[Barbara]

I always enjoyed reading Science Fiction, and I think it would be great to post here some novels about a post-apocalypse world and survival. Good books of course!

There are the first which came to my mind:
- Philip Dick, "Doctor Bloodmoney. Or How We Got Along After The Bomb", a post industrial society after nukes.
- Stephen King, "The stand", how people and society cope with a sudden worldwide collapse (a plague in this case).

Any further suggestion?

[mmm]

"Canticle for Leibowitz"

[JR]

"Dies the Fire" by Stirling.

[JR]

also.....Lucifer's Hammer by Niven.

[JR]

there is also an older book..."Warday" I believe by Streiber. (sorry, I like to read and get into "end of times" type books) The Stand is by far the best....especially the unabridged edtion.

[gego]

http://mfco.net/surv/fiction/

Electricity goes out in the western world and society breaks down; an heroic struggle against evil.

I kept reading it and am waiting for the final chapters to be written.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

Swan Song by Robert McCammon.

Scairy read, post apocolyptic world and living in a waste land. Couldn't put it down.

Edited to add: co-won 1987 Bram Stoker award

[eastbay]

How I ever got to be my age without ever hearing of, "Lucifer's Hammer', I'll never know.

But I want to thank you JR for mentioning this amazing and refreshingly relevant book. I have about 75 pages more to read and I absolutely love it!!

I read another similar book in the 70's, but can't recall the name... was it, 'That Perfect Day'??? It takes place in the Sierra Foothills as well, but the near-total destruction of population is from plague... and a mail carrier plays an important role in it as well.

If anyone can recell the title I would appreciate it... and then I could recommend it.

Thanks again!

EastBay

[seldom_seen]

Edward Abbey, "Good News" (1980)

Cover Text
-------------
In Good News, Edward Abbey's acclaimed underground classic, the West is wild again. American civilization as the twentieth century knew it, has crumbled. In the great Southwest, a new breed of settles, whites and Indians together, is creating a new way of life in the wilderness -- a pastural economy -- with shills and sawy resurrected from the pre-industrial past. Meanwhile, in a last surviving bastion of urban file, the remnants of the power elite are girding their armed forces to reimpose the old order. This is a land of horses and motorcycles, high-tech weaponry and primitive courage, and the struggle for the American future is mounting in intensity. No quarter is asked for given, and the outcome hangs in perilous balance against a background of magnificent nature and eternal human verities.

With this boldly satirical imaginary world, Edward Abbey asks us to look us to look around and take stock of what we value before it is too late.

[JR]

No problem, eastbay! I'm reading another one now that was actually published in 1949, then rereleased in the 80's. I missed this one until now. It's called Earh Abides by George Stewart. Main character is in the wilderness for an extended period and while he's gone the world is ravaged by a killer virus. Most humans die. He is bitten by a rattlesnake about the same time the virus reaches him and somehow survives it. Book is about his travels accross the US post-virus die-off. You can tell it was written in some parts in 1949, but you can relate it to curren times. Good read, tho a bit slow in some parts.



JR

[eastbay]

Earth Abides!! That's it. Thanks... I'm going to try to find a copy of that and read it again... crumbled freeways... dried out car tires... no more gas... I can only remember scattered parts.

EastBay

[bart]

Hmmm, novels related to peak oil. Probably means sf.

Some great recommendations were given above. Dr. Bloodmoney is a classic (anything that the Master, PK Dick, wrote is a classic!).

Some oldies:

Wolfbane by Pohl and Kornbluth.
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/wolfbane.htm
Back in 1959, this famous pair of sf writers imagined an earth with low calories/capita, and pointed out that the quality of life depends on the amount of available energy. $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ''')...the 1000-1500 calorie range... produces the small arts, the appreciations, the peaceful arrangements of necessities into subtle relationships of traditionally-agreed-upon-virtue. Japan, locked into its Shogunate prison, picked scanty food from mountainsides and beauty out of arrangements of lichen and paper.'

