Post~Apocalyptic fiction / NOT looking for Zombies, Vampires, Witches or aliens!!.

[Angi]

I am looking for more Goodreads about survival after devastation. (chemical/biological/nuclear warfare; natural disasters; plague and etc.) I do not want the supernatural elements that so many PA books offer. I also do not love gangs of roaming warlords pillaging everything on every other page. For example, I have read (and loved):

Alas, Babylon
On the Beach
World Made by Hand Got real wierd at the end with the 'Queen Mother.' Otherwise, really good.
Dies the Fire Started getting wierd at the end.
The Stand I loved this book, especially the first half. (I know I am contradicting myself with this one. No yelling!)
The Postman I put up with the pesky warlords...the story was good.

I hope you guys can help. I am exhausted with the looking.

[Christine]

Wolf of Shadows but it is YA.

[Angi]

That looks interesting, Chris. I sometimes find that some YA does not really delve deep enough (for me) into its characters and plot. I really get disappointed when a storyline has potential and it never really climbs high enough to reach the summit. What were your impressions on this scale when you read it?

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications)]

Sort of, sort of, How I Live Now might fit the description. It´s a relative apocalypse, devastating war in England. Not endless roaming, but very interesting. It´s YA as well but characters are very deep (though maybe not too likeable).

Sean Stewart has some books, post an apocalypse of magic having returned to the world and tech having broken down. Not sure if any would fit.

Awfully dated for sure, there is also a french book called Malevil (nuclear warfare, neutron boms, some people in a cave of a castle survive and need to create some sort of society), but I can not find it in English, maybe it was never translated. And it must be very dated by now, it was a bestsellers type of book.Edited: found it Malevil

[Christy]

How about Into the Forest, The Fifth Sacred Thing, The Shore of Women, or Soft Apocalypse? I enjoyed all of these and I love Into the Forest.

I haven't read this one, but it looks interesting: Eliot Pattison's Ashes of the Earth: A Mystery of Post-Apocalyptic America.

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications)]

I thought of more:

The Chrysalids - I love John Wyndham so I am biased, but this is lovely.

The Scarlet Plague - if Malevil is dated, not sure what to call this, but I remember loving when I was a child.

[Christy]

I would second How I Live Now, but it does include some supernatural elements, I think.

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications)]

Yes, it does so sorry. How I live Now has light telepathy, Chrysalids has heavy telepathy, and Sean Stewart´s books about a post-apocalyptic magic-return universe are totally full of supernatural elements. very sorry. Misread it was only zombies, vampires and those horror elements.

[karen, future RA queen]

i just finished America Pacifica which is exactly what you want, i think. it is about what happens after an ice age overtakes mainland usa, and some survivors create their own society on an island off the coast. all the action of the book takes place after the move, so the society is already established, like in the kunstler books. have you read the follow up to world made by hand?? i have only read the first one.

[Christine]

Angi wrote: "That looks interesting, Chris. I sometimes find that some YA does not really delve deep enough (for me) into its characters and plot. I really get disappointed when a storyline has potential and..."

It's short, so I could suppose you can say it could of used more development, but I enjoyed it.

[Angi]

Thank you all so much. There are a few here that I am trying to track down. Sadly, my library doesn't have a single book I want. Interlibrary loan here I come!

[Christin]

Oryx and Crake tends to focus on how the Apocalypse happened but it's told by a survivor living through it.

A Canticle for Leibowitz does have some roving bands of bandits but only briefly.

[Mir]

Riddley Walker
This Time of Darkness
The Visitor (some ambiguously supernatural/alien elements)
The City, Not Long After

[carriedaway]

Earth Abides, but it's a little unnerving to read with the thoughtless assumptions of gender & race.

[Randy]

The Road; The Year of the Flood...kinda sorta sequel to Oryx & Crake; The Handmaid's Tale; Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America;

[Michael]

I think you'll appreciate The Judas Syndrome series of PA fiction as it deals with surviving the Apocalypse and how a group of people live after.
The Judas Syndrome and Rebirth are currently available with the third out end of the year.

[Natalie]

How about Octavia E. Butler's Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)?

Or, the excellent Nation by Terry Pratchett which is a terrific post Tsunami story that highlights issues of science, morality, obligation on an island that must reestablish its culture and the expectations of the diaspora that leave their own devastated islands and come seeking community.

