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Hello little Cenobites! My inspiration for this post was the internet outage we experienced in my area a few weeks ago. The service has been down for over a week, and I know we now rely on the internet for a lot of things, but I didn’t fully understand the extent of the problem until the service went away.
While I was spending all this time without the Internet — which sounds great, but was actually quite stressful because I need it to do my job — I started thinking about the world if the Internet went out. It won’t be pretty. People aren’t quite ready for what going back to analog means.
That’s why I thought of books about different apocalypses. There are a lot of them, from simple outages to complete destruction of the world. These outages happen for all kinds of reasons: weather, war, nature, disease, take your pick. Instead of reviewing the same post-apocalyptic novels used in each list –The way, Attitude, I am a legend, On the beachEtc. – The books below are not exactly known to everyone, but they are all truly excellent and deeply disturbing.
Also, as I write this post, a massive winter storm is expected to wreak havoc in 33 of the 50 states, causing a lot of damage and power outages, so we’ll probably find out sooner than we thought. Although if you’re reading this, it means it all worked out in the end. Fingers crossed!
Reapers Are Angels by Alden Bell
This is probably my favorite zombie novel. The film revolves around a young woman named Temple who searches a monster-infested America in hopes of finding her brother, while being pursued by a killer. Temple also searches for redemption, but mostly finds only zombies.
Fear stuff
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Last Ones Alive by Sarah Davis Goff
In this thrilling premiere, isolation cannot save people from the end of the world forever. Orpen grew up on a small island off the coast of Ireland, and was raised on tales of the world before the murderous flesh-eaters that now inhabit their country. Alone with her mother and Maeve, Orpen is told that isolation is the only way to stay safe. But when tragedy strikes, Orpen knows their only chance of survival is to go to the dangerous mainland.
The Getaway by Lamar Giles
This is an excellent young adult thriller about racism and class. Jay is a black teenager who has the good fortune to live in Karloff Country, a gated resort where he vacations while the rest of the world suffers from a lack of necessities. Jay and his family are able to be there because they work at the resort’s amusement park. But things change when rich people start coming to the resort and don’t leave, and suddenly, the less fortunate disappear.
The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones
As if the end of civilization isn’t bad enough, there are also ticks. In the future United States, humanity has been reduced to a small section of the country due to deadly ticks. Inside the burned area, humans are safe. But there is big money to be made by transporting risk enthusiasts out of the region. On one of these outings, things go horribly wrong when it turns out that deadly ticks aren’t the only thing the group has to fear.
Ice by Anna Cavan
This is a 1967 sci-fi classic about environmental collapse and sexual assault, and it’s still terrifying today. As the world slowly covers the world and society collapses, the unnamed narrator pursues a girl he loved, but for what reasons and for what purpose, we do not know.
Flaky Snow Moon by Waubgeshig Rice
This award-winning novel is so frightening because it leaves so much to the imagination.
After a power outage for several days in a small, isolated Anishinaabe community in the north of the country, people realize they need to start planning what to do if the power never comes back. But power struggles soon arise, as strangers emerge with scary stories about the world outside their city.
You Were Not Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White
While White’s adult horror debut is technically more focused on dystopia than post-apocalypse, I take every opportunity I can to shout about it. Why? Because it’s one of the most disturbing and disturbing books I’ve read recently, and it is surprising! It is the story of an alien invasion that wipes out much of humanity in rural West Virginia and leaves behind a hive of a few survivors. Underneath all the gore and horror, there’s an important story about coming to terms with identity and dysfunction as a neurodivergent and trans person.
Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson
Finally, in what seems most likely, technology has turned against humans. The artificial intelligence that the world relied on has decided that it doesn’t need people around it anymore, and its robots attack, killing most civilizations. The novel is narrated by a lone group of survivors, telling the story of the fatal blows as they try to determine whether they have any chance of fighting back.
Well, stars, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books almost nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say a lot of adjectives about them on the Book Riot podcast All books! And on Instagram.
