Best apocalyptic fiction by new authors?

[lessonsintightropes]

I have read an awful lot of stuff written from 1950s to the present day, and am enjoying finding some new stuff via Kindle from self-published authors - some total trash but other things I've thought were quite well written, like Feed/Deadline etc by Mira Grant.

Any other suggestions?

Fair enough. CBA to recategorise though!

US/UK - there was some discussion upthread about liking stuff set over here so I thought it would be helpful to have something to differentiate between them. I also really love the Louriero series which is set in Spain (speak the language, been there a lot and so feel an affinity with it) but the fact it's set over there might put some off. Far North set in a far future Siberia is also excellent but if people are expecting NYC with zombies may disappoint.

I also did some searching of old threads (along with looking for articles on it) and found some which aren't on here. I am going to keep updating and having a look.

Cote, Fan, Pom, others, I think we could probably put together a pretty definitive list if we try hard enough

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)

Sounds great. So our top line categories are zombie, other apocalyptic category/dystopia, fantasy, vampire and sci-fi; sub cats/descriptors of classic or old, YA, magic, place (i.e. US, UK, Spain, worldwide etc) and its crossover category (such as apocalyptic as a sub category for vampire for The Passage).

List by crowdsourcing! Come up with other suggestions, sub cats etc, add and amend and change the list over the next few days (you who of you can be bothered) and I'll try and do a definitive version with standardised descriptors later in the week.

Sorry misread your suggestion - so four top lines of apocalyptic, dystopian, fantasy, sci fi and use (zombie) and (vampire) and (flu) for example as sub cats? Just to make sure I'm clear.

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.

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.

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.

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

Oh yes, The End Of Mr Y

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

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

FanFuckingTastic so sorry you're not feeling any better - hope you get well soon.

Keep suggestions coming with brief descriptions so I don't have to google them as well and I'll compile and re-edit the list on Wednesday (and yes Cote with the four main topics and subcats as discussed above).

Fantastic thread!!!

As you were

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 )

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

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.

Giraffes, Wilding, Lobbing, keep 'em coming, good work with the labelling (setting sub categories to say which country they are set in would be helpful too although I'll just leave it out if it's not straightforward).

More contributions extremely welcome, list update due Weds eve.

I am so pleased there are others who like all this stuff

PS Fan definitely up for a book club - the one I'm on in FB is great though, people write reports on what they've read and what they liked/disliked rather than everyone trying to read the same thing when we all have different tastes, and it's all cross fertilised quite nicely. So I think that might work here... we could title threads something like ApocalypseFictionFanClub: xxx book discussion, so it was obvious what we were discussing and people didn't feel left out?

The one I mention above is the only book club I've ever been part of for more than a couple of sessions, and it means it's easier for new people to come and old people to go - which would probably be good for here.

What do you all think?

I'm going to put my foot down about On The Beach by Nevil Shute and say that it should not make it to any "Best Of" list, purely on the grounds of being a completely unrealistic, laughable story of how people would NOT behave when faced with annihilation - not trying to save their lives by moving down south, talking about whether to start fishing season a bit early this year (as if there will be a next year, ffs), the guy's wife is concerned about his career (although they are all going to die soon) and so he wouldn't think of refusing an assignment, which would take him away from his wife & newborn baby for months. What?

Truly pathetic excuse for a sci-fi book (Sorry lobbing )

An example:

They are talking about a couple and this woman says "I hope they get married and have children". When told how unlikely that is with, you know, certain death by September, she replies:

" Oh dear, I keep forgetting "

Really???

The Chemical Garden trilogy by Lauren Destefano...very reminiscent of Handmaids tale!

I found a ya self published zombie romance novella series called Love and Decay which I'm really enjoying. The author releases a new episode fortnightly comprised of about 4 chapters (~20k words)

Cotedazur, I have to disagree - I loved it, even if it did make me feel miserable to a degree no other book has...but each to their own and all that.

I'd sooner chew my own arm off than read anything else by Margaret Atwood, and loathed 'Death of Grass' by John Christopher but I'm aware others don't feel the same and wouldn't life be boring if they did?!

Lobbing - Would you call it in any way plausible? Does it 'work' as a book on any level (believable characters, credible plot, etc)?

And if not, what was it that you 'loved'?

That bit I quoted downthread sums the book up for me.
"Ooh I hope they get married & have children"
"Err... but we'll all be dead by September"
"Oh dear, I keep forgetting"

Huh!?!? You morons, just hurry up and die already

Sorry, I get really riled up about this book

I really enjoyed Coldbrook, which was recommended on here at some stage.
The stand, the road, work war z. I didn't enjoy the passage as much.

I really loved Then by Julie Myerson, but I know she is not well liked on MN.

I also liked Jorge Saramago Blindness

Sometimes I like reading really bad ones as much as the really good ones. Like when I watch shit sci fi and horror on the TV to amuse myself.