Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction Books
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction (or, in some cases, the more general category speculative fiction) that is concerned with the end of civilization through nuclear war, plague, or some other general disaster. Post-apocalyptic fiction is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten (or mythologized). Post-apocalyptic stories often take place in an agrarian, non-technological future world, or a world where only scattered elements of technology remain. There is a considerable degree of blurring between this form of science fiction and that which deals with false utopias or dystopic societies.The genres gained in popularity after World War II, when the possibility of global annihilation by nuclear weapons entered the public consciousness. However, recognizable apocalyptic novels existed at least since the first quarter of the 19th century, when Mary Shelley's The Last Man was published. Additionally, the subgenres draw on a body of apocalyptic literature, tropes, and interpretations that are millennia old.
Post Apocalyptic SciFi Books
The first work of modern apocalyptic fiction may be Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man. The last portion becoming the story of a man living in a future world emptied of humanity by plague, it contains the recognizable elements of the subgenre. It is sometimes considered the first science fiction novel, though that distinction is more often given to Shelley's more famous earlier novel, Frankenstein.
The 1885 novel After London by Richard Jefferies is of the type that could be best described as "post-apocalyptic fiction"; after some sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature, and the few survivors to a quasi-medieval way of life. The first chapters consist solely of a loving description of nature reclaiming England: fields becoming overrun by forest, domesticated animals running wild, roads and towns becoming overgrown, the hated London reverting to lake and poisonous swampland. The rest of the story is a straightforward adventure/quest set many years later in the wild landscape and society; but the opening chapters set an example for many later science fiction stories. Similarly, Stephen Vincent Benét's short story "By the Waters of Babylon" (1937) describes a young man's coming-of-age quest to a ruined New York City after an unspecified disaster.
George NEW Orwell
1984 - George Orwell - New Nineteen Eighty-Four (also titled 1984) by George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair) is an English novel about life in an authoritarian regime as lived by Winston Smith an intellectual worker at the Ministry of Truth. Winston is degraded and psychologically tortured after he is arrested by the thoughtpolice under the instruction of the totalitarian government of Oceania in the year 1984. The book has major significance for its vision of an all-observing government which uses constant surveillance and propaganda both insidious and blatant to control its citizens. The book had a substantial impact both in literature and on the perception of public surveillanc more.....
King Stand USED Uncut
The Stand - Stephen King - complete and uncut - Used Get The Stand by Stephen King Uncut NEW click here Other Stephen King Books are here From the Blurb: This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides-or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail-and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile extra info.....
NEW Margaret Oryx Crake
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood - New Oryx and Crake is a novel with dystopian elements by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. Like The Handmaid's Tale the book is often categorized as science fiction novel but Atwood herself prefers to label it speculative fiction and "adventure romance" because it does not deal with 'things that have not been invented yet' and goes beyond the realism she associates with the novel form. Oryx and Crake was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2003 and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction that same year. Returning to the dystopic themes of Atwood's earlier novel The Handmaid's Tale Oryx and Crake presents a very different more information.....
Stephen Stand King Uncut NEW
The Stand - Stephen King - complete and uncut - New Other Stephen King Books are here From the Blurb: This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides-or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail-and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg the dark man. extra info.....
Tower Stephen King
The Gunslinger - Stephen King - Dark Tower 1 - New The rest of the Dark Tower series is here Other Stephen King Books are here In the first book of this brilliant series Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes Roland of Gilead The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world which frighteningly mirrors our own Roland pursues The Man in Black encounters an alluring woman named Alice and begins a friendship with the Kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike The Gunslinger leaves readers eagerly awaiting the next chapter. About The more details.....
Stephen Wastelands Tower NEW
The Wastelands - Stephen King - Dark Tower 3 - New The rest of the Dark Tower series is here Other Stephen King Books are here The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands follows The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three as the third volume in this remarkable series which well may be the most extraordinary and most imaginative cycle of tales in the English language. Inspired in part by Robert Browning's narrative poem Stephen King has written once again of his twenty-year affair with The Dark Tower and its strange world that is both so familiar and unfamiliar to us. Writing of his masterwork King reveals that he is ". . .still able to find Roland's world when I set more.....
Dark
The Dark Tower - Stephen King - Dark Tower 7 - New The rest of the Dark Tower series is here Other Stephen King Books are here The Dark Tower -All good things must come to an end Constant Reader and not even Stephen King can make a story that goes on forever. The tale of Roland Deschain's relentless quest for the Dark Tower has the author fears sorely tried the patience of those who have followed it from its earliest chapters. But attend to it a little longer if it pleases you for this volume is the last and often the last things are best. Roland's ka-tet remains intact though scattered over wheres and whens. Susannah-Mia has been carried from the Dixie Pig (in the summer of 1999) to a birth click here.....
Book NEW Cormac
The Road - Cormac McCarthy - NEW Book new paperback Get other Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction - click here Get "The Road" in Movie Tie-in formats - click here "The Road" the movie information is here The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and seemingly most life on earth. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. McCarthy said the inspiration for The Road came during a visit click here.....
Michael Novel
Eifelheim - Michael Flynn - NEW Novel In 1349 one small town in Germany disappeared and has never been resettled. Tom a contemporary historian and his theoretical physicist girlfriend Sharon become interested. Tom indeed becomes obsessed. By all logic the town should have survived but it didn't and that violates everything Tom knows about history. What's was special about Eifelheim that it utterly disappeared more than 600 years ago? Father Deitrich is the village priest of Oberhochwald the village that will soon gain the name of Teufelheim in later years corrupted to Eifelheim in the year 1348 when the Black Death is gathering strength across Europe but is still not nearby. Deitrich is an e more information.....
