Your favorite post-apocalyptic stories

[MillieDynamite]

In the history of the world, when the technologically superior find the technologically inferior, it never ends well for the second group. Why would it be different with Aliens?

For books, right now I'll go with A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys. It's sort of a post-post-apocalyptic story, about an Earth that has just finally started to claw its way out of the climate disaster, finally started to heal, when an envoy of aliens lands and says that they've come to save humanity from itself, whether we like it or not!

 

[PennyThompson]

In the history of the world, when the technologically superior find the technologically inferior, it never ends well for the second group. Why would it be different with Aliens?

Oh it is such a good story The aliens don't want to invade or conquer, they just want to help humans survive The Great Filter by escaping our broken home planet. Some factions are all for it, others want to continue the work of rebuilding, everyone thinks they're doing the right thing.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Yeah, are you sure it doesn't end with a cookbook like Twilight Zone, How to Serve Man? Maybe in a lovely sauce with onions and mushrooms?

Oh it is such a good story The aliens don't want to invade or conquer, they just want to help humans survive The Great Filter by escaping our broken home planet. Some factions are all for it, others want to continue the work of rebuilding, everyone thinks they're doing the right thing.

 

[Wifetheif]

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. Fast acting plague wipes out ninety-nine percent of the earth's population. Society is wiped back to square one. My degree is in geography. Earth Abides is the only novel I'm aware of with a geographer as protagonist. The novel won the first ever World Fantasy Award 1n 1949 and was decades ahead of its time. Ish, our protagonist tekes up a relationship post apocalypse with an African-American woman. During the Jim Crow Era? An incredibly brave stand for sn author. In Stephen King's book "Danse Macabre" he flat out admits that he stole "Earth Abides" for "The Stand."

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Station Eleven is my absolute favorite post-apocalyptic TV series. Strange, harrowing, occasionally funny, deeply, deeply empathetic to every character

This has been on my list to watch. I've heard good things. Have to finish Ozark first.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Ish, our protagonist tekes up a relationship post apocalypse with an African-American woman.

The Last of Us pays homage to Earth Abides by including a character named Ish in the backstory. You never see or meet Ish, but you learn about him through notes and diary entries that you discover while exploring the world.

It's a strength of video games as a medium that you can discover parts the story as you go, in your own way, at your own pace, just as you would if you were immersed in that world. Sometimes you find obvious things like dairy entries. Other times, you find more subtle things, like the remnants of a makeshift daycare center for survivors with teacher shifts and names on the wall and photos of the families who lived there.

Details like those enrich the story and make the world feel lived in. You could easily pass them by and still enjoy the game and appreciate the main story. But when you do stumble upon them, it feels like an organic part of the story that you discovered yourself (rather than having it forced upon you).

 

[Voboy]

Station Eleven is my absolute favorite post-apocalyptic TV series. Strange, harrowing, occasionally funny, deeply, deeply empathetic to every character One detail that I liked a lot from it was that people weren't dressed like extras from Mad Max... there are gigatons of clean, brightly colored, non-biodegradable clothes piled up in every clothing store warehouse in America (Stars Mackenzie Davis, who I love ever-so much)

Have you read the book? It's magic. Mandel is a wicked good author. I have no idea how good a job the show could have done in depicting her world.

 

[PennyThompson]

Have you read the book? It's magic. Mandel is a wicked good author. I have no idea how good a job the show could have done in depicting her world.

I have not! It's on my to-read-someday list, but... it is a very very long list

 

[VallesMarineris]

I have mixed feelings about the genre.

I have mixed feeling also. Especially stories with zombies, which I just don't get. And Children of Men was just too, too bleak. That ray of hope at the end wasn't enough for me.

But I have to mention two works I haven't seen yet in this thread that are worth a look:

Silo, which just finished its second season on Apple TV, creates an all too realistic post-apocalypse bunker world in which the silo itself is almost a character. I'm still wondering how the filmmakers made it look so realistic, with such clever detail.

The Peripheral, by William Gibson. People in today's world, which is on the verge of collapse, are contacted by people in a distant post-apocalypse future and pulled up-time to help with the future's problems. The future world's motives are not totally altruistic. The Amazon TV version is good, but the novel is even better.

 

[Carson19820]

As far as film and television:

The Walking Dead up until halfway through Season Five. After that zzzzzzzz.

