Your favorite post-apocalyptic stories

[StillStunned]

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.

That's a rule I've never heard of, but it could. Either way, my world has a remnant of the pre-apocalypse civilisation (the Dome, with highly advanced technology), and a savage world of mutated creatures beyond.

I think the issue you're referring to is mostly one for television, where it's cheaper to use real-world ruins, or adapt real-world structures, than create a whole new world.

 

[TheLobster]

That's a rule I've never heard of, but it could. Either way, my world has a remnant of the pre-apocalypse civilisation (the Dome, with highly advanced technology), and a savage world of mutated creatures beyond.

Genres rarely hard and fast rules, so this is of course open to interpretation. But if all you need for a story to be thought of as post-apocalyptic is that a devastating disaster happened in the past, then there are tons of storylines which match the criteria that no one would consider to fall within the genre, including works of Tolkien and the real-world history of renaissance Europe.

These are of course all nerdy musings; if it walks like Fallout and quacks like Mad Max, it probably qualifies.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

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.

Thank you for the hopeful message as I am through 25 years of communism, and still counting!

 

[StillStunned]

The Shannara books are set in a post-apocalyptic world, but I wouldn't categorise them as PA. The television series leaned into it more heavily though.

But his Word & Void books and the series that follow are more explicitly pre- and post-apocalyptic. One day I'll get round to reading them properly.

 

[StillStunned]

My Favorite in the Genre ...

... is not listed yet. I'm saving it for a separate post later in the thread. Unless this thread dies immediately. In which case, I'll wander the barren forum wasteland on my own, searching for that most elusive thing of all: hope.

Curious to know what your favourite is.

(And how come it's not "The Dome", obviously.)

 

[gunhilltrain]

I can understand that. With a few exceptions, I'm generally not a big fan of the zombie subgenre. For example, I've never seen The Walking Dead. A friend lent me some of the graphic novels years ago. While I enjoyed reading them at the time, I really have no interest in the show.

That show went on for far too long. The downside of being successful.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Curious to know what your favourite is.

My favorite is the video game The Last of Us (Part I). I've not watched the HBO series.

I'll start with two caveats. First, I played the game when my daughter was younger, so the Joel/Sarah/Ellie dynamic resonated very strongly with me in a way it otherwise might not have.

Second, I'm not a gamer, so I was amazed by how immersive "playing" the story felt. That said, elements about video games as a storytelling medium that seemed novel and exciting to me may feel like standard operating procedure to regular gamers.

That hedging out of the way, here are some of the reasons why I like it so much. *Story spoilers ahead*.

• The characters: Joel loses his only child, Sarah, at the start of the pandemic. Twenty years later, he reluctantly agrees to shepherd a fourteen-year-old girl, Ellie, across the country in the hope that her immunity might hold a cure. Watching their reluctant bond develop is the heart of the game. It's a character-driven story that shines brightest in the quiet moments between the two leads. The voice actors are tremendous. The plot is fine, but it's nothing special.
  
  
• The prologue: The opening fifteen minutes immediately hook you. You play most of them as Sarah, and you can really feel her fear and vulnerability as chaos erupts around her. It ends on a gut punch.
  
  
• The world building: The detail and thought put into building the world is amazing. It feels "lived in" because you're living in it. I mentioned earlier in the thread that you can discover parts the story as you go, in your own way, at your own pace, simply by exploring the environment (or not) and learning about the survivors who lived there. Again, this may be par for the course for video game storytelling, but it was a new-ish experience for me.
  
  
• The immersiveness: There's a scene where you're playing as Ellie and wandering around in a whiteout blizzard as bad guys hunt you. The feeling of not knowing whether to go forward or backward, not knowing if your next step will bump you into a cabin where you can shelter or a person who will try to kill you, is strikingly intense and hard to duplicate in other types of media.
  
  
• The ending: The final scene is pitch perfect. Joel and Ellie's motivations collide in a nuanced way. Ellie, racked with survivor's guilt, would give her life if it means possibly finding a cure. Joel knows this, but he also will do anything to protect her. Without her knowledge, he makes a choice that saves her life but ends any possibility of finding a cure. Does he do it to protect her, or to protect himself from the pain of losing another daughter? Does it matter? Joel lies to her about what he's done. Ellie asks him to swear that he's telling the truth. He says he is. Ellie replies, "Okay." The game ends.
  
  I love the ambiguity in that "Okay." Does Ellie believe him? Maybe she does. Or maybe she doesn't believe him, but she responds with her own lie and says okay for the sake of preserving their relationship. Or maybe she doesn't believe him, and that "okay" represents the moment that her trust in him fractures and their relationship begins to crumble. You can read it in multiple ways, and I think it was the perfect place to end the story.

(And how come it's not "The Dome", obviously.)

Well, because I haven't finished reading "The Dome," obviously.

 

[StillStunned]

Well, because I haven't finished reading "The Dome," obviously.

What, just because I haven't finished writing it? That's no excuse!

I was actually awake half the night because the plot bunnies were playing in my head, giving me ideas for the second half of the story.

 

[Baneson]

Z-nation is a guilty pleasure of mine. Usually the start of post apocalyptic shows start off entertaining, and then just devolve into cheap drama.

