What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

Dies the Fire, maybe? (Haven't read any of the books you reference, so I might be way off base.) I find Stirling wildly problematic but nonetheless entertaining for...at least two books.

(That's not a very enthusiastic rec, is it? Sorry. I hope others are more helpful.)

Edit: Just for the sake of it, and since you've mentioned a King book, there's always The Stand. Markedly better reviews.

Seed is one of the best novels on the subject I've read and it has some good action in it.

There are a series of books by James Wesley RawlesJames Wesley Rawles that you might like.

Flowertown - SG Redling (Dystopian, set in modern times, kickarse female heroes, corp poisons a town, and it could leech out and kill off the planet)

JL Bourne: Day by Day Armageddon (Zombies from one man's POV) , Tomorrow War. (Economic collapse, dystopian, man becomes a hero)

Hugh Howey: Wool, Dust, Shift (all one series - Heroes galore! Our dystopian future after the war)

Area 187 - Almost Hell by Eric Lowther (The ultimate everywoman becomes a hero, walled off region of US infected.)

Second for Laurie's rec of James Wesley, Rawles - (Economic collapse) his Survivors and Patriots are good reads and educational on a survivalism level, but heavily slanted toward the heroes can do no wrong and things seem really handed to them during life and death events, overly religious, so the men are heroes and the women bake bread between almost accidentally shooting people.

Dies the Fire (series) rec'd by Liralen is.... cute, until it is not. Improbable, plot and science holes you can drive a tractor-trailer through, and cardboard characters, but passible if you are bored. I agree with her, beyond the second book, it reads like a bad soap opera.

Another one of my favorite books in this category is:



This book shows events from a Roman Catholic religious POV but is one of the best I've read in this genre.

Pilgrimage to Hell is the first in a fun series set further in the future with lots of action and very little realism

The Fox Run is set a couple of generation after the apocalypse and has lots of guns and weapons and such but is a decent read.

Robopocalypse where robots take over the world.

Night of the Living Trekkies Where the zombie apocalypse occurs while the main character is attending a star trek conference. It was better than I expected

Odd Billy Todd is about day to day survival after an apocalypse. I think it was a plague

Maybe:
The Office of Mercy
White Horse
Aftertime

I'll second The Fox Run. It's the first in the Endworld series, which was basically an extended B-movie. Far from great literature, but lots of fun.

Another 80's post-apocalyptic series was The Survivalist by Jerry Ahern. The first book was Total War, and it was about a guy who was overqualified for the end of the world searching for his family and kicking Commie ass.

The Deathlands series wasn't half bad, either, at least the ones I read. They take place a hundred years or so after the end of the world, so Our Heroes have to fight horrible mutants and even more horrible humans. It's very much gun porn, but not half bad adventure. The first was Pilgrimage to Hell. The author, James Axler, was a pseudonym used by a huge number of authors over the years, and as far as I know they're still publishing books in one of the off-shoot series.

There were a couple of novels set in the Car Wars game universe, which owes a lot to Mad Max. It's more of a soft apocalypse, though, with civilized towns surviving but bandits and other nasties owning the highways in between them. And unlike Mad Max, the cars are actually armed, which is always fun. The first and best Car Wars novel was The Square Deal by David Drake, who knows more than a thing or two about science fictional vehicular combat.

And now two of my favorite post-apocalyptic books which do not have a Mad Max vibe but are well worth reading.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham is about a man who escaped being blinded by a meteor shower that blinded 99+% of humanity. Carnivorous plants known as Triffids capitalized on the new status quo and escaped captivity to wreak havoc. I think of this book as more or less the first zombie outbreak novel, because it did a masterful job of laying out all the elements that would become cliches decades later.

Hiero's Journey by Sterling Lanier is about a Canadian warrior-priest sent on a quest for knowledge 5000 years after the end of the world. He rides his mighty war-moose and is accompanied by a psychic bear and an exiled princess, and together they fight mutants and a sinister brotherhood of scientists who want to, dare I say it, rule the world!

The Survivalist! I loved that series. True, every two pages he waxed on about his guns, describing them in loving detail, but they were fascinating (except everything they needed was really easy to find).

More recs:

The Cure - Stephanie Erickson is a stand-alone book written from POV of a young woman living in a post-plague US. Pretty interesting dystopian novel.

Road Less Traveled - C Dulaney (three book series set in zombie apocalypse, main female character keeps her friends alive)

One Second After, and One Year After by William Forstchen are set in US after an EMP has destroyed the power grid. First book focuses on a family's survival, the second details resistance to the new gov't.

One more, my favourite - Lucifer's Hammer. Aftermath of a asteroid strike.

Station Eleven features a knife-throwing survivor of an apocalypse. Interspersed with scenes from before the apocalypse, when no one was throwing knives or killing.

The War of the Worlds

The Passage