Life After the End of the World

...[W]e take, admittedly, rather morbid pleasure in presenting a new selection of the best of...postoil, postgrid, post-financial collapse, postpandemic tales by exceptional fiction writers."
~Donna Seaman, "Read-alikes: Life After the Apocalypse"

Writers have a lot of ideas about how the world will be coming to an end. Epidemic? Terrorist plot? The rise of the machines? Nuclear war? However civilization will collapse, the question remains - what will come next? How will humanity survive? Here are a list of books, some new, some old, that take us into the author's vision of the imagined cataclysm, and what life will be like afterwards.

World Made By Hand by James Howard Kunstler

After the Apocalypse: Stories by Maureen F. McHugh

Ashes of the Earth: A Mystery of Post-Apocalyptic America by Eliot Pattison

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

Half the Kingdom by Lore Segal

Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee

Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez   [eBook]

Snowpiercer: Volume 1, The Escape by Jacques Lob

Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin

The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.   

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams

There are 179 titles listed in the ABC Library catalog under the subject "End of the world - Fiction". With the current popularity of dystopias, especially in Young Adult fiction, would you expect anything less?

Links

A Practical Fiction List for Surviving After the Apocalypse [Flashlight Worthy]

How to survive the apocalypse [Guardian]

10 Facts About Life After the Apocalypse [Listverse]

Cli-Fi: Speculative Fiction about Climate Change

University courses on global warming have become common, and Prof. Stephanie LeMenager’s new class here at the University of Oregon has all the expected, alarming elements: rising oceans, displaced populations, political conflict, endangered animals.The goal of this class, however, is not to marshal evidence for climate change as a human-caused crisis, or to measure its effects — the reality and severity of it are taken as given — but how to think about it, prepare for it and respond to it. Instead of scientific texts, the class, “The Cultures of Climate Change,” focuses on films, poetry, photography, essays and a heavy dose of the mushrooming subgenre of speculative fiction known as climate fiction, or cli-fi... Climate novels fit into a long tradition of speculative fiction that pictures the future after assorted catastrophes. First came external forces like aliens or geological upheaval, and then, in the postwar period, came disasters of our own making.
~Richard Pérez-Peña, "College Classes Use Arts to Brace for Climate Change"

With Earth Day just behind us, we take the environmental bull by the horns in mentioning a new fiction genre that has been labeled "Cli-Fi". Science fiction readers have most likely read novels featuring a post-apocalyptic future before, but climate-related apocalyptic fiction has been proliferating widely across genres lately. If you are a reader of dystopian fiction interested in some titles envisioning the struggle to survive after catastrophic climate change such as a new ice age, rising sea levels, global warming, natural resources (including our water supply) being sucked dry, and general ecological collapse, we have some titles to suggest!


The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Solar by Ian McEwan

Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

The Healer by Antti Tuomainen

The Rapture by  Liz Jensen

A Friend of the Earth by T. Coraghessan Boyle

After the Snow by S. D. Crockett [YA]

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis [YA]


Links 

Global warning: the rise of 'cli-fi' [The Guardian]

So Hot Right Now: Has Climate Change Created a New Literary Genre? [NPR]

Weathering the Change: Cli-Fi Settles In For the Duration [VOYA]

Cli-Fi: Birth of a Genre [Dissent]

Climate Change: The hottest thing in science fiction [Grist]

A Brave New World: Dystopian Fiction and Film

Perhaps you may have noticed the tremendous amount of post-apocalyptic books, movies, and video games available. Why the upsurge in these depressing views of the future? Theories range from the inundation of information in our lives, 24 hours a day from around the globe, to our increasingly public digital lives, now available to anyone, including the government, on the internet. Pessimistically, the world is going to implode, explode, or become a mass experiment by some government or another.

Whatever the cause for these views, the end result of this media trend is not necessarily negative. Teens report feeling more aware of how good they really have it: iPods, Facebook, and family, but also medicine, law, and SHOWERS. Another upside to any apocalypse paranoia is an excuse to start learning old fashioned skills like sewing, canning, and survivalism.

The name for this genre, Dystopia, comes from Thomas More's use of Utopia, meaning nowhere in Latin, and the Latin prefix dys, meaning bad. If you want to escape the relative calm and stability of the present, check out these dystopian offerings:


Books
1984,by George Orwell
Anthem, by Ayn Rand
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
The Maze Runner, by James Dashner
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Shades of Gray, by Jasper Fforde

Movies
Blade Runner
Children of Men
A Clockwork Orange
I am Legend
Mad Max
Minority Report
WALL-E

Teen Reads-But Not Just for Teens!

For fans of dystopian fiction, or adventure stories and who don't mind reading Young Adult fiction, put your name on the waiting list for "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. While it is not for the faint of heart, it is still a story to be savored, with characters who draw you inside and make you want to see the book to its conclusion. If you click on the book jacket after bringing up the title, you can click on reviews to get a feel for what this book offers to readers of all ages. The second book in the trilogy "Catching Fire" is already out and has a long waiting list of eager fans. If you like this book, you might want to try the Scott Westerfeld series "Uglies", "Pretties", and "Specials", which is also hugely popular with library customers, young and old alike.