On this site I'm enjoying both Rebuilding by thehospital, and Apocalypse Slaves by AlexClayton. Vastly different stories, but one has great potential and the other had great world-building (and kinks)

Post apocalypse can differ a lot tho, from diseases and natural causes, to more collapse of society. Or a sci-fi take where things have evolved so much that it's no longer recognizable.

 

[Carson19820]

That show went on for far too long. The downside of being successful.

I liked it up until halfway through Season Five, then it just derailed. It had interesting ideas, but they drug them out to the point you didn't care. During the Negan story line there was just too many characters to deal with. But... I kept watching until the last season hoping it would redeem itself. Nope.

 

[NoTalentHack]

A lot of good choices in here so far. I'm not going to repeat the ones that I like (Fallout, for example), but I did have a few to add:

Games:
Wasteland - Fallout before Fallout. Fallout was actually supposed to be a sequel to Wasteland, but Electronic Arts wouldn't license it to Interplay, even though Interplay had made Wasteland in the first place. So, you know, eat a dick, EA. Also had a much weirder sequel called Fountain of Dreams set in post-apocalyptic Florida. But I repeat myself.

Movies:
Okay, I have a couple here that seem odd, but hear me out: Demolition Man and Star Trek: First Contact.
They're both post-post-apocalyptic, about societies after the doom (whatever it was) happened and humanity pulled itself back from the brink of extinction. I mean, technically all of Star Trek is post-post-apocalyptic (early 21st century Star Trek universe looks a LOT like the world at the moment, in fact), but First Contact is the only one that shows humanity near its lowest point, when there are only a few million people left alive around the world. I think that's a really interesting space to explore that usually doesn't get explored for a lot of reasons.

Books:
World War Z - almost nothing like the movie, the book instead is made up of "survivor accounts" after humanity has come through the other side of the zombie apocalypse. It really should have been turned into a TV series instead.

I Am Legend - So much better than any of the movies that adapted it (Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price, Omega Man with Charlton Heston, I Am Legend with Wil Smith). Almost every adaptation missed the point of the book, often ignoring its themes entirely.

The Ex-Heroes series by Peter Clines - This one's mostly popcorn fun, but it was right up my alley. Set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles a year after a worldwide zombie apocalypse that originated in LA, a small group of relatively low-powered superheroes try to keep a few (hundred? thousand? It's been a while since I read the books) civilians alive and safe in a semi-fortified section of downtown, dealing with threats both internal and external.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Thank you so much for shouting out Epilogue!!

 

[ThatNewGuy]

I Am Legend - So much better than any of the movies that adapted it (Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price, Omega Man with Charlton Heston, I Am Legend with Wil Smith). Almost every adaptation missed the point of the book, often ignoring its themes entirely.

So glad you mentioned this! I read the book maybe 15 years ago and really enjoyed it. Haven't seen any of the film adaptations, though.

 

[StillStunned]

Here's a thought: imagine how uncool the Mad Max movies would be with electric vehicles, and without the need for oil.

Of course, there's the title for the next instalment: "Mad Max: Fully Charged".

 

[StillStunned]

"Max! I'm coming for you, Max! I'm going to chop you into little pieces! In about four hours, you know, when my car has finished charging..."

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Will you be @StillStunned if all the cars are cybertruck variants?

 

[Erozetta]

A lot of good choices in here so far. I'm not going to repeat the ones that I like (Fallout, for example), but I did have a few to add:

Games:
Wasteland - Fallout before Fallout. Fallout was actually supposed to be a sequel to Wasteland, but Electronic Arts wouldn't license it to Interplay, even though Interplay had made Wasteland in the first place. So, you know, eat a dick, EA. Also had a much weirder sequel called Fountain of Dreams set in post-apocalyptic Florida. But I repeat myself.

I forgot about that one and I have the collector's edition for the sequel.

 

[StillStunned]

Will you be @StillStunned if all the cars are cybertruck variants?

I'm thinking a dozen Priuses, all circling around a single charge point, with half naked road warriors shooting at each other.

Max still has his charge card from his days as a police officer, and that's why everyone is after him.

 

[Bramblethorn]

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!

Hmm, you've reminded me that her Innsmouth Legacy series is also post-apocalyptic in its way. The protagonist and her brother are the last two survivors of their people on land, trying to figure out whether to rebuild the community that was destroyed or to abandon the surface world permanently.

 

[lovecraft68]

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.

Omega Man was good for its day.

I am Legend (Which I believe its based on) I thought sucked, at least the book because of its pussy ending

 

[Bramblethorn]

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.

Sometimes termed "environmental storytelling".

 

[MillieDynamite]

I finished one some time back and tried to sell it to one of the authors for whom I do ghost work. He politely turned me down, saying it was an interesting story but that he doesn't do sci-fi. I think the fact that it isn't set on Earth, or at least doesn't mention anything that would make you think it was, caused an issue with him as well.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

Sometimes termed "environmental storytelling".

Aha! Makes sense that there's a term for that technique within the gaming world. Now I know the shorthand to use when discussing it.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

I finished one some time back and tried to sell it to one of the authors for whom I do ghost work.

Short story or novel?

 

[MillieDynamite]

Novella and I'll probably go through it, spice it up a schose, and publish it.

Short story or novel?