"What are the Must Read Post Apocalypse Books?" Topic

Despite being a big fan of post apocalypse gaming, I've read very few books with PA settings. What are the must read post-apoc books?

Footfall
Lucifer's Hammer

Hiero's Journey
A Canticle for Liebowitz

A Boy and His Dog, Harlan Ellison (appears in several short story collections)

The Stand, Stephen King

Alas Babylon for me as well

There is, if you consider then PA, the Emberverse series

My all time favourite, though, is Miller's A Canticle for Lebowitz

The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury( a Little stretch, but the ending still gives me shivers)

Damnation Alley Roger Zelazany

I Am Legend Richard Matheson

The World Next Door, cant remember the author – not combat oriented, but interesting twist

The genre covers a lot of ground, and the must-reads are all over the map in terms of type of PA, what else they are doing with the setting, and why the book is a must-read.

You get the skirmish game fodder like Damnation Alley and My Name is Legend, the RPG sourcing like the Pelbar Cycle, Hiero, Horseclans, or Daybreak 2250 AD, and the literary explorations of The Postman, A Canticle for Liebowitz, or the Memoirs of Alcheringia.

I'm glad to have read all of those, but for different reasons.

I'm less certain that Tank Girl, the Wraethu trilogy, or either of the "physics change" PAs I've read (Saberhagen's Empire of the East being one of them) were as useful.

Patriots by Rawles. Kind of a manual on post apocalyptic survival disguised as a novel. Interesting read.

Jake

Earth Abides

Starman's Son

The Last Ship: A U.S. warship that launches its Tomahawks finds itself as the last combat vessel possibly on the planet with most of the planet destroyed.

The Road(warning: you may have severe depression after reading this!)

Swan Song

The Road was a good PA book, yes. The movie based on it was pretty good, as well.

WHile they were rather focused, Demon-4 and Fire Lance, both by David Mace, were most certainly PA – US/Soviet nuclear war, specifically. Demon-4 (the better of the two) was about a cyborg sub being used in an attempt to 'talk down' an AI undersea fort in the Antarctic, and the sub 'waking up'. Fire Lance was about one of the last major fleet surface assets being tasked to go up under the Northern Hemisphere cloud cover and launch one last strike. It was a bit of psychological thriller mixed in with thoughts on near-future surface nuclear warfighting and ship design for such.

It's not a total apocalypse, but World War Z is a must.

Demon-4 and Fire Lance, both by David Mace

Seconded. Excellent reads, and very grim.

For something much sillier, how about Nick Pollota's 24-Hour War and American Knights?

link

Friendless Quest Gamma World books, what's not to love?

Best

Earth Abides
Canticle of Leibowitz
Earth Abides
Alas, Babylon
Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse (my opinion anyway)

Also good

Eternity Road
The Road
This is the Way the World Ends
The Postman

Decent

Afterblight Chronicles
Hiero's Journey
The Oblivion Society

That's what I've read within the last year. Really getting into PA myself. Note I have not included any zombie books in this list as I consider the genres similar, but different. My take anyway.

Joey

In no particular order of books I've read:

Alas Babylon (my personal favorite atm)
World War Z
The Road (heed the depression warning)
I am Legend
The Stand
Malevil,( a little known PA book from the early 70's.)

Earth Abides I thought this is not a must read. Or at least the end of the "must read list"

The Last Centurion is not on the must read either, but I did enjoy it. Warning very right leaning(just an observation, not an endorsement or condemnation)

Cheers, Xin

The Postman was a much MUCH better book than the movie. Ironic thing was, reading the first chapters, I could easily imagine Kevin Costner playing the lead. Somehow, Hollywood got hold of the story and tried to fix it.

Earth Abides
A Canticle for Leibowitz
I am Legend
Lucifer's Hammer (Even though that Jerry Pournelle co-wrote it…)

The Year of the Cloud
No Blade of Grass (Highly recommended)
The Long Winter.

