“We had to put our money into bowls of vinegar,” my Aunty Mary once told me, “because they thought we’d infect them.” It’s hard to believe that this happened in living memory but in the early 1960s, smallpox came to the Rhondda valleys of South Wales where my family lived. Patients were put into a local isolation hospital. When people from the valleys went to the capital city, Cardiff, some shop-owners insisted that any coins were put into vinegar – a supposed ‘cure’ for the plague that dates back to the Middle Ages. Is it any wonder that I grew up with a fascination for the end of civilization as we know it?
It came with the snow. Overnight the world changed. Bodies lie unburied. Gangs of bestial semi-humans roam the streets hunting for prey. But for one man, the end was a new beginning. Snowbound, in an isolated cottage, Jonathan Richards wakes from illness to discover that the world he knew has gone. He sets out on a perilous journey across Britain, searching for safety – but finding only death, destruction, and danger.
The Snow takes you into a post-apocalyptic world where survival is the only goal. But survival at what cost?
In this wonderful novel, massive earthquakes cause a geological catastrophe that changes the world’s geography overnight. The upheaval of the ocean floor forms a land bridge that connects the island of Guernsey with mainland Britain. By removing the sea from the English Channel, Christopher creates a peculiar, surreal landscape which, we soon discover, is populated by some peculiar and surreal people. I particularly enjoyed the captain of the grounded ship who tries to run his vessel as though nothing has changed. John Christopher was the grandmaster of the post-apocalyptic genre.
One night, the island of Guernsey convulsed. As shock followed shock, the landscape tilted violently in defiance of gravity. When dawn came and the quakes had stilled to tremblings, Matthew Cotter gazed out in disbelief at the pile of rubble that had been his home. The greenhouses which had provided his livelihood were a lake of shattered glass, the tomato plants a crush of drowned vegetation spotted and splodged with red.
Wandering in a daze of bewilderment through the devastation, he came to the coast, looked out towards the sea ...
Global pandemics are far more enjoyable to read about than to live through. Probably the most influential novel about a pandemic is Earth Abides, written way back in 1949. The main character, Isherwood Williams, is bitten by a rattlesnake while out in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the west of the USA. After recovering from this, he returns to civilization only to discover that civilization no longer exists because a plague has spread across the world, killing much of the population. The initial chapters of this book are wonderfully evocative and terrifying. Though I must admit that I found the later chapters, when small bands of people try to rebuild society, a bit dull. That’s one of the odd things about this type of fiction – the worse things get, the more fun they are to read about!
In this profound ecological fable, a mysterious plague has destroyed the vast majority of the human race. Isherwood Williams, one of the few survivors, returns from a wilderness field trip to discover that civilization has vanished during his absence.
Eventually he returns to San Francisco and encounters a female survivor who becomes his wife. Around them and their children a small community develops, living like their pioneer ancestors, but rebuilding civilization is beyond their resources, and gradually they return to a simpler way of life.
A poignant novel about finding a new normal after the upheaval of a global crisis.
Stephen King has acknowledged that Earth Abides was a source of inspiration for his blockbuster novel, The Stand. This is a huge book (1,420 pages in the edition I have) with a vast array of characters. In addition to the pandemic itself, King brings in storylines involving elements of fantasy, religion, and horror. In spite of its immense size, the novel generally manages to keep the story moving along at a brisk pace though. I found the opening chapters by far the best; they convey a creepiness about things being “not quite right” (a dying man driving his car into a petrol station, for example) which, to my mind, is a good deal scarier than the more overtly apocalyptic events towards the end of the book.
Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by virus and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.
Soon to be a television series.
'THE STAND is a masterpiece' (Guardian). Set in a virus-decimated US, King's thrilling American fantasy epic, is a Classic.
First come the days of the virus. Then come the dreams.
Dark dreams that warn of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of…
Speaking of first chapters, they really don’t come much better than the first chapter of The Day Of The Triffids. The story begins in a hospital. We learn that there was a dramatic meteor shower the night before. Almost everyone went outside to watch. Bill Masen is a rare exception since he was in a hospital ward with his eyes bandaged. When he takes off the bandages he realises that he is one of the very few people who is still able to see. That would be bad enough. But what is worse – muchworse! – is that the world is now infested with huge, walking, stinging, killing plants – Triffids. If you haven’t read this book, you’ve missed a treat. It is an absolute classic of post-apocalyptic science fiction.
When Bill Masen wakes up in his hospital bed, he has reason to be grateful for the bandages that covered his eyes the night before. For he finds a population rendered blind and helpless by the spectacular meteor shower that filled the night sky, the evening before. But his relief is short-lived as he realises that a newly-blinded population is now at the mercy of the Triffids.
Once, the Triffids were farmed for their oil, their uncanny ability to move and their carnivorous habits well controlled by their human keepers. But now, with humans so vulnerable, they are a potent…
Not everyone would agree that this book is a post-apocalyptic novel. After all, it hasn’t got an apocalypse. No plague. No natural disaster. No killer plants. Even so, it has everything else that characterises the genre. Overnight, society falls apart and nothing will ever be the same again. But there is a small band of survivors who are prepared to fight against all odds. So what is the catastrophe that caused this? For reasons which are never fully explained, a foreign power has seized control of Australia. Their army moves in, sets up internment camps, and imprisons the population. A group of teenagers escaped imprisonment because they happened to be camping in the wilderness when the invasion occurred. This book (the first of seven) tells their story. A cracking read. Recommended.
Meet Tony Valenti. His high-flying corporate law career just cratered. His society marriage blew up in a bitter divorce. He's returned to the Chicago suburbs to lick his wounds and regroup in the haven of the Valenti family home. But time to heal isn't in the cards.
Tony's elderly father inexplicably shoots a sheriff's deputy on their front porch. Nobody knows why, and Papa isn't talking. Then their house becomes an unlikely target for condemnation and expropriation by corrupt local officials and their cronies.
With money and hope dwindling, Tony steps up to defend his father and take to city hall, and quickly finds himself in peril when he unearths sinister connections between the cases. The audacity of the plot against them fuels a gritty determination to get to the bottom of what really happened—regardless of the risks and ultimate cost to himself. To win, Tony must earn his father's trust and outwit his wily opponents.
Meet Tony Valenti. His high-flying corporate law career just cratered. His society marriage blew up in a bitter divorce. He’s returned to the Chicago suburbs to lick his wounds and regroup in the haven of the Valenti family home. But time to heal isn’t in the cards.
Tony’s elderly father inexplicably shoots a sheriff’s deputy on their front porch. Nobody knows why, and Papa isn’t talking. Then their house becomes an unlikely target for condemnation and expropriation by corrupt local officials and their cronies.
With money and hope dwindling, Tony steps up to defend…
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