doors, I'll go do something dumb. That gets annoying, and all the aircraft stuff explained in detail is pretty dumb, but whatever. Worth $3. I hadnt read any of these military type disaster things before, always some kind of apocalypse and a normal person trying to survive. These are a great change of pace. Spermy Smurf fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Dec 31, 2013 |
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Dec 31, 2013 19:15
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A Canticle for Lebowitz is great, from what I've heard. It deals with religion and rebirth after a major nuclear war devastated Earth, but this takes place thousands of years after that. It also touches upon the loss of technology.
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Jan 1, 2014 20:53
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