End of the World Novels: A Top 10 (Edit)

[endurance]

Haven't gone through all the pages of this thread (I'm late to the party as usual) but I would list "One Second After" by William Forstchen

If this has already been mentioned - I apologize

Don't wish for a happy ending though

I'm just about 2/3 through it myself.  I agree, it's thought provoking (I like the way the community deals with folks who have stored food, at least to this point) and brought up some good points about vulnerabilities.  It's readable and seems well researched (but obviously everything has its weaknesses).

[wildrabbit]

Nature's End: The Consequences of the Twentieth Century: Whitley Strieber, James Kunetka
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang: Kate Wilhelm

[ReznorHead]

Hey Rabbit! Have you read Warday? Also done by those guys. I didn't know they did another book. Thanks for the heads up.

[Rorschach]

One Second After by Forstchen is excellent.  Chilling, dramatic and touching. 

[Bill Hicks]

I edited the original list to include Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack (The Last Ship got the boot).  I really do urge Peak Oil believers to check it out.  You'll find some chillingly familiar imagined nightmares within its pages.

Enjoy!   

[sunbird]

Oh, Rube.  It was chilling.  I thought to myself, that it was the most unnerving of all the doomer books I'd read.  (I've read most of them)  The rhythm of the language pissed me off until I realized it was indicative of the social collapse.  Any New Yorker would love it as they could relate more to the setting.

The Day of the Triffids  rates with Alas, Babylon.

Oryx & Crake was a find.

Parable of the Sower haunts.

Reading One Second After at the moment. 

GREAT THREAD!  MANY THANKS

[Bill Hicks]

Oh, Rube.  It was chilling.  I thought to myself, that it was the most unnerving of all the doomer books I'd read.  (I've read most of them)  The rhythm of the language pissed me off until I realized it was indicative of the social collapse.  Any New Yorker would love it as they could relate more to the setting.

Glad you liked it.     It haunted me for days after I read it.  The best part was that I'd never heard of it before I started this thread. 

[sunbird]

The best yet, a newb identified a book I read 20 years ago, Long Voyage Back!   

Thank you Hylander, hope you stick!

[sunbird]

Not in the top ten but just finished "Critical Mass" by Whitney Strieber.  Reads like Ludlum only with doom with no helpful info. The editor should be shot with the ending.  Children would NOT be an option.

[sunbird]

Hey, Rube.  There's a thread talking about a book club looking for an organizer.  Please, Please consider it.  You've inspired me and led me to books I'd never of known about.

PLEASE, the site needs you.

[anarchyale]

This is a great thread. I'm adding several titles to my reading list that will keep me busy for a while. As I was surfing Wikipedia for info on some of them, I found this title that looks pretty good and I don't think I've seen it mentioned here: "Down to a Sunless Sea" by David Graham. I have not read it, but how's this for PO doomer fiction (or prediction), from Wikipedia:

David Graham's Down to a Sunless Sea (1979) is a post-apocalyptic novel about a planeload of people during and after a short nuclear war, set in a near-future world where the USA is critically short of oil. The title of the book is taken from a line of the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

State of the World Before The Nuclear War

    * Mexico's leftist government has refused to export oil to capitalist countries;
    * Canada has militarized its border and made exporting oil a capital offense;
    * Britain has instituted fuel rationing, and had followed a policy of conservation;
    * Israel has captured all of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan in its most recent war;

[edit] State of America Before The Nuclear War

    * Booker T. Langford, the first Black President of the United States, has to deal with an African-American secessionist movement in Georgia, the Carolinas, Alabama, and Mississippi, and with an autonomous, urban, African-American Muslim brotherhood. He dies in the nuclear war: his successor, James McCracken, becomes president in an unknown bunker location.
    * There is a resurgence of steam-powered locomotion: single men without dependents 25 and older are drafted to dig coal; men with families may volunteer, while other conscripts are in the National Guard, advised by the SAS.
    * Most people left the cities; most of the remainder were those who could survive in the absence of law and order. Law-abiding people traveled in organized quasi-military groups and even the military withdrew from the cities at night.
    * Collapse of the criminal justice system; Jonah kills an intruder but Capel simply bags the dead men for collection.
    * America tried to trade gold from Fort Knox in exchange for oil but the gold never made it to the Gulf of Mexico because of riots.
    * The armed forces has whatever little oil America can still produce. The big planes are practically grounded, but aircraft carriers (Harrier Carriers) still deploy VTOL aircraft.
    * After desperation turns to mass starvation and cannibalism, Spain airlifted medicine, Great Britain sent ten supertankers of oil and Brazil sent meat-packing ships.
    * The United States has a program of voluntary expatriation for any citizen who has family abroad to support them. However, it is necessary to keep desperate people from storming aircraft; Jonah witnesses a National Guard unit firing on civilians who were charging their line.

[graveday]

Well, thirty years later Graham might be proud of some of his scenarios, and want to change others, but otherwise pretty consistent with some of the current predictions here.

I am finally reading my first M. Crichton book, Jurassic Park, and the preaching he is doing goes a long way to explain his anti-global warming stance.  Very interesting and fun read.  Never saw the movie.  Strange that he was only two years older than myself and he is dead.

[Bill Hicks]

Hey, Rube.  There's a thread talking about a book club looking for an organizer.  Please, Please consider it.  You've inspired me and led me to books I'd never of known about.

PLEASE, the site needs you.

I'm flattered to be asked, but I've never had much luck with book clubs.  The consensus always ends up being to read a book I'm not much interested in.  Then it feels too much like homework.

But I promise I'll keep posting on good doomer books that I run across.   

[Bill Hicks]

Bump - no one's posted in this thread in a while and I'm hoping someone has some new books for the list by now.

[sunbird]

Hey Rube- What's with the Bill Hicks??

Just read that Margaret Atwood, author of Oryx & Crake has written a parallel novel called The Year of the Flood.

Anyone read it?