MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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I like a good apocalypse book, I've read plenty of zombie stuff, The Passage, currently on so Stephen kings "The Stand" which is great.
I'm after my next read, but I don't really want zombie or horror, just "everything falls apart and the aftermath," if that makes sense, rather than monsters and violence. Any ideas?
The Road.
I like a good apocalypse book
My current research? I'll let the publisher know we have a pre-sale. 😉
+1 for The Road
Lucifer's Hammer by Pournelle and Niven or The Forge of God by Greg Bear.
Insert joke about USA here.
I really enjoyed The Postman (very different to the film, obvs)
I've never got round to reading or watching the road, don't know why. Gonna put all these suggestions so far in my reading list, excellent stuff 😀
"Heart of Darkness" Joseph Conrad. Apocalypse? now.
Another one is Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm. Also try the SF Encyclopedia entry here http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/post-holocaust
Mind you if you read all of these in a row it might be a bit bleak. I'd suggest some Pratchett or PG Wodehouse in between.
The Girl with All the Parts.
Zombie, but different.
The girl with all the partsMight be Girl with all the Gifts, I think most of them come with all the parts.....
From someone else's recommendation on here - Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson
Station Eleven by Emily StJohn Mandel. Post bio-apocolpyse journey in search of new beginnings - quirky and edgy a bit violent in places but not as depressing, outright violent or macabre as The Road.
David Mitchell's (not that one) THe Bone Clocks has a brilliant post-oil world bit in it at the end - takes a while to get there but worth it.
Swan Song
The Road is great, really hard in places
his border trilogy are also quite nihlistic
the early ballard stuff, the drought, drowned world, high rise
I am legend
Y The last man, graphic novel series is billiant
Revelation.
The Wool trilogy is worth a read. The end of the world running club isn't bad either. They're not classics, but good.
[url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass ]The Death of Grass[/url]
[url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_Male_(novel) ]Rogue Male[/url]
Read these.
Swan Song by Robert MacCammon.
I Am Legend
The Road
John Birmingham, Disappearance series. Just finished the three books in the series. Not a literary great but quiet engaging and interesting premise(I read the three back to back). Kind of Clancyesque. Based around America being wiped out and the out fall afterwards.
Dies the Fire by SM Stirling.
Going home by A. American is a good series, in a enjoyable brain in stand by mode way! Or the Arisen series if you fancy a Zombie apocalypse read!
Herbert's Rats trilogy heads in to Apocalypse territory
The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance is sort of in this area. A stone classic - beautifully written, very light touch and funny stories, but against a sad, elegiac backdrop.
GRRM's first novel is another suggestion - The dying of the light. Excellent first novel and interesting to read given his later transformation into parttime author of behemoth blockbusters. Not really in the same league as some of the other suggestions upthread, but a good one to pick up if you see it in a second hand bookshop or something.
If your enjoying The Passage your in for a heck of a treat with The Twelve & City of Mirrors. Justin Kronin is simply brilliant.
Watch for those Virals. 😉
Look up "A Scientific Romance" by Ronald Wright.
It's set 500 years from now, in a world decimated by BSE. (It was written in the 90's, when BSE was all the rage...).
Can't really help the OP more than the current suggestions, but wanted to add a big +1 for the Arisen series by Michael Stephen Fuchs. Incredible value for lengthy series of books with a great story arc and good character development. D-Boys is also excellent.
While looking for more zombie/apocalyptic fiction, I stumbled across the 'Joe Ledger' series by Jonathan Maberry. Absolutely brilliant and worth a shot if you like the Arisen and D-Boys series.
Recently read the 'Remaining' series by DJ Molles. Not up the the standard of the two I just mentioned, but a decent distraction.
Mira Grants stuff is quite readable, the Newsflash series and the Parasite series, one is zombies and other might as well be though.
I know it;s technically a zombie book, but World War Z is excellent (the film is gash, obvs).
It goes into lots of detail about the process of rebuilding and the everyday challenges of living in a post apocalyptic society etc.
Also, another vote for I am legend. The film was appalling, but the book is excellent.
2nd what he said ^ about World war Z, for those reasons
Just thought of another: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller.
