Best apocalyptic fiction by new authors?

Nevil Shute - On the Beach (end of the world)
José Saramago - Blindness (everyone goes blind, society breaks down) Started off hating this, it's an unusual style - but got sucked into it - really absorbing book.
Wayne Simmons - Flu and Fever (zombies)
Patrick d'Orazio - The dark trilogy (zombies)
Sean Schubert - Alaskan Undead (zombies)
D J Molles - The Remaining (zombie series)
Craig DiLouie - The Infection, Killing Floor & Tooth and Nail (zombies)

I'm not sure I'd consider some of the zombie ones to be classic fiction but I enjoyed all these.

I'm so excited about this list!

Please can we add to the post-apocalyptic category:

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, which is a lovely one I read recently, and
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway, another one I really enjoyed

Oo I thought of a contribution- Scott Sigler trilogy Infected (horror), Contagious (apocalypse) and Pandemic (don't know yet because this thread just reminded me to buy it )

Fantastic thread!!!

As you were

bird box is really good. very scary but not blood, gore type stuff

Thought of another one! Dystopia- The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

Oh yes, The End Of Mr Y

For Fantasy- The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas (UK- magical fantasy)

This is pretty cool, I am glad we're making this happen.

Again I am ill and not getting much time for anything but sleeping. Seem to have an ENT infection and might need some oral antibiotics as I got some eardrops and now my ear is fine but my throat and sinuses are not. Been running fevers, so find it difficult to relax and read when I feel so bad. It's been two weeks now and no real improvement, so doctors tomorrow and hopefully I can start adding to the list and reading some of the suggestions.

Do we all use kindles? Or are there people who use books? I was wondering if in future we could set up a loan or pass it along scheme, so that people can share books with each other. Obviously not the books we collect and cherish, but whatever people would be happy to share?

At some point too, I'd love if we could do a reading circle, where we all read the same book and discuss it? That could be very interesting as there are some intelligent minds here and I love to talk about books so much.

Yes, lessons, as in your last post.

Would you like to go through the books you have written and assign them to those four categories? I don't know them at all.

Can I suggest Patchwork People and Calling B for Butterfly by Louise Lawrence (YA)
The Girl Who Owned a City (children/YA) by OT Nelson
Brother in the Land, Daz 4 Zoe, and Fallout by Robert Swindells (YA) - all of his books are great, and a lot of them are sci-fi/fantasy. He wrote Stone Cold which sometimes crops up on school reading lists too - that's a thriller/urban setting thing rather than sci-fi though. Some of his are aimed at younger readers, like Room 13, and some at teens and older readers.
For more "classic" SF - these are often cited on lists of people's "most read" and "Classics" and such, although I often didn't actually like them (isn't that always the way with classics?) there are
A Canticle for Leibowitz
A Gift Upon the Shore
Oryx and Crake
Greybeard
After London
The Scarlet Plague

For "hard" sci-fi I love CJ Cherryh's "Merchanter" universe books, my favourites areRimrunners, Finity's End, and Tripoint.

For fantasy type SF I love Storm Constantine, her Wraeththu books are wonderful, there are two main trilogies, which she revised, updated, and added to recently, and a couple of other books set in the same world, and even a couple of published fanfics that SC collaborated on, and wrote a couple of lines in her books to add the fanfics in iyswim
They are dystopian fantasy, set in a world where humans are almost gone, superceded by a new species, the Wraeththu, and the few humans that are eventually left are kept almost as curiosities, and encouraged to breed a bit to keep the species going.

I added the explanations in parentheses to Sci-fi books. Also said Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is "magic".

I propose the following categories:

-- Apocalyptic:

-- Dystopian

-- Fantasy

-- Sci-fi

And under each category, we can have sub-categories like magic (under fantasy), zombie (under apocalyptic), vampire (under apocalyptic like for "The Passage" and under fantasy like for "Interview With The Vampire"), magic (under fantasy).

What do you think?

