Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

Original poster

apocalypse/post-apocalypse reading. anyone?

41 replies

tyaca · 28/11/2010 23:06

i really like books in which most of the world's population have been wiped out.

not bothered by genre, happy to read YA and kids books. any ideas?

My list so far...

Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake, and Year of the Flood.

Stephen King: The Stand
Jean Ure: Plague
PD James: Children of Men

God, there must be loads more. When i was a teenager, the apocalypse stuff was all nuclear holocaust. YA I've read recently has all been environmental.

Recommend me some more!

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
shortnotsweet · 14/12/2010 13:22

Opps wrong link sorry Blush

shortnotsweet · 14/12/2010 13:20

Read The Passage www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1103760-Man-flu-Why-dont-you-just-man-up.
It is so so good and reminds me of Stephen King's The Stand.

beijingaling · 12/12/2010 09:33

I am Legend was a much better book than movie.

Vampire Earth series on amazon

BonniePrinceBilly · 07/12/2010 21:45

I love these books! I devoured the Plague books, Children of the Dust, Brother in the Land, all of them. And Empty World is one of those that really stays with you, I'd love to read it again but have never found a copy.

I have a canticle for Liebewitz but am finding it very difficult to get into.

sfxmum · 05/12/2010 22:56

I will keep pushing Swastika Night as one of the best early feminist dystopia fiction

set very far into the future many centuries after Hitler won the war and where women are not considered human

CaptainBarnacles · 05/12/2010 22:50

Great thread - just my sort of thing!

I loved The Road, and am not usually one for muscular masculine writers. Z for Zachariah is excellent. Reread Children of the Dust recently - god, it's disturbing!

I don't think anyone has mentioned The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall - about a female paramilitary organisation in the Lake District. Not a classic, but worth a read.

marioncoakes · 01/12/2010 14:05

Thanks for this thread! Nothing to add - although I am a huge fan of The Road, The Pesthouse, and How I Live Now.

BelligerentGhoul · 01/12/2010 14:00

I hated Cell - thought it was very boring and unoriginal (and I am a massive King fan).

I also didn't think a great deal of The Road.

maktaitai · 01/12/2010 13:58

soylent green was 'Make Room! Make Room!' wasn't it?

nickeldonkeyonadustyroad · 01/12/2010 13:47

for YA, there's The Hunger Games, which is set in Post-apocalyptic America.
It's brilliant.

there's also Life as We Knew it by Susan Pfeffer - where an asteroid hits the moon and messes up the earth. The Dead and the Gone is the same disaster but told from America instead of the UK.

swanriver · 01/12/2010 13:45

or even..The Time Machine by HGWells
and was Soylent Green (film with Charlton Heston) ever a book?
Under the Skin by MFaber v.v.frightening, but furry creatures post apocalyspse coming up from the earth beneath to kidnap us...

Road/Chrysalids all excellent

melezka · 30/11/2010 22:12

Yes, same Road

bloomingnora · 30/11/2010 21:34

Maggie Gee - The Ice People is good too.

sixpercenttruejedi · 30/11/2010 21:23

Just marking my place really. Love these kinds of book, have read The Handmaidens Tale, but glad of some more to read.
Was The Road made into a film recently, or was that totally different?

melezka · 30/11/2010 21:14

ooh ooh ooh also the Shadow Histories chronicles - they are good I reckon

NoelNemofish · 30/11/2010 21:03

Me too. I think that it just wasn't what they were expecting from Stephen King. Also maybe because it was technically a zombie book?

anonacfr · 30/11/2010 20:57

I loved Cell- I was surprised to find it was panned by the critics.
I thought it was pretty good?

melezka · 30/11/2010 18:37

Looooooove The Chrysalids. The Road is ok but I read The Hours at the same time (not at all post-apocalyptic I know) and thought it looked at the same question of what it means to be human in a much more female friendly way. McCarthy all a bit boy and Hemingway for me.

But Riddley Walker? Possibly the best book EVER WRITTEN.

Takver · 30/11/2010 18:34

One of my favourite post-apocalyptic stories is 'Solitude' in the collection 'The Birthday of the World' by Ursula le Guin.

NoelNemofish · 30/11/2010 17:56

For a more horror kind of feel to your apocolypse:

Cell by Stephen King - great for technophobes!

and for a bit of fantasy with your apocolypse:

Armageddons Children
Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
This is a trilogy by Terry Brooks - some of the best Apocolype stuff I have ever read, and I have read a fair bit. Absolutely haunting.

ragged · 30/11/2010 12:39

Earth Abides. Which I found one of the more credible visions of a post-disaster world.
Must confess that The Road annoyed me.

belindarose · 30/11/2010 12:31

Doris Lessing 'Mara and Dan' is worth a read.

DandyDan · 30/11/2010 07:12

The Jim Crace is "The Pest House" - I'd forgotten about that. Also second the John Christopher "Empty World" and the Robert Swindells - Brother in the Land.

exexpat · 29/11/2010 23:01

Has no one mentioned Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban? Modern post-apocalypse classic - the Guardian has been doing it as their readers' book club book this month - here.

anonacfr · 29/11/2010 14:43

Just read The Passage (did a thread on it) and thought it was excellent!
Well written and gripping. There is an end but it's ultimately the first of three- second book due in 2012 I've been told.