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end of the world fiction? - Page 3  

post #41 of 111
11/2/07 at 9:56am
Would "Children of Men" fit into this category? I thought it was a well-written book.
post #42 of 111
11/4/07 at 11:45pm
I adored Oryx and Crake. I thought it was her best novel. I also second whoever recommended The Gates to Women's Country. It is not anything too deep or hard to figure out, but it was a good read.
post #43 of 111
11/5/07 at 9:03pm
http://www.empty-world.com/
post #44 of 111
6/10/08 at 5:43pm
Holy thread resurrection, Batman!!

I just found this thread searching for others who read "Swan Song" - LOVED it. I'm appreciating these suggestions - I loved the Stand too, found The Road incredibly grim (in a good way!) and amazing. I just ordered "Earth Abides" and "Dead City" (found them reading amazon.com reviews and lists.) Anyone read those two?
post #45 of 111
6/10/08 at 9:55pm
Thread Starter 
I'm stoked that the thread lives on!
I picked up "The Zombie War" at the airport while I was travelling a few months ago (the bean growing in my belly was conceived while I was reading that book -not sure how I feel about that one!). It was good, but I did find myself hiding the cover as I felt a bit foolish carrying it around. I really liked it though, and there was some good political commentary stuffed in to the corners.

I also managed to find Into the Woods, which was very good. I was disappointed though because I foresee a definite "end" to those young women. It felt like they would potentially become more and more isolated and afraid of others that they would wind up just living their lives and finding themselves at the end, alone. One of my favorite parts of this kind of fiction is the social comentary and the community coping skills of people. I like the reformation of society stuff, which was definitely not a theme in this book. I really did like it though.

And, our library does do interlibrary loans though. And the books get up here quicker than the mail does!

I'm always game for more suggestions, should people want to provide them...



Katia
post #46 of 111
6/11/08 at 12:40am
Emma Bull's Bone Dance.

Seriously good post-apocalyptic fiction.
post #47 of 111
6/11/08 at 4:07am
Since I've posted on this thread the last time, I've read World War Z which someone recommended.
post #48 of 111
6/11/08 at 9:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by warriorprincess View Post
Oh, two other great ones: A Canticle for Leibowitz and if you need some funny, Gaiman/Pratchett's Good Omens.
A Canticle for Leibowitz seemed vaguely familiar -- I wiki'd it and now I remember reading an excerpt in one of my dad's old Isaac Asimov Science Fiction magazines, when I was a teenager. I'm glad it came up here -- now I can read the whole book.
post #49 of 111
6/11/08 at 11:42am
The only purpose of this post is to marvel that this thread has almost 1,200 views and only <50 posts.

Fascinating.



(insert Spock-ish single-eyebrow-raising here)
post #50 of 111
6/11/08 at 11:48am
The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy.
post #51 of 111
6/11/08 at 2:37pm
OOOH, zinemama.... I did like that one.
post #52 of 111
6/11/08 at 5:27pm
what about Robin McKinley's Sunshine?
post #53 of 111
6/11/08 at 5:31pm
Has anyone read James Howard Kunstler's new fiction work "World Made by Hand"? He's only written nonfic before (e.g., "End of Suburbia," "The Long Emergency"). I want to read it, but since my public library doesn't have it, I'll have to order.
post #54 of 111
6/11/08 at 8:58pm
The Stand by Stephen King
Cell by Stephen King
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
On the Beach by Nevil Shute
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven
Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Postman by David Brin
The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
In the Days of the Comet by H.G. Wells
Year Zero by Jeff Long
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnus Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

and, for some nonfiction,

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

...sorry for any repeats...
post #55 of 111
6/11/08 at 10:26pm
i'm subbing.

i'm a huge fan of disaster/end of world flicks but there just aren't any being made these days so i'm going to start reading some of these books to get my fix. just started Lucifer's Hammer tonight.
post #56 of 111
6/12/08 at 12:12am
Love many of the books on this thread. King's Cell is pretty amazing.
Also Butler's Parable of the Sower and Palmer's Emergence.

Gordon R. Dickson, Wolf and Iron

John Wyndham, Out of the Deep (which I like better that Day of the Triffids)

S. M. Stirling, Dies the Fire and sequels

Mary Shelley may have invented this genre for the modern age with The Last Man It is really interesting to read a story about a plague wiping out the world that was written before modern germ theory.