A superb story about the abandonment of science following a nuclear war, although that description doesn't really tell the whole story.
The News
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
Dated - but all the better for it , one of the first.
Station Eleven is brilliant. A slightly different perspective than the desperation of many post-apocolytic stories, and really good use of flashbacks.
Another vote for Station Eleven...
I'd avoid Cell by Stephen King as it was too similar to the Stand..
Has anyone read On the Beach by Nevil Shute? That's supposed to be pretty good..
Another vote for the Wool trilogy, I really enjoyed it. "Sand" by the same author is worth a read too. Also "End of the World Running Club". Bit different but very good.
Not post apocalyptic as such but distopian nonetheless but "Red Rising" is shaping up to be rather good.
Z for Zachariah
48 by James Herbert
Daily Mail? If you believe that every cold snap is going to be "snowmageddon" and their usual level of story.
Daemon - Daniel Suarez
David Mitchell's (not that one) THe Bone Clocks has a brilliant post-oil world bit in it at the end - takes a while to get there but worth it.
+1
The earlier part of the book is kind of patchy - great in places, weirdly cheesy in others, but it's worth persevering for the last part.
It's a scarily plausible depiction of a slow slide into third world conditions set in the Republic of Ireland. Basically, a perfect storm of climate change, fossil fuels running out, and the centre of world power migrating elsewhere (China in this instance).
Echoing the comments above, James Herbert's 'Domain' (3rd in The Rats Trilogy, I think) is set in a post nuclear war London. I haven't re-read it as an adult, but the opening depiction of the nuclear attack (and subsequent depictions of the aftermath) really stick in the mind.
E.E. Knights Vampire Earth series of books are worth a read - not really vampirey in the traditional sense (as the titular vampires are aliens who feed on the life force of humans and plunged the world into a post apocalyptic state).
They're also available in Audio Book form from Graphic Audio, and have all the sound effects etc which make them quite a good listen
Slightly different but a favourite of mine is Dinner at Devient's Palace by Tim Powers.
[i]Damnation Alley[/i], by Roger Zelazny - made into a really shonky film that bears no resemblance to the book; the hero is the last of the Hell's Angels, didn't sit well with the Hollywood of the time...
[i]The Drowned World[/i], by J G Ballard
[i]Lucifer's Hammer[/i], by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
[i]The Windup Girl[/i], by Paolo Bacigalupi
[i]A World Out Of Time[/i], by Larry Niven - not exactly an apocalypse story, but close.
Earth Abides is good, currently reading On The Beach. Have a look at Trinity's Child, not exactly post apoclapyse, more during but a very good read, a favourite of mine
Just remembered about the Greg Mandel series from Peter F Hamilton. Not post apocalyptic, more dystopian future. Really stood out for me after cycling around Rutland water and staying at a hotel there and reading his book with Greg living in the holiday homes there and having orange groves around there due to global warming.
Lionel Shriver The Mandibles is good. Sort of economic meltdown apocalypse.
Also Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake and sequels. Plus the Handmaid's tale.
Incredible that nobody has mentioned The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, written in 1951 and one of the original post-apocalyptic novels, which has been made into at least one film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids
Another of his, which I love and have re-read a few times is The Chrysalids, Wiki says some regard it as Wyndham's best novel and I would agree. It's about a new emerging world after nuclear apocalypse and the efforts of the new society to eradicate genetic impurities caused by radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chrysalids
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. A slow burner.
The Wool trilogy is great
Nod by Adrian Barnes is also really good and a nice short read
Oryx and Crake series
Gotta agree with globalti too, there's lots of older classics, John Wyndham especially "The day of the triffids"
Not quite apocalyptic, but dystopic alternate realities, China Mievelle writes some really intersting books, "The city and the city" being one of the more dystopic.
More a vision of Hell than the Apocalypse, but everything he writes is brilliant -
[i]Damned[/i] by Chuck Palahniuk
Link: http://amzn.eu/5t3pQ8L
For impending apocalypse
[i]Joy, Pa[/i] by Steven Sherrill
Link: http://amzn.eu/4eBZkxt