Did I say it's both sophisticated, tender and funny? All those things too!

You might also want to try The Floating Islands

I heartily second the recommendations you have received for A Canticle for Leibowitz and Into the Forest.

And for dystopian futures in urban environments where there are huge social stresses because of environmental and other collapses (but not necessarily post-apocalyptic) The Windup Girl and Perdido Street Station are both great reads.

[jen]

I'd recommend Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon. Though his apocalypse comes by way of nuclear war rather than plague, it has the same sort of epic reach, with a diverse bunch of characters from different parts of the country banding together in the fight for good vs. evil. I suppose there might be a bit of a supernatural element to it, but no more than The Stand... it takes a similar course in that the bulk of it is really quite grounded in the possible aftermath of an apocalyptic event, with just little bits of the supernatural sprinkled in throughout until it shifts a bit in its latter acts (and admittedly, gets quite a bit weaker at the end as a result).

I noticed that you cited some reluctance towards YA, but I would also mention The Last Survivors trilogy by Susan Beth Pfeffer, particularly the first novel, Life As We Knew It . It's a really close look at just one family's survival after a sudden and harsh climate change that leaves the world in a sudden food and energy crisis. The science behind it is seriously dubious (the moon moves closer to the Earth, throwing everything out of whack), but the survival elements are really interesting, and, I suspect, fairly realistic. It's basically just a detailed, small-scope look at a devastating crisis.. just one small town girl's diary. (Things become even more grim in the second book, where the same time period is investigated from the viewpoint of a boy of the same age in NYC.)

And for a little something different, I have to give a shout out to my all time favourite comic book series, Y: The Last Man , in which every male on Earth suddenly drops dead, except for one man and his monkey. Chaos and hijinks ensue.

[Angi]

I have a long list in hand...heading to the library tomorrow! Thanks, guys!

[karen, future RA queen]

be sure to tell us all about it!

[Jasmine]

so I haven't read it but The Silent Land looks like it might be along these lines

Award-winning novelist and cult favorite Graham Joyce transports readers to a mysterious world of isolation and fear with a hypnotically dark story about a young couple trapped by an avalanche in the remote French Alps . . . a daring and powerful novel about love, loss, and rebirth. In the French Alps around Chamonix, a young married couple is buried under a flash avalanche while skiing. Miraculously, Jake and Zoe dig their way out from under the snow—only to discover the world they knew has been overtaken by an eerie and absolute silence. Their hotel is devoid of another living soul. Cell phones and land lines are cut off. An evacuation as sudden and thorough as this leaves Jake and Zoe to face a terrifying situation alone. They are trapped by the storm, completely isolated, with another catastrophic avalanche threatening to bury them alive . . . again. And as the couple begin to witness unset­tling events neither one can ignore, they are forced to con­front a frightening truth about the silent land they now inhabit.

[Christy]

I read The Silent Land recently and I actually probably wouldn't recommend it for this specific request. It's much less post-apocalyptic and realistic than that description makes it sound - more psychological horror than survival narrative.

[Jasmine]

I hate book descriptions

[Jaye]

The Hermit Thrush Sings
Susan Butler

I haven't read this but I saw it mentioned somewhere else and thought a link might be appreciated here.
It seems to have good reviews.

[D.M.]

Soft Apocalypse might be something to try. J.G. Ballard also did High-Rise which is what happens when a society that lives in mega-high rise buildings goes down, and goes down hard.

[Kaethe]

A Boy and His Dog
Golden Days
Islands

[karen, future RA queen]

did you try any of these?

[karen, future RA queen]

i am bumping this because i find these suggestions interesting.

[Rachel]

If you haven't read it yet, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It's stark, bleak, and uses human monsters (not zombies).

[Rachel]

You might also like Jose Saramago's Blindness. It meets a lot of the criteria of a post-apocalyptic story--and also a Holocaust survival story.

Alan Weisman's The World Without Us is a non-fiction post-apocalyptic account of what would remain of human civilization if we were all to suddenly experience the rapture and disappear from the planet. I thought it was an interesting read.

[Grey]

On The Beach has already been mentioned, but it was one of those few books I was forced to read at school that I actually thought was epic.

My novel Götterdämmerung will be coming out next month (print on demand and ebook) and has a fair amount that addresses some of these topics