The Postman. Yeah it gets a lot of flak but I liked it.

The Mad Max series.

The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. Hokey by today's film standards but when you are ten years old this movie was killer.

Planet of the Apes (the original). Same as above. I still have to watch it when it comes on tv.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I have mixed feeling also. Especially stories with zombies, which I just don't get. And Children of Men was just too, too bleak. That ray of hope at the end wasn't enough for me.

But I have to mention two works I haven't seen yet in this thread that are worth a look:

Silo, which just finished its second season on Apple TV, creates an all too realistic post-apocalypse bunker world in which the silo itself is almost a character. I'm still wondering how the filmmakers made it look so realistic, with such clever detail.

The Peripheral, by William Gibson. People in today's world, which is on the verge of collapse, are contacted by people in a distant post-apocalypse future and pulled up-time to help with the future's problems. The future world's motives are not totally altruistic. The Amazon TV version is good, but the novel is even better.

I'll read anything by William Gibson, but I really liked the Peripheral because while it was obviously on the road to apocalypse, they hadn't gotten there yet and it looked like it was avoidable.

 

[SimonDoom]

My favorite is probably Lord of the Flies, if that counts. Boys marooned on an island during a war; it's not exactly clear what the background is but the story is much like a post-apocalyptic tale.

I liked Stephen King's The Stand until the last part. I thought it went off the rails at the end. But the first two-thirds, dealing with the pandemic and its aftermath and how people gathered together to survive, was interesting.

Planet of the Apes, of course. The movie had such a great ending (thanks to Rod Sirling, who adapted the book into a screenplay). The reboot movies of this century were pretty good, too.

The Tom Cruise movie Oblivion was entertaining. I think his movies are almost always entertaining.

I agree with Carson 19820. Walking Dead was good for a while and then seemed indulgent.

HG Wells, The Time Machine.

 

[TheLobster]

A Quiet Place
A compelling premise, masterfully executed

I don't know about masterfully but it's a solid movie.

I have to say one thing about Russian writers: they really know how to do a post-apocalyptic world.

That's what living under 600 years of feudal serfdom followed by 100 years of communism followed by 30 years of whatever the hell they have now does to a mfer.

In general I'm not a huge fun about the genre either. Most of it is just pretentious: the author really wants to write a low-fantasy-like story set in a simple world, but doesn't want to do the legwork of worldbuilding and run the risk of having his masterpiece filed by critics under genre fiction and thus ignored as the Great Literature (tm) it obviously must be. There's a reason why so many post-apo stories sooner or later start veering into the paranormal, magical realism, psychic powers, and so on.

Oh, and of course the setting gives the author an excuse to spew aesops about their pet peeve, like climate change or whatnot, which is what many of them want to do instead of telling a story.

This saying, there is this web novel called The Phenomenon which I did enjoy quite a bit. I don't think it's actually finished but I liked the original premise and the haunting atmosphere.

 

[Omenainen]

On Lit, Sunlight by rwsteward (though it’s not post-apocalyptic so much as end-of-the-world) and Epilogue by me and AMD (zombies).

 

[StillStunned]

Literotica

Three stories/series pop to mind:

• The Dome by @StillStunned

Thanks for the mention!

In general I'm not a huge fun about the genre either. Most of it is just pretentious: the author really wants to write a low-fantasy-like story set in a simple world, but doesn't want to do the legwork of worldbuilding and run the risk of having his masterpiece filed by critics under genre fiction and thus ignored as the Great Literature (tm) it obviously must be. There's a reason why so many post-apo stories sooner or later start veering into the paranormal, magical realism, psychic powers, and so on.

Oh, and of course the setting gives the author an excuse to spew aesops about their pet peeve, like climate change or whatnot, which is what many of them want to do instead of telling a story.

Hey, no spoilers for my WIWAW!

I'll add another series, which unfortunately remains unfinished: "Hiero's Journey" and "The Unfosaken Hiero", by Sterling E. Lanier. They're set in what is currently the border between Canada and the US, and tell of a priest with psychic abilities sent by his Abbey to find a mysterious machine called a "computer". What he finds instead are an evolved bear, an enslaved princess, a druid, and a circle of powerful enemies who use machines to boost their psychic powers.

 

[AchtungNight]

Days Gone. Biker with family issues surviving the zombie apocalypse and reuniting with his estranged wife. Also killing hordes of zombies and marauding bandits.

