Open Thread: The Plural of Apocalypse Edition

[sabotabby]

Your favourite apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction—tell me it.

Comments

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

I'll tell you this much, so far it is not The Road. Oh I know. It's not specifically post-apocalyptic, because there's no talk at all of what happened, but it's the subset of "last person on earth" fiction. It's called Wittgenstein's Mistress and I love it dearly. It is a probably annoyingly fractured narrative with lots of needless cultural references. It's one of my favorite books in fact.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Btw Wittgenstein's Mistress is about the last woman on earth. I don't know, but I suspect this is uncommon.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

yes! so good!

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

shit, i could be here all day.
i'll get back to you with a list.
(although i have to say that the recent night shade anthology 'wastelands' is pretty top notch.)

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

The Shannara Trilogy :D

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr is a classic of the genre. And, a powerful story, too.

I am away from my collection, but I'm sure there are others.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

Ya beat me to it.

[gynocide.livejournal.com]

Both are by Margaret Atwood but the stories aren't related.

The Handmaid's Tale

Oryx and Crake

[genesayssitdown.livejournal.com]

how is oryx and crake? i own it, haven't read it yet.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

it is kind of devastating. But in a good way.

[tanyahp.livejournal.com]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I dunno if it's actually after the apocalypse, but it's good reading.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

you should rent 'Time of the Wolf'. that is some bleak winter-appropriate shit. french; filmic; proto-'The Road'.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

oh, and also 'Threads'.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

...becasue reading is bourgeois.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

Maybe not favorite, but most recent I liked was Southland Tales - graphic novels and movie.

apocalyptic - check
musical - check
Texas gets nuked in movie opening - check
Sarah Michelle Gellar is an ex-porn star with a reality TV show - check

"Scientists say the future's going to be far more futuristic than originally predicted."

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, and "neo-marxist" terrorists.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

earth abides?

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

This whole category is generally depressing to me, but that book most of all -- my mother LOVES it. The subsidence of humans back to pretty much illiterates within one generation made me miserable, I remember.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a tough one.

How about Day of the Triffids? Or the Tripods. Of course, the second two tripods books suck, but the first one is genuinely eerie.

Do you suppose Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men counts?

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

J.G. Ballard, my favourite dystopian, destroyed the world four different ways:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_From_Nowhere (air)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drowned_World (water)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burning_World (fire) (aka The Drought)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_World (time)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Rise
In this book, a part of the world reverts/ converts to a sort of post-apocalyptic lifestyle - it has my vote for Best Opening Line of All Time: "Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months."

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

Does the Book of Revelations qualify?

...as apocalyptic, I mean. I know it qualifies as fiction.

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

OK, more seriously:

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

[droneish.livejournal.com]

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

Seconded!

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Not that it's really post-apocalyptic (except in the city of Bellona itself), but it's one of those rare books that I've probably read more than 20 times since I first picked up in grade 7.

And I suspect I've tried to foist it on sabotabby before. But what the hell, I'm happy to try again and with some support this time.

Re: Seconded!

[marsianer.livejournal.com]

Oh my, it's way to long since I read that.

Re: Seconded!

[marsianer.livejournal.com]

Too long, even.

[jordansc.livejournal.com]

I'd like to third this, and anything by J. G. Ballard.

(And, while we're on the subject of Delany, Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia is the best utopian novel ever. Mandatory reading.)

In a lighter vein and a different medium, I think Six String Samurai deserves a special mention. And Fallout 3 is pretty fun thus far. I wonder when "retro-futuristic post-apocalypse" is going to become its own genre.

Has anyone read Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban? I keep intending to read it, and it's sitting on my library book shelf, but I can't quite get started.

My Troubles With Triton

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

It's been a few years since I last read Triton (and many years since I first did), and I've always come away from it thinking of it as some kind of noble failure.

Somehow, when you said, "...is the best utopian novel ever," something clicked. I think I've been misreading it all along.

I'm going to pull it off the shelf very soon and give it another go. Thanks.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

There is no cat.
There is no cradle.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have one which is almost tongue-in-cheek at this point, although it was written as a real warning along about the same time as A Canticle for Liebovitz (which is probably superior in all respects). However... this one could be subtitled: How Living in a Small Town in Florida Will Save You From the Bomb*. It is by Pat Frank, called Alas, Babylon, and my father (I just found this out) read it the year it came out, in high school, and was strongly affected.

It's... it's like a feel good post-apocalypse novel, which posits that if you were lucky enough to escape the blast and the radiation, hey, it would just be 1890 again. Maybe 1870.

*I suspect that Jim Jones might have read it, too, before moving the People's Temple to Redwood Valley, California because that area was supposed to be a fairly safe location, in the likely event of nuclear holocaust.

[screenedout.livejournal.com]

Can't resist a good apocalyptic thread... Yes to Ballard (although of the early disaster novels I have so far only read The Drowned World - but there is an apocalyptic, or rather post-apocalyptic theme, suggesting that the disaster has already happened, running through all Ballard's work; The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash seem to depict a sort of internal, personal apocalypse which is reflected in the landscape). A similar New Worlds-ish Inner Space type of fiction is 'The Heat Death of the Universe' by Pamela Zoline. Film-wise Kellista is dead right about Haneke's Time of the Wolf, and the BBC's Threads.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

i haven't read any of the other responses yet. I'm so excited! I love apocalyptic fiction! I cna't wait to see the other suggestions!

Parable of the sower and parable of the Talents (but mostly the sower) are definitely in my top five. Um, Kim Stnaley robinson's three California's is god. all fo sherri Tepper's stuff is engaging although she's very bought into the gender binary.

hmmm.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

doh, I'm a fool! I was thinking dystopian fiction. which i also love. hrrm.

[threeliesforone.livejournal.com]

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (I really have to read Oryx & Crake)
Cat's Crade, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman (It's about the antichrist & the end of days, after all)

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

Riddley Walker

READ IT. NOW.

[livingfossil.livejournal.com]

I wake one morning and everyone is gone. I gather myself some books and tins of food. In the process I come across Future Eve. We repopulate the earth. Properly--with Marx-read children.

[livingfossil.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is about real fiction? The Stand. But I read that ages ago. I also have a thing for Zombiepocalypses.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

William Tenn - "The Liberation of Earth". I own it in an anthology called "Science Fiction of the 50s" which is wall to wall greatness, and I'm not even that into SF.

[thegiantkiller.livejournal.com]

A Scientific Romance by Ronald Wright is the first that comes to mind; Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up, both by John Brunner, may also qualify, depending how you're defining apocalyptic.