Zombie

Deadline Trilogy – Mira Grant (US)
Alison Hewitt is Trapped etc – Madeleine Roux (US)
Death by Revelation trilogy – Jack J Lee (US)
Apocalypse Z series – Manel Loureiro (Spain)
White Flag of the Dead – Joseph Talluto (?)
Zombie Fallout series – Mark Tufo (?)
dEaDINBURGH – Mark Wilson & Paul McGuigan (UK)
The Undead – R R Haywood (?)
All the dead are here – Pete Bevan (?)
Zombie Takeover – K Bartholemew (?)
World War Z – Max Brooks (Worldwide)
Dead World series – Joe McKinney (?)
Autumn series – David Moody (?)
Drop Dead Gorgeous etc – Wayne Simmons (Ireland)
Day by Day Armageddon – J L Bourne (?)
Code Zero etc – Jonathan Maberry (?)
The Rising – Brian Keene (?)
Dead Bastards – Jenny Thompson (?)
Tube Riders trilogy – Chris Ward (?)

Other apocalypse/dystopia

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (Old)
The Stand – Stephen King (also Mist, Cell etc) (Old, US)
Earth Abides – George R Stewart (Old, US)
Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (Old, Canada/US)
MaddAdam Trilogy – Margaret Atwood (Canada/US)
1984 – George Orwell (Old, UK)
Silo49 – Ann Christy (?)
Day of the Triffids etc – John Wyndham (Old, UK)
The White Mountains etc – John Christopher (Old, ?)
Swan Song – Robert R McCammon (?)
Shades of Grey etc – Jasper Fforde (Humourous)
Divided Kingdom – Rupert Thomson (?)
Chaos Walking series– Patrick Ness (?)
Last Light – Alex Scarrow (UK)
Computer One – Warwick Collins (?)
Redaction series – Linda Andrews (?)
The Girl with all the Gifts – MR Carey (UK, YA)
The Last Policeman – Ben Winters (?)
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell (Worldwide, multilayer structure)
Outpost – Adam Baker (?)
Far North – Marcel Theroux (Siberia)
One Second After – William R Forstchen (?)
Domain – James Herbert (?)
The Road – Cormac McCarthy (US)
Yesterday’s Gone – Sean Platt & David Wright (?)
Bird Box – Josh Malerman (?)
The Flood – Stephen Baxter (?)
Z for Zachariah – Robert C O’Brien (Old, ?)
Children of the Dust – Louise Lawrence (Old, UK)
Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins (YA, US)
Divergent – Virginia Roth (YA, US)
The Gift – Lois Lowry (YA, US)
Wool trilogy – Hugh Howey (YA)
Inside Out – Maria V Snyder (YA)
Devil on my back etc – Monica Hughes (YA)
The Delikon etc – HM Hoover (YA)
Blood Red Road – Moira Young (YA)
The Fear etc – Charlie Higson (YA)
Shade’s Children – Garth Nix (YA)
Sparrow Rock – Nate Kenyon (YA)
Life as we know it trilogy – Susan Beth Pfeffer (YA)

Fantasy:

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke (magic)
Dragonflight etc – Anne McCaffrey (?)
London Underground series – David Aaronovitch (YA, UK)
Battle etc – L M Pruitt (?)
The day Aberystwth stood still etc – Malcolm Pryce (Humourous, UK)

Vampire

Vampire for hire – J R Rain (?)
True Blood series - Charlaine Harris (US)
The Passage series – Justin Cronin (apocalyptic)
Interview With The Vampire - Anne Rice (US)

Sci-fi:

2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C Clarke (Classic)
The Foundation (series) - Isaac Asimov (Classic)
Dune - Frank Herbert (Classic)
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Idoru - William Gibson (virtual reality)
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson (virtual reality)
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson (nanotechnology)
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson (Enigma, codebreaking)
Anathem - Neal Stephenson (alternate universes)

"Old"?

"Classic" would be better imho.

Does anyone are about US or UK? Personally, I don't.

Chaos Walking is YA (and very good). Second recommendations for Shades of Grey, I really enjoyed that. Earth Abides is interesting, but very much a book of it's time, it is both sexist and racist IMO. This is true for a lot of older sci-fi, future worlds but with older social values that sometimes really jar.

I'd like to add Kathleen Ann Goonan's Queen City Jazz (nanotechnology future) and Tadd William's Otherlands (virtual reality future).

I loved Anne McAffrey as a teen, but reread some of the Pern books recently and thought they weren't very well written.

Good idea. We don't need YA as a separate genre, but can just add (YA) next to the books in each category that are YA.

lessons - Would you like to assign the books under YA to their relevant categories?

Rather than sub-categorising fantasy, why don't we just put descriptors into brackets next to the book title and author. That way people know if it's (urban fantasy, werewolves, vampires) sort of thing. Then you could stick to main genre types and not split into young adult etc. A YA next to a sci-fi book would be enough to let you know it's audience.