It is fun to read King's The Stand together with Earth Abides


Have to check my bookcase. I've always been morbidly fond of this genre....
post #57 of 111
6/12/08 at 4:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aubergine68 View Post
It is fun to read King's The Stand together with Earth Abides
On the Beach too ... those are the two that inspired King to write The Stand
post #58 of 111
6/12/08 at 5:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewCrunchyDaddy View Post
On the Beach too ... those are the two that inspired King to write The Stand

I didn't know that, but there are such an awful lot of similarities between Earth Abides and The Stand, that when I read Earth Abides, I couldn't help noticing them. The comparison would make a great book club session, I think.

It has been ages since I read On the Beach. I didn't enjoy it much, to be honest. I can't remember any specific homage in the Stand to On the Beach. I'll have to re-read On the Beach now and see, thanks for the info!

Other fiction which satisfies my own "roots and berries" urges includes Clan of the Cave Bear.

I've always felt that stories of the Holocaust/concentration camps/genocide have some relation to end-of-the-world narratives. But I find it so hard to read true stories of evil and total destruction, even though I enjoy the fantastic ones.

Isaac Asimov edited an anthology of short SF called A Choice of Catastrophes. I did a book report on it in high school. It classified disasters from local ones growing in magnitude to the end of the universe and presented a story for each category, if I recall correctly.
post #59 of 111
6/12/08 at 6:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aubergine68 View Post
I didn't know that, but there are such an awful lot of similarities between Earth Abides and The Stand, that when I read Earth Abides, I couldn't help noticing them. The comparison would make a great book club session, I think.

It has been ages since I read On the Beach. I didn't enjoy it much, to be honest. I can't remember any specific homage in the Stand to On the Beach. I'll have to re-read On the Beach now and see, thanks for the info!
It's not necessarily "homage" so much as King reading On the Beach and Earth Abides and thinking, "you know, I think I can kill off the world too." It's detailed in either Danse Macabre or On Writing, I can't remember which off the top of my head.

Though I do remember reading EA and thinking it reminded me a lot of The Stand. I'll have to dig it out now that I'm almost done with summer session and have a month and a half to plow through my pleasure reading.

On a side note, my wife's late great-aunt was a student of George R. Stewart's when he was a professor at UC Berkeley in the 30s and 40s and was later his AT in some of his classes.

It came up because when we moved to Seattle, Aunt Helen lived in a retirement home there and when we first went to visit her I was perusing her bookshelf (which is what I do when I am in somebody's home, I can't help it) and she had a signed hardbound first edition copy of EA on her shelf, as well as signed hardbound first edition copies of a number of his other books, and I had to ask, because at that point I had just recently finished reading EA and so I asked and the story came out.

I think her daughter got the books ... I was hoping she'd will them to me, but I guess immediate family is more important than a great-neice's husband.




post #60 of 111
6/13/08 at 2:35am

More Great Reads

Thanks, MountainLaurel for mentioning "World Made by Hand." I couldn't remember the name of the author but I really, really enjoyed it. After reading "The Road" several times, I came across that title at the library. While "The Road" is about civilization abandoning us all, "World Made By Hand" is not as bleak. The citizens of small, isolated town actually work together, with some exceptions, to rebuild their lives as best they can given the reality of the situation. It was thought provoking, suspenseful and real. A couple of fairly recent YA titles that I don't think have been mentioned are "How I Live Now" by the amazing Meg Rosoff about a fifteen year old New York City girl who is stranded with her cousins in rural England after war breaks out. Rossoff is considered one of the most gifted writers of this current YA renaissance and has won lots of awards in her native England as well as in America. Well worth reading. Then old favorite Susan Beth Pfeiffer made a strong return with "Life as We Knew It" in 2006 about the effects of a meteor colliding with the moon. Extreme weather, catastrophic earthquakes, food and gas shortages...sound eerily familiar to today...and the story of one family in typical American town. Pfeffer released a companion book called "The Dead and the Gone" on June 1st and I haven't seen it yet. Apparently it takes the same events and moves the action from the suburbs to New York City.

If you have read "The Road" check out the lengthy interview with the author in Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year. It really brought to light the ideas that inspired Cormac McCarthy which largely come from his hanging out with scientists at a think tank in Santa Fe, and his love for his young son. Also, The NYT's had an article a week or so ago about the film that is being made of "The Road" in Pennsylvania with Viggo Mortensen. It sounds very true to the book and what great casting.
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