Post-Apocalyptic Fiction Vol. 1
Explore the best post-apocalyptic fiction books in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction Vol. 1. Discover gripping tales of survival, dystopian worlds, and epic adventures in this curated collection of must-read apocalyptic novels.
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Wastelands
by John Joseph Adams
With stories from George R.R. Martin (author of Game of Thrones), Gene Wolf, Carol Emshwiller, Stephen King, and more! "I can't help but give this collection the highest recommendation. I think this will be a cornerstone for most reader's shelves."—SFF World From the Book of Revelation to ''The Road Warrior'', from ''A Canticle for Leibowitz'' to ''The Road'', storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving eschatological tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. In doing so, these visionary authors have addressed one of the most challenging and enduring themes of imaginative fiction: the nature of life in the aftermath of total societal collapse. Gathering together the best postapocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction - including George R. R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King - Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon. Whether the end of the world comes through nuclear war, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm, these are tales of survivors, in some cases struggling to rebuild the society that was, in others, merely surviving, scrounging for food in depopulated ruins and defending themselves against monsters, mutants, and marauders. Wastelands delves into this bleak landscape, uncovering the raw human emotion and heart-pounding thrills at the genre's core.
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Twilight World
by Poul Anderson
Mutant births caused by the war's residual radiation convince the remaining normal humans that they must flee to another world in order to survive
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Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The first volume in the internationally acclaimed MaddAddam trilogy is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future—from the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey—with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake—through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.
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The Long Tomorrow
by Leigh Brackett
In the aftermath of a nuclear war, Americans have come to blame technology for the disaster. The population is scattered into small towns. Cities are forbidden by law, as is scientific research.
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The Sheep Look Up
by John Brunner
"In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The government is ineffectual, and corporate interests scramble to make a profit from water purifiers, gas masks, and organic foods. Environmentalist Austin Train is on the run. The Trainites, environmental activists and sometime terrorists, want him to lead their movement. The government wants him in jail, or preferably, executed. The media wants a circus. Everyone has a plan for Train, but Train has a plan of his own"--Publisher.
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Plague Year
by Jeff Carlson
When the nanotechnology designed to fight cancer evolves into a machine plague, killing nearly five billion people, a group of survivors, struggling to stay alive, places their faith in a top nanotech researcher who has discovered the plague's one weakness. Original.
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The Folk of the Fringe
by Orson Scott Card
Only a few nuclear weapons fell in America-the weapons that destroyed our nation were biological and, ultimately, cultural. But in the chaos, the famine, the plague, there exited a few pockets of order. The strongest of them was the state of Deseret, formed from the vestiges of Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. The climate has changed. The Great Salt Lake has filled up to prehistoric levels. But there, on the fringes, brave, hardworking pioneers are making the desert bloom again. A civilization cannot be reclaimed by powerful organizations, or even by great men alone. It must be renewed by individual men and women, one by one, working together to make a community, a nation, a new America.
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Empty World
by John Christopher
When a deadly virus kills off most of the world's population, a teenaged boy tries to survive in a seemingly empty England.
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The Pesthouse
by Jim Crace
"In The Pesthouse Jim Crace imagines an America of the future where a man and a woman trek across a devastated and dangerous landscape, finding strength in each other and an unexpected love." "Once the safest, most prosperous place on earth, the United States is now a lawless, scantly populated wasteland. The machines have stopped. The government has collapsed. Farmlands lie fallow and the soil is contaminated by toxins. Across the country, families have packed up their belongings to travel eastward toward the one hope left: passage on a ship to Europe." "Franklin Lopez and his brother, Jackson, are only days away from the ocean when Franklin, nearly crippled by an inflamed knee, is forced to stop. In the woods near his temporary refuge, Franklin comes upon an isolated stone building. Inside he finds Margaret, a woman with a deadly infection and confined to the Pesthouse to sweat out her fever. Tentatively, the two join forces and make their way through the ruins of old America. Confronted by bandits rounding up men for slavery, finding refuge in the Ark, a religious community that makes bizarre demands on those they shelter, Franklin and Margaret find their wariness of each other replaced by deep trust and an intimacy neither one has ever experienced before."--BOOK JACKET.
