I'm looking for good reads in the apocolyptic genre

[Theleb K]

I've read 'a canticle for Leibowitz' and it is good... now, I've just got to remember what it was about...

It is split into two or three parts spanning huge tracts of time but united by a fragment of a holy relic. If more comes back to me I'll post again, but I definitley enjoyed it.

 

[Musky]

Realizing i havent read the subgenre for a long time now i decided to chance on these books


Earth abides - George R Stewart
Year Zero - Jeff Long
A canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr


For the thread maker these book i found info about and thought sounded interesting. People who have read already can tell you if they are good reads of the sub genre. If not i will tell you when i have read them.

All three are good, with #1 and #3 being classics. I like Jeff Long, my favorite of his is The Descent. Year Zero won't stand the same test of time, but is worthwhile reading. Plague novels are usually fun.

On a side note, I just bought and read the sequel to Long's The Descent, entitled Deeper. I was disappointed.

 

[j d worthington]

I've not read Year Zero, but I've read the other two. Earth Abides is a much more quiet novel, focused on one character, chiefly, and is a very still, poignant picture of such an apocalypse... one that many of us would be able to empathize with as we get older, as it works both as a sf novel on the theme and a parable (as with Del Rey's "Day is Done") of becoming the "stranger in a strange land" where we no longer belong....

Canticle for Leibowitz is a brilliant novel, with a wide range of emotions and approaches, from almost slapstick to starkly tragic, lots of mythic layers (the Wandering Jew plays an important role here, for example) and examinations of both faith and science and our roles and responsibilities in both... just a damn' fine novel, all 'round.

 

[Connavar]

I thought it was a nice touch to balance a modern normal OP book among two classics.

If i think one of the classic was a good but heavy read like Canticle sounds like than it will be easier to a book like Year Zero after it.

 

[Lobolover]

Well,I'd suport Night Land's nomination:

BUT!Be prepared to make "I ate some of the tablets and drank some o the water" your most re-read sentence EVER.

 

[murphy]

Another post apocolyptic series of books is Donald A. McQuinn's Gan Moondark trilogy: Warrior, Wanderer and Witch. A group of people have been put in hibirnation when the bombs started going off and wake up 500 years later in a completely changed world.

 

[Zakalwe]

I've not seen World War Z by Max Brooks mentioned yet and that is well worth reading. Set up as an oral history of the Zombie War it's one of those books that I sat down to read and didn't move until I'd finished. Top notch stuff.

 

[Salvelinus]

Classic Wyndham:
"The Chrysalids" and "The Day of the Triffids"
Both seminal work in the genre of sci-fi if you haven't read them, post apocalyptic and apocalyptic, respectively.

The 06 Hugo winner, "Spin" by Robert Charles Wilson is not a book about apocalypse per se, but rather a major part of the novel is the human reaction to an impending apocalypse. I suppose then it would be a "pre-apocalyptic" novel. In it, humanity has several decades in which to prepare for (or hopefully avert) thier extinction.
He intricately describes both how contemporary societies and individual people think and act when faced with death on a global scale. Read this one if you missed it, definitely the best "human perspective" sci fi novel I've read.