Recommend me some good "End of the World" type books

[Sho'Nuff]

Screw fiction, read "The Coming Plague" by Laurie Garrett. Scary and pretty much true.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: Canai
Go read the Dark Tower series, especially if you liked the Stand.

Best books I've ever read.

I loved The Stand. I'm currently reading the DT series, but it's just not drawing me in. I'm about 2/3 finished with the second book.

 

[thedarkwolf]

Originally posted by: Aves
This isn't exactly an EOTW book but it's still good.

Warday: And the Journey Onward - Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka

You'd probably have to get it from a library as it's out of print.

I forgot that one. Its setup kind of weird. The authors are the main characters and its them writing about their travels around the US after a limited nuclear war. They also wrote Nature's End if I remember right in the same kind of manner only its about over population and pollution. Stieber has another really short one called Wolf of Shadows that you will never find about a mother and daughter that go camping and while camping the nukes go flying and they end up hooking up with a pack of wolves to survive.

You aren't alone BlueWeasel. I've read the first four books of the Dark Tower series and had to quit for awhile. I'll finish it eventually just because everybody blabs about how great they are but I haven't been very impressed.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I just started it today, and I know many are familiar with it, but "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand seems to be shaping up as a weird take on an "end of the world (as we know it)" scenario. This is judging from the preface and the bit I've read so far, of course.

 

[nageov3t]

tag!

 

[Dimmu]

I don't know if this is quite what you're looking for, but it is one of my favorite books in this same vein. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It is a story based in a bleak and empty post-apocalyptic setting, centered around a man and his son trying to survive.

A quick intro...

"The Road" is a work of stunning, savage, heartbreaking beauty. Set in the post-apocalyptic hell of an unending nuclear winter, Cormac McCarthy writes about a nameless man and his young son, wandering through a world gone crazy; bleak, cold, dark, where the snow falls down gray; moving south toward the coast, looking somewhere, anywhere, for life and warmth. Nothing grows in this blasted world; people turn into cannibals to survive. We don't know if we're looking at the aftermath of a nuclear war, or maybe an extinction level event -- an asteroid or a comet; McCarthy deliberately doesn't tell us, and we come to realize it doesn't matter anyway. Whether man or nature threw a wild pitch, the world is just as dead.

 

[I Saw OJ]

Day by Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne


Tactical Underground

Read his journal and get hooked, then you HAVE to by the book.


EDIT: Just about all books put out by Permuted Press have that end of the world theme

 

[Jschmuck2]

+1 For Monster Island/Nation/Planet.

Certainly an interesting take on the genre. It may be a little more uh..."fictional" than your normal zombie book but still cool nonetheless.

 

[dsity]

I have always liked on the beach

 

[dudeman007]

The Bible.

 

[mundane]

Originally posted by: SlitheryDee
I just started it today, and I know many are familiar with it, but "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand seems to be shaping up as a weird take on an "end of the world (as we know it)" scenario. This is judging from the preface and the bit I've read so far, of course.

I just finished it - it's more of an industrial collapse than apocalypse, but it does paint a potentially gritty picture.

Towards the end one character goes on for a fifty-five page oratory, continuous, without pause :shocked:. I almost died.

 

[Aves]

Originally posted by: thedarkwolf

Originally posted by: Aves
This isn't exactly an EOTW book but it's still good.

Warday: And the Journey Onward - Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka

You'd probably have to get it from a library as it's out of print.

Stieber has another really short one called Wolf of Shadows that you will never find about a mother and daughter that go camping and while camping the nukes go flying and they end up hooking up with a pack of wolves to survive.

Funny you mentioned it because I have been meaning to read this. It looks like the local library has a couple of copies. It might be time to to check it out.

 

[cthulhu]

Originally posted by: jjones

Originally posted by: thedarkwolf

McCammon, Robert Swan Song
Damn good one. If you liked The Stand you will like this one. This one is end by nuclear war.

I remember reading this one years ago and yes, it is a damn good book.

I too read Swan Song years ago and loved it.

Thanks for the thread OP. I'll have to make a list of some of these suggestions for some reading material.

 

[LordMorpheus]

World War Z.


Best apocalypse book ever.

 

[Throckmorton]

Trust me, you must get the audio version of World War Z

After listening to it, I could not even imagine reading. Each interviewee is voiced by a different actor. One of them is Mark Hamill.

 

[Oceandevi]

David Gerrold

1. A Matter for Men (1983)
2. A Day for Damnation (1985)
3. A Rage for Revenge (1989)
4. A Season for Slaughter (1993)

Its fucking weird but I've read it twice.

"The story is unusual in that the tactics used by the aliens eschew the usual direct attack by advanced and powerful pyrotechnics in favour of applying terraforming techniques to the Earth's ecosystem."

 

[StevenYoo]

just FYI, the Left Behind series SUCKS.

It's just the authors throwing Christian propaganda at you

 

[Jadow]

Read the Genesis of Shannara series by Terry Brooks. The 3rd one isn't out till 2008 though.

 

[imported_Imp]

The Omega Man

Wow... I just looked it up and the main is Charleton Heston! And it's based off the novel "I am Legend" by Richard Matheson's, which has a movie coming out soon. Three movies based off 1 book can't be bad.

 

[lupi]

Alas Babylon and The Postman.

 

[slackwarelinux]

A Boy and his Dog