I enjoyed the Battle Circle series by Piers Anthony (Sos the Rope, Var the stick, etc…)

Philip K. Dick. He wrote a lot more than "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (the basis for the movie Blade Runner). "The Best of Philip K. Dick" (1977) is a collection of short stories that inspired numerous scenarios in both Traveller and D&D. Both 'imminent apocalypse' and 'post apocalypse' story lines can be found in there.

There was a series of books in the late 80s called CAD. It had powered armor suits. The Russians nuked and attacked the US. THe Air Force had powered armor suits called CADs. Think I read the first 4 or 5.

Wyndham's "The Day of the Triffids" and "The Kraken Wakes" are good examples of the genre from the late 50's or so.

My favourite would be "A canticle for Liebowitz", and it's nice to see it has already got a lot of mentions.

I enjoyed the Amtrak Wars series, although I don't think it's a "must-read".

For a different take on "post-apocalyptic", try Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds. The titular setting was, until recently, a "crystal spires and togas" high-SF world, with extensive nanotechnology and cybernetics. Then came the Melding Plauge, where it all went haywire.

Most of the suggestions so far are good, but, in my very Humble Opinion, the all-out by far the best, knock-‘em-down and drag them out winner is ‘Riddley Walker'.

It's a bloody hard book to read until you ‘get' Riddley-speak, but it's well worth the effort.

May I also give some honourable mentions to John Christopher's two Wyndhamesque Post-apocs – ‘The Death of Grass' and ‘The World in Winter'. Both of them are like John Wyndham without the cuddly safeness of that author.

One Second After – Details the after effects of a massive EMP attack on the US, as seen from the POV of a college professor in a small town in North Carolina. Very sobering book, as it is chocked full of hard science, and is a a very real possiblity.

Can't believe that no one has mentioned the "Survivalist" series by Jerry Ahern, yes it's now out of date and of very little literary value but it you want a damn good rip-roaring adventure in the mould of Sharpe/James Bond meets biker gangs/russian/nazi's then I highly recomend them.

plus they are always popping up on E-bay/Chariyt shops (only paid 20p esch for most of mine).

Cheers Roger.

Some Will Not Die by Algis Budrys. IIRC (and it was 20+years since I read it) part was set in a New York apartment block that gets organized and carves out an empire and part was about the crew of a nuclear powered APC.

Empty World – Read it it school, book about a plague that kills off all the adults and leave only a few kids left .

God how many survivalist books were there? I think I gave up after 7.
I still enjoy the Dark Future novels.

Reading through this thread, I realize that I've read *almost everything* mentioned so far, including the Survivalist series. I stopped at 16; by then, the series had taken a *serious* sci-fi turn for the weird.

I've been a glutton for PA fiction since I first encountered it in the '60s. There are a few books listed that slipped under my radar, though, so I'll definitely be checking them out.

For me, Fire Lance was good, but just as depressingly bleak as The Road.

Others that I haven't seen mentioned yet:

The Doomsday Warrior series (19 books), by Ryder Stacy.
The Outrider series (5 books), by Richard Harding.
Rankin: Enemy of the State, by John Osier.

how many survivalist books were there?

Wikipedia claims 27 numbered and two written out of sequence that drop in between numbered books and are thus not numbered.

Wyndham's best post-apocalypse work is "The Chrysalids." ("Rebirth" in the US.)
Both "Triffids" and "Kraken" are really apocalypse-in-process.
"Canticle for Liebowitz" and "Earth Abides" are must reads.

Wow! This is awesome. Many, many thanks to everybody.

S.M. Stirling's "The Peshwar Lancers" is arguably post apocalypse.

The book is set IIRC late 20th/very early 21st century after a series of cometary impacts devestate Europe and North America.

I recommend the "Vampire Earth" series. It has a high fantasy value (aliens come-cause civilization to collapse and then takes over) It has some of the books that have a very "post-apoc military feel."

