Favorite Survival or Apocalypse Novels

I’m reading Nemesis Games now!

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A friend was wounded very badly in Vietnam and spent months in the hospital recovering. He passed the time reading war novels.

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Ultimate survival novel: The Martian.

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Just got reminded of a series from my youth. Sax Rohmer Fu Manchu novels

“The Last Policeman,” by Michael Winter. It’s a series of three novels, about a detective in a small New Hampshire city who’s continuing to solve murders during the final few months before a giant asteroid is due to hit the Earth.

Bigger than the dinosaur-killer – this asteroid will wipe out all life, and everybody in the world knows it. So as the novels progress, civilization just unravels.

Wonderful, beautiful novels, among the best I’ve read, particularly the first one.

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I’d second that! They were wonderful books.

The ones that stood out to me were by Paolo Bacigalupi.

The Windup Girl
The Shipbreaker trilogy

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He’s a local writer and yes those should be on the list too. Personally my favorite character out of those worlds is Tool.

Of his some that are particularly appropriate to this event are Doubt factory and Zombie Base Ball Beatdown.

windup girl was really good.

It’s the one that got him started but I don’t like it compared to his other stuff.

Now his short stories are eerily like many from C.M. Kornbluth. “Pump 6” is a favorite. “Tamarisk Hunter” expanded into Water Knife which is very close to home. I saw Paolo at the post office on my last trip into town. I didn’t get to talk but I hope he’s busy on more stuff.

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your post office is much more interesting than mine.

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Seveneves (but it was soooo long)
The Water Knife

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Yes, sooooooooo long :slight_smile:

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Good point, though 1959! Didn’t realise it was that long ago. But I may watch it again in black & white based on Austin Kleon’s recommendation

The Road to Nowhere series by Meg Elison:

  • The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
  • The Book of Etta
  • The Book of Flora

The first book begins in the immediate aftermath of a pandemic that has wiped out a significant portion of the population. The disease is more deadly to women, so it also causes a massive gender imbalance.

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Blindness by José Saramago: story of an unexplained mass epidemic of afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows.