Part 1 (August 2010)

Casaubon’s Book over at the Science Blogs is starting a post-apocalyptic novel reading club.

This is about as targeted to my interest as humanly possible.  Science fiction is my genre and post-apocalyptic is my favorite sub-genre.  So let’s get it on.  I’m going to update this page from time to time, and I hope you’ll add your recommendations in the comments.

Any discussion of book, and certainly any discussion of post-apocalyptic books HAS to begin with Andre Norton’s  Daybreak 2250 – AD, also known as Star Man’s Son.

This was the first science fiction book I ever read, and it remains one of my all-time favorite books.  Some people claim that this book, published in 1952, was the first book set in a post-nuclear world.  I love, love, love this book, and highly recommend it.

Another book- or actually 7-book series- that I really like is The Pelbar Cycle by  Paul O. Williams.  The Amazon description sums it up well:

One thousand years after a devastating and chaotic series of nuclear exchanges, all that is left of the United States of America are scattered, warring tribes and small city-states. One of the latter is Pelbar-proud, civilized, and intolerant of change and new ideas. Rebels and troublemakers are sentenced to a year of exile at the massive midwestern fortress of Northwall, defending Pelbar against the fierce Shumai and Sentani tribes. Restless and brilliant Jestak is a visionary who has seen and learned too much in his distant travels to be content with life in Pelbarigan. During his exile at Northwall, he makes contact with Pelbar’s age-old enemies and risks all to rescue his beloved Tia from nomads armed with long-lost weapons from before the atomic holocaust. Jestak’s daring quest for love brings profound changes to his world.

I really enjoyed all of these books.

One of the best forms of post-apocalyptic story is the journey, in search of a better place.  I can give you four of these to start with.  Obviously, Stephen King’s The Stand and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road are both excellent books.  Lesser known but still very good are James Van Pelt’s Summer of the Apoclypse and J.G Ballard’s The Burning World, published in 1964.

Another of my favorites is David Brin’s The Postman.

I am a huge fan of vintage science fiction, and buy used paperbacks in bulk on eBay.  You can get a lot of books cheap, and discover a lot of good, out of print books.

Other vintage post-apocalyptic books I’ll recommend in this initial installment are On the Beach, Robert Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold, Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, and We Who Survived the Fifth Ice Age by Sterling Noel.

Finally, though perhaps not a traditional post-apocalyptic book, let me give a nod to a good book I just finished- Ursula K. LeGuin’s City of Illusions.  I really liked it.  It has a similar feel to Daybreak 2250 – AD, and that’s high praise.

That’s it for part 1.  Do you have some recommendations to add?