I also liked
Down to the Sunless Sea (Nuclear war breaks out while a British Airways plane is going cross Atlantic and after a stop off the group tries to make it's way to the last base in Antarctica.)
No Blade of Grass
Final Blackout (one of the few books I could read over and over)
Lucifer's Hammer

"Dark Future – Comeback Tour", by Jack Yeovil, thank you very much.

'Jack Yeovil' needs to get his bloody hair cut.

Pat

Going to go for some calssics that still stand up -

The Long Loud Silence by Wilson Tucker ( A limited atomic strike leaves half the US in ruins, the other half isolates survivors in order to rebuild.)

The Chrsalyids by John Christopher ( Though I cannot believe the last bastion of technology would be Wellington, NZ :)

The Company of Glory by Edgar Pangborn ( The book during the Final War that creates the Mediaval-style world in whioh "Davy" and most of his fiction is set in )

In The Wet by Nevil Shute ( Part of the book involves a tale set in a greenhosue but wetter future, as Britain collapse under European influence into an anarchic state and the Royal Family are exiled to a flooded Australia )

A Scent Of New-Mown Hay by John Blackburn ( Not quite PA, it features the spread of an ingeniously-thought-out pathogen with zombie-like effects and how it's spread threatens the population. )

Dr. Bloodmoney, Or How We All Got Along After The Bomb by P K Dick ( A conglomeration of many Dick short story ideas about the mentality and operations of the survivors of a nuclear war, it still holds up 45 years later, and yes, I'm found of anything written in my birth year :) )

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
(she actually wrote a lot of post apoc stories with all kinds of twists and causes)

The Road by Cormac McCarthy(very depressing and scary to read, but the very very very end is actually quite inspiring and pretty beautiful for a Cormac McCarthy book)

Alas Babylon ( all around excellent read, which was trying to dispel the myth of the 1950s of America surviving a nuclear war.)

Postman (Book is interesting and good, but odd, movie is a completely different story which is good and bad)

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams. A whole bunch of short stories that are some of the best post apoc short stories I have ever read. the best being "When Sysadmins ruled the Earth" by Cory Doctorow

Lucifer's Hammer by Niven (personal favorite from high school, and it takes place in my home town!)

If you want campy cheesy (actually quite awful) gaming idea fodder try the Deathland series, I warn you though they are ridiculous, pretty badly thought out, somewhat insulting, and have the strangest fascination with ridiculous gruesome deaths, sodomy and rape,hideous mutations, and firearms of all kinds.

>>If you want campy cheesy (actually quite awful) gaming idea fodder try the Deathland series, I warn you though they are ridiculous, pretty badly thought out, somewhat insulting, and have the strangest fascination with ridiculous gruesome deaths, sodomy and rape,hideous mutations, and firearms of all kinds.<<

Yep. Wild stuff, but full of possibilities for scenarios.

There was also the "Warlord" series of books about California being cut off from the United States after a catastrophe. The state descends into chaos and the hero, Vietnam vet, ex-Special Forces soldier turned history teacher Eric Ravensmith, fights for survival. It was published back in the early 1980's and afaik was never reprinted. There are 6 books in the series which ended abruptly.

Just thought of another that fits the bill. Spider Robinson's "Telempath".

Wovermonkey posted a comment on a series of books that I've been looking for I think. The series where Russian forces in powered armored suits attacked the US with nukes and the US had it's own powered armored suits. Does anyone know the authors name and the book title because I can't find it under the name listed in the post on the internet. Thanks for any help.

@MrFacts: This one sound right? link

Interested in the russian perspective, anybody recommend "roadside picnic" and "metro 2033"?

the doomsday warrior books.

If you want a zombie PA then try Stephen King's 'Cell'which has the interesting twist of mind linked 'flocks' walking in daylight, forcing the unchanged humans to live their lives by torchlight at night.
Or for a gentler take on things, try the so far unmentioned John Christopher's 'Wrinkle in the skin'
Of course, there is always Terry Nation's 'Survivors'
You could try 'Battlefield Earth'. Just don't bother with the terrible film of the same name…