The Rot & Ruin series by Jonathan Maberry. Group of teens in a world full of zombies learning to not take things for granted and the value of friendship.

Horizon Zero Dawn. Badass redhead fights robot dinosaurs with a bow and arrow. Humanity died out but is reborn and rebuilding.

 

[shelleycat1]

I’ll second On the Beach.

Also, a novel that has a different take on the apocalypse, after a magic war. Sunshine by Robin McKinley. It is beautifully built up. I first encountered the author in “The Blue Sword”, a YA/ fantasy and I’ve read a lot of her books which range from Beauty and the Beast to a retelling of Deerskin, very dark.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Children of Morrow
Children of the Dust
Empty World

All YA fiction, post-nuclear holocaust. Why yes, I'm a child of the 80s. Hopeful endings.

Do not watch Threads if you are feeling in the least but down. It traumatised a generation of Brits.

Firefly and Serenity are post-apocolyptic war.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I don't read much in the genre, but one of my favorites remains, "Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank.

On a side note, at almost every writing event I attend where agents and publishers are asked what they are looking for in new material, the overwhelming response is "dystopian" stories. Keep that in mind if you write post-apocalyptic tales.

 

[Erozetta]

The entire Fallout series. (Even the one I'm still pissed off at.)

Some I haven't seen mentioned yet:

Tank Girl
Wall-E
Z Nation
9
Escape from New York
Cleopatra 2525

(I never claimed to have good taste.)

 

[TheLobster]

Wall-E

I'm not sure documentaries count.

 

[kitmarlowe]

The Death of Grass by John Christopher and Ice by Anna Kavan are two of the best post apocalyptic novels ever written and I don't see them come up anywhere near enough. Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee is also great, though I guess it's "mid apocalypse" rather than post? Looking at this list it also seems I really like climate fiction, which I hadn't realised until now.

 

[StillStunned]

In general I'm not a huge fun about the genre either. Most of it is just pretentious: the author really wants to write a low-fantasy-like story set in a simple world, but doesn't want to do the legwork of worldbuilding and run the risk of having his masterpiece filed by critics under genre fiction and thus ignored as the Great Literature (tm) it obviously must be. There's a reason why so many post-apo stories sooner or later start veering into the paranormal, magical realism, psychic powers, and so on.

Oh, and of course the setting gives the author an excuse to spew aesops about their pet peeve, like climate change or whatnot, which is what many of them want to do instead of telling a story.

Coming back to this, as one of the very small number of writers admitting to doing post-apocalyptic in this thread (and because I need a break from my work):

I'm not sure how creating a PA world involves any less legwork than creating a low-fantasy world. I have both, and actually my PA world has far more worldbuilding, far more detail, far more coherence than any of the fantasy I've written.

I'll admit to psychic powers, but they've been present (or at least mentioned) since the very first chapter, and they're an intrinsic part of the story. Possibly because I was influenced by "Hiero's Journey", as mentioned in my earlier post.

I'll also admit that the whole idea for "The Dome" derived from a pet peeve, and that's AI and the idea that it can replicate human thought. But again, it's intrinsic to the story, and it's presented as such from the very first line: "If Mother could have experienced an emotion, it would have been satisfaction."

 

[Carson19820]

The entire Fallout series. (Even the one I'm still pissed off at.)

Some I haven't seen mentioned yet:

Tank Girl
Wall-E
Z Nation
9
Escape from New York
Cleopatra 2525

(I never claimed to have good taste.)

I totally forgot about Wall-E and 9. Both good films.

 

[TheLobster]

I'm not sure how creating a PA world involves any less legwork than creating a low-fantasy world. I have both, and actually my PA world has far more worldbuilding, far more detail, far more coherence than any of the fantasy I've written.

I haven't read yours, and perhaps your idea of post-apocalyptic setting is so far removed from the contemporary world that it does qualify almost as a distinct universe. There are examples of such stories, including terrible ones like Waterworld and better ones like Planet of the Apes; if these are taken as staples of the genre then sure, a lot of my critique does not apply.

But my impression was that in order for something be called post-apocalyptic, there have to be visible and tangible signs of said "apocalypse" occurring relatively recently, and definitely within living memory. And if there are, then you still have lots of remnants of the "real world" you can build upon, lessening any extra worldbuilding effort required by a significant degree.