/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3113565]

What are the 10 best post-apocalyptic novels?

[Anonymous No.3113596]

>>3113565
1-10. The hunger games

[Anonymous No.3113607]

>>3113565
I'd say Oryx and Crake would be in their somewhere.

[Anonymous No.3113617]

>>3113596
Not likely, especially considering there are only three books and none of them are very good, but thanks anyway.

[Anonymous No.3113626]

>>3113565
The Road

(inb4 some wrong person says 'no it isn't!' It totally is)

[Anonymous No.3113632]

>>3113565
I doubt it's plausibly in the top 10, but The Book of Dave is a good one I never see mentioned in /lit/'s recurring post-apoc threads.

[Anonymous No.3113635]

I haven't read a lot of genuinely post-apocalyptic novels. The Road, yes. The Hunger Games are not post-apocalyptic, I think.

[Anonymous No.3113636]

A Canticle For Leibowitz is definitely up there.

[Anonymous No.3113640]

What would be the 'classics' of post-apoc?

Anything significant written prior to Earth Abides? What about The Scarlet Plague or whatever by London?

[Anonymous No.3113646]

>>3113626
cormac mccarthy is fucking awful

[Anonymous No.3113649]

>>3113646
I don't like Cormac McCarthy either but 'fucking awful' is a bit strong.
Why exactly is he awful? Because he's popular?

[Anonymous No.3113654]

THIS APOCALYPTIC SHIT IS HILARIOUS!

The apocalypse is the end of all this shit, there is no "post", but of course we disregard that old religious perspective of the word because we have science that already tell us what could possibly go wrong (nuclear war, epidemics, asteroids, environmental crisis, the sun going nuts, etc) and thus all we have to do is prepare ourselves and analyze factors.

Here enters fiction writers as part of this whole functionalist wheel and they will serve as to "help us understand how we would deal with situations like this". You just add some fireworks to that (videogames, movies, sensationalism, pessimistic news cover, cgi and photoshop) so that people are impressed. You have monsters(zombies), demons (aliens), fear of the future (tech revolution gone wrong), fear of the past (going back to savage animals), people trying to protect loved ones (often a romantic and idealized melodramatic approach), everyone is in some way an orphan of the world, men as a intrinsically evil ("monkeys with guns"), men as virtuous creatures ("something we would remember through hard times, but not in our crappy routine"), etc.

You have all those myths combined in a number of ways, all that fantasy, everything to reproduce the very original myth of the apocalypse in that "shit is about to happen, your inner value will now be judged".

[Anonymous No.3113655]

>>3113654

Would you survive? Would you chicken out? Would people unite or split up (or both)? Would you be there firing your gun(virtue) against the evil zombies(alienation, "sheeple", no brains)? The false idols and images would crumble(economic and social standards) and there would be only god's judgment (nature). No order, just chaos (and the realization that this chaos is in fact the primal order), the power of god above all men.

It's incredibly funny for me to see that people haven't changed in that sense. Dreaming of the world's end in the very same way. We just change the names, we change the words, but the ideology remains (even though changing the names make people think they are being very different from the original myth). It's a way for us to excuse ourselves from being artificial, evil, sinners, confused creatures who were made in the image of God (in that we hold in ourselves the idea[the myth] of objective truth, brought to us today by the name of "Science"; dreams of utopia [Eden, technocracy] and thus, dreams of dystopia).

[Anonymous No.3113656]

>>3113655

"One day this will all burn and then we'll see what we are truly made of... Meanwhile, I'll try to get ahead, preparing myself for that day. All the others will see why they should have listened to me".

Ego massage. A way for us to fear something extreme, when ordinary middle-class life is so extremely dull. Ignore bad realities, embrace bad fantasies. Ignore the now, think of the future: save, plan, wait, sin.

Hahahahaha, it's all too funny. I too am a slave, for I find joy in realizing how ignorant people are about those things, the same joy I condemn about them having about others.

The myths survive.

[Anonymous No.3113668]

>>3113649
because he's the most self-indulgent writer to become popular in a long, long time

[Anonymous No.3113709]

I am legend by Richard Matheson is well worth a read. Its short too.

[Anonymous No.3113796]

>>3113668
Anyone who even thinks about trying to become a writer is being unbelievably self indulgent. It's one of the most narcissistic things you could ever do.

This isn't a good criticism.

[Anonymous No.3113803]

The Road
Earth Abides
The Stand

[Anonymous No.3113808]

>>3113668

This is strange. I've read several of his books and really enjoyed them.

OP: On The Beach my Nevil Shute is really very, very good.

The Land of Last Things by Paul Auster isnt good incase someone brings it up.

[ForcedMeme !IsAMEmE6C2 No.3113812]

I think the best-known have been mentioned. Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is excellent, certainly occurs after (at least one) collapse/war, but isn't concerned with that *immediate* post-apocalyptic thing you might be thinking of.

Also, The Drowned World and a few others by J.G. Ballard.

>>3113654
>>3113655
>>3113656
Edgy teenager, you seem to have missed your breakfast.

[Anonymous No.3113826]

>>3113636
This, this, this.

Canticle for Leibowitz is amazing.

[Anonymous No.3113829]

Kamandi by Jack Kirby

[Anonymous No.3113831]

>>3113812
>Edgy teenager, you seem to have missed your breakfast.
You say that as if I was ever mad.

[ForcedMeme !IsAMEmE6C2 No.3113858]

>>3113831
No, it's not that. It's that i recognized that incoherent-yet-smug-and-disdainful thing, exactly like I was when I was seventeen on days I had skipped breakfast. Or maybe if I had just listened to some Nirvana or something.

[Anonymous No.3113867]

>>3113858
Oh, so it's just plain projection. Alright then.

[Anonymous No.3116536]

David Brin's The Postman

[Anonymous No.3116602]

The Day of the Triffids, although I wouldn't really call it post-apocalyptic, the main character and his protege seemed awfully cheerful despite the world being blinded by a solar flash and man eating plants taking over.

[Anonymous No.3117070]

>>3116536
Mah nigga.
I've re-read this so many times.

[Anonymous No.3117091]

Are there any fuck morality kind of novels you guy can recommend?

[Screwtape !!tdBUE9PLvpz No.3117135]

>>3113656
>>3113655
>>3113654
>yfw A Boy And His Dog avoids all of this

The Last Man is sort of apocalyptic but it takes a while to get there. I haven't read Roadside Picnic, but the Zone has the same vibe.

[Anonymous No.3117163]

Mogworld

[Anonymous No.3117653]

>>3117135
Maybe the Novel that was based on Tarkovsky's movie was good.

[The Importance of Being On Time and Being !OjeNcMSGtE No.3117682]

>>3117135
>Ruh Roadside Picnic
Yeah, that book's not so much about the zone as it is about family dynamics and the culture spawned by its existence.
Which I liked.