Pre-dystopian, Post-apocalyptic Fiction - Levisan.me

Excerpt

The name’s Levi Breederland. I design and build things for the internet. This is my blog.

Published: 06 May 2016

Last Updated: 21 August 2018

I’m a subscriber of Untitled, a mailing list where, every day, one of the ~22,000 subscribers is randomly chosen to share something. Last week, I was given this chance. I didn’t have much to say (you can read what I wrote here), but I took the opportunity to ask the audience for book/media recommendations.

I’ve read a lot of end-of-world, apocalyptic stories, and I enjoy them, but I’ve always wanted to know, “What happened next?” as very few of the tales I read actually ended up with everyone dying.

In high school, one of my favourite genres was dystopian fiction, as it answered a lot of those what-happen-next questions, but ever since I read my first one (Brave New World), I wanted an origin story. I wanted to know how they got from “our world” to the end of the world, and then to thought crime and telescreens.

So, I asked The Listserve members for suggestions. What follows is their recommendations, sorted by how many times each was suggested. I think I’ve listed each suggestion that I received, but I got a lot of them!

Books

• Station Eleven by Emily Mandel

• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller

• World War Z

• The Stand by Stephen King

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• Earth Abides by John Stewart

• Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

• Engine Summer by John Crowley

• Ill Wind by Doug Beason and Kevin J Anderson

• One Second After

• Oryx and Crake

• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

• The Handmade’s Tale

• The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

• The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

• The Postman by David Brin

• The Silo (series) by Hugh Howey

Movies

• Maze Runner

• Snowpiercer

Plays

• Nether by Jennifer Haley

TV Shows

• The 100

• Arrow

• Dollhouse

• Falling Skies

• In The Flesh

• Survivors

• The Leftovers

Video games

• Fallout

• The Last of Us

Apps

• Zombies Run