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Dr. Bloodmoney
by Philip K. Dick
Dr. Bloodmoney is a post-nuclear-holocaust masterpiece filled with a host of Dick's most memorable characters. Epic and alluring, this brilliant novel is a mesmerizing depiction of Dick's undying hope in humanity.
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Wolf and Iron
by Gordon R. Dickson
After the collapse of civilization, a former scientist searches for a refuge to keep the spark of science alive.
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The Genocides
by Thomas M. Disch
This spectacular novel established Thomas M. Disch as a major new force in science fiction. First published in 1965, it was immediately labeled a masterpiece reminiscent of the works of J.G. Ballard and H.G. Wells In this harrowing novel, the world's cities have been reduced to cinder and ash and alien plants have overtaken the earth. The plants, able to grow the size of maples in only a month and eventually reach six hundred feet, have commandeered the world's soil and are sucking even the Great Lakes dry. In northern Minnesota, Anderson, an aging farmer armed with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, desperately leads the reduced citizenry of a small town in a daily struggle for meager existence. Throw into this fray Jeremiah Orville, a marauding outsider bent on a bizarre and private revenge, and the fight to live becomes a daunting task.
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Vic and Blood
by Harlan Ellison
The acclaimed series of short stories around the adventures of Vic and his telepathic dog, Blood, by Harlan Ellison is brought together as one stunning graphic novel by Richard Corben, one of today's leading fantasy artists. This conjugation of talents forms a powerful saga of love, death, and the consequences of both in a devastated society.
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The Aftermath
by Samuel C. Florman
In 2010, a group of survivors, including those attending an engineering conference, make plans to rebuild society after a comet strike off the coast of California has all but wiped out mankind.
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Dark Universe
by Daniel F. Galouye
The survivors live deep underground, as far from the Original World as possible. It¿s true that some of the hot springs that sustain life are failing, and they are plagued by the huge and vicious soubats, and subject to sudden raids from other tribes. But they are safe from the Twin Devils, Strontium and Cobalt, and protected from the ultimate evil, Radiation. Then something strange and frightening starts to happen: terrible monsters, who bring with them a screaming silence, are seen and people are disappearing. One young man knows that to find out what¿s going on he must question the orthodoxies of his faith and defy the law. He must discover the nature of Darkness itself...
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Queen City Jazz
by Kathleen Ann Goonan
Queen City Jazz "A dizzying novel that takes full advantage of the creative potential of nanotech." --The New York Times In Verity's world, nanotech plagues decimated the population after an initial renaissance of utopian nanotech cities. Growing up on an isolated farm, she finds her happy life changing course when Blaze, the only young man in the community and Verity's best friend, is shot. With Blaze's body wrapped in a nanotech cocoon, Verity sets off on a quest to the Enlivened City of Cincinnati. It is a place of legend, where huge bio-engineered bees carry information through the streets and enormous nanotech flowers burst from the tops of strange buildings. It is the place where Blaze might be brought back from the brink of death. But Cincinnati is a city of dreams turned into nightmares, endlessly reliving the fantasies of its creator, a city that Verity must rule--or die.
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Mississippi Blues
by Kathleen Ann Goonan
The continuing adventures of Verity, a teenage country girl, as she travels through an America transformed by nanotechnology. This trip is in a boat on the Mississippi and the boat is attacked by pirates.
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Crescent City Rhapsody
by Kathleen A. Goonan
When an electromagnetic pulse from space triggers a total communications blackout on Earth, astronomer Zeb Aberly tracks the signal to an intelligent alien race, but the government will stop at nothing ensure his silence. Reprint.
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Light Music
by Kathleen A. Goonan
Goonan's Nanotech Quartet concludes as Jason Peabody, one of the few on Earth who remember when radio, television, and the Internet connected the world, makes a startling discovery and begins a journey to find the truth behind long-concealed mysteries.
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Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition
by Russell Hoban
This acclaimed story is set in an England that has suffered a nuclear holocaust. Society has regressed to an Iron Age, semi-literate state represented by the special language that the author created especially for this book.
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Ape and Essence
by Aldous Huxley
In the year 2108, a rediscovery expedition from New Zealand arrives in a post-nuclear Los Angeles and tries to make sense of what is left of the survivors. Huxley wrote this in 1948 as a response to the use of atomic weapons in WWII and the emerging Cold War.