[EnviroEngr]

Posted By: pamur

Joined: Mar 07, 2004
Posts: 6
Location: seattle

Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 11:10 pm
Post subject: You might consider the Alternate History Genre of SF


I am reading a book now by S. M. Sterling called "Peshawar Lancers" that is from the Alternate History genre of SF literature. In this book the earth was hit by a meteor (comet?) shower in 1870 and the Northern regions of Europe and North America entered an ice age. The novel takes place in the 21st Century in SE Asia where British subjects had migrated to restart the Empire. The writing is very good and the detail required to pull off a completely imaginary society is amazing.
I was led to this book from another book of Sterlings called "Island in the Sea of Time." This is the first book of a trilogy that describes what happens when an island in the modern U. S. enters a time warp and is transported back in time a few thousand years. It is very interesting because it shows what the people have to do to keep their society running without the supply lines of food and energy that they were used to and how they were able to use the accumulated knowledge of civilization to their advantage in their encounters with the past. Again a very interesting book and well written.

[keekles]

..

[katkinkate]

Wolf and Iron by Gordon R Dickson

[tivoli]

Yeah, yeah, I know the last half pretty much blows, but the first half is actually quite entertaining.

[LadyRuby]

Into the Forest" by Jean Hegland

Not specifically about peak oil, it doesn't say specifically in the book, but when I read it I was assuming something like nuclear holocaust. Now I think it was more like peak oil.

Fiction, but a really good book. I read this long before I'd heard of peak oil.

A couple of reviews:

Amazon.com
Jean Hegland's prose in Into the Forest is as breathtaking as one of the musty, ancient redwoods that share the woodland with Nell and Eva, two sisters who must learn to live in harmony with the northern California forest when the electricity shuts off, the phones go out, their parents die, and all civilization beyond them seems to grind to a halt. At first, the girls rely on stores of food left in their parents' pantry, but when those supplies begin to dwindle, their only option is to turn to each other and the forest's plants and animals for friendship, courage, and sustenance. Into the Forest, an apocalyptic coming-of-age story, will fill readers (both teens and adults) with a profound sense of the human spirit's strength and beauty. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Hegland's powerfully imagined first novel will make readers thankful for telephones and CD players while it underscores the vulnerability of lives dependent on technology. The tale is set in the near future: electricity has failed, mail delivery has stopped and looting and violence have destroyed civil order. In Northern California, 32 miles from the closest town, two orphaned teenage sisters ration a dwindling supply of tea bags and infested cornmeal. They remember their mother's warnings about the nearby forest, but as the crisis deepens, bears and wild pigs start to seem less dangerous than humans. From the first page, the sense of crisis and the lucid, honest voice of the 17-year-old narrator pull the reader in, and the fight for survival adds an urgent edge to her coming-of-age story. Flashbacks smartly create a portrait of the lost family: an iconoclastic father, artistic mother and two independent daughters. The plot draws readers along at the same time that the details and vivid writing encourage rereading. Eating a hot dog starts with "the pillowy give of the bun," and the winter rains are "great silver needles stitching the dull sky to the sodden earth." If sometimes the lyricism goes a little too far, this is still a truly admirable addition to a genre defined by the very high standards of George Orwell's 1984 and Russell Hoban's Ridley Walker.

[julianj]

I salute your indefatigability, oh my geeky SF droogs.

John Brunner, P K Dick and Ursula LeGuin (the Dispossessed is IMnotsoHO, one of the finest SF Novels ever written), are ace, plus A Canticle for Leibowitz.

I haven't read some of the others, but I'll put them down to acquire.

I ought to re-read High Rise by Ballard; my memory of it is that order breaks down in a huge tower block and the inhabitants are reduced to violence and cannibalism.

I'd add The Parable of the Sower by Octavia S. Butler: she's unique in being as far as I know, the only black female SF writer, and this book is about survival in a disintegrating US: I felt it was horribly realistic - it's not about PO, in fact I don't think it states explicitly why the USA falls into chaos, but it did seem very convincing to me.

There are a lot of British books about societal breakdown, The Day of the Triffids being the most famous, but Brian Aldiss called them "Cosy Catastrophes" - in that the hero (invariably male) has a good time as society collapses; I don't think this is very believable. The US based stories seem much more uncompromising and realistic. There is one old novel called Death of Grass by John Christopher which is rather more grim in a UK setting, with people being murdered. But quite frankly even this is, compared to what I have read about, for example, WW2 and Rwanda, nothing like what happens in a real crisis.

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LadyRuby', 'I')nto the Forest" by Jean Hegland

Not specifically about peak oil, it doesn't say specifically in the book, but when I read it I was assuming something like nuclear holocaust. Now I think it was more like peak oil.