NEW Place Carmody
The Keeping Place - Isobelle Carmody - New Book 4 of the Obernewtyn Chronicles Paperback Get other Isobelle Carmody books here After a kidnapping Elspeth Gordie and the Misfits are forced to join the rebellion against the oppressive Council using their extraordinary mind powers. But Elspeth must also seek out clues left by the long-dead seer Kasanda vital to her quest to destroy the Beforetime weaponmachines. One clue is lost in the past forcing Elspeth to travel the Dreamtrails stalked by a terrifying winged beast with the cat Maruman as her guide and guardian. Only there can she learn more of the Beforetimer Misfits and their enemy Govamen. Gradually Elspeth realises that her quest is inti more details.....
John Wyndham
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham - New Book Paperback Triffids are fictional plants capable of animal-like behaviour: they feed on rotting meat are able to uproot themselves and move about on their three "legs" possess a deadly whip-like poisonous sting and appear to communicate with each other. The narrator and protagonist is Bill Masen who has made his living working with Triffids. Being an expert on the subject he speculates that they were deliberately bioengineered in the Soviet Union and that Triffid seeds were spread worldwide when an attempt was made to smuggle them out of Russia; the escaping plane is presumed to have been shot down literally scattering the seeds to t click here.....
Fire NEW S Dies Stirling M
Dies the Fire - S.M. Stirling - NEW Book Other S.M. Stirling Books click here Other The Emberverse series or "The Change" click here Paperback - the first Book in "The Change" Dies the Fire chronicles the struggle of two groups who try to survive "The Change" a sudden worldwide event that alters physical laws so that electricity gunpowder and most forms of high-energy-density technology no longer work. As a result modern civilization comes crashing down. Michael Havel a former Marine turned bush pilot is in the air over the Bitterroot mountains in Idaho when The Change occurs on March 17 1998. His passengers are wealthy industrialist Kenneth Larsson Larsson's wi more information.....
Dome King NEW Under Stephen
Under the Dome by Stephen King - NEW Book Other Stephen King Books are here Stephen King's The Dark Tower series is here Under the Dome is an upcoming novel by Stephen King scheduled to be released on November 10 2009. It is a rewrite of a novel King attempted writing twice in the 1980s under the titles The Cannibals and Under the Dome. As King stated on his official site these two unfinished works "were two very different attempts to utilize the same idea which concerns itself with how people behave when they are cut off from the society they've always belonged to. Also my memory of The Cannibals is that it like Needful Things was a kind of social comedy. The new Under the Dome is play more.....
Book NEW Baxter Flood Stephen
Flood - Stephen Baxter - NEW Book new hardback Get other Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction - click here The above effects are catastrophic and exceed current estimates of climate change- related sea level rise. In the opening chapter four main characters (Lily Piers Helen and Gary) are liberated from a "Christian extremist" Catalonian terrorist bunker in Barcelona after five years of captivity in 2016. At this point sea level changes have already submerged Tuvalu a low lying South Pacific island whose inhabitants have been evacuated to New Zealand. However as a tidal surge hits London and Sydney scientists become aware that this cannot be explained solely by the consequences of clim more here.....
Andre Norton wrote one of the definitive, post apocalyptic novels, Star Man's Son (AKA, Daybreak 2250), published in 1952, where a young man, Fors, begins an Arthurian quest for lost knowledge, through a radiation ravaged landscape, with the aid of a telepathic, mutant cat. He encounters mutated creatures, "the beast things" which are possibly a degenerated form of humans. There have been many retellings of this basic story, yet little or no acknowledgment is paid to Andre Norton, despite sales of more than 1 million copies of Star Man's Son, for her thematic development, and popularization of this genre. The novel set a pattern for many future movie plots.Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949), deals with one man who finds most of civilization has been destroyed by a plague. Slowly a small community forms around him as he struggles to start a new civilization and preserve knowledge and learning. The Cold War saw increased interest in the subgenres, as the threat of nuclear war became real. Since this measure of destruction was no longer imaginary, some of these new works, such as Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7, Nevil Shute's On the Beach and Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, shun the imaginary science and technology that are the identifying traits of general science fiction.
Others include more fantastic elements, such as mutants, alien invaders, or exotic future weapons such as James Axler's Deathlands.A seminal work in this subgenre was Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959). Many subsequent stories were clearly derivative of this novel. Ideas such as a recrudescent Church (Catholic or other), pseudo-medieval society, and the theme of the rediscovery of the knowledge of the pre-holocaust world were central to this book. Paul Brians published Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, a study that examines atomic war in fiction published in short stories, novels, and films between 1895 to 1984.In 1978, Stephen King published The Stand, which follows the odyssey of a small number of survivors of a world-ending influenza pandemic. Although reportedly influenced by the 1949 novel Earth Abides, King's book includes many supernatural elements and is generally regarded as part of the horror fiction genre. Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006) is a recent work of post-apocalypse fiction. It won the Pulitzer Prize, rare for a post-apocalyptic or science fiction book.
Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (1977) is about a cataclysmic comet hitting the Earth, and various groups of people struggling to survive the aftermath in southern California.The award winning novel Emergence by David Palmer (1984) is set in a world where a man-made plague destroys the vast majority of the world's population. The work was nominated for a Hugo Award, a pair of Locus awards (for first novel and science fiction novel), was a finalist for a Philip K. Dick Award, and won the Compton Crook Award.Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is an example of both dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction.The framing story is set after a genetically modified virus wipes out the entire population except for the protagonist and a small group of humans that were also genetically modified. A series of flashbacks depicting a world dominated by biocorporations explains the events leading up to the apocalypse.
