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I'll second the vote for Phillip K. Dick. Yes, his work was written decades ago. But for the most part, you can't tell that as you are reading it. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a must-read. (you know the movie as Blade Runner). His best work though is in his short fiction.
Post-Apocalyptic and thought provoking?
Wool by Hugh Howley
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, The Mote in God's Eye, Footfall, Legacy of Hereot, and others.
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Originally Posted by Unsettomati
First, I'd just like to say that I think post-apocalyptic fiction often gets shoehorned into the label 'science fiction' when most of it really contains no real futuristic science as part of its fiction. Anyway, that said...
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Years after an apocalyptic event (the novel doesn't spell it out, but in an interview the author says he imagined it was a comet hitting the Earth) a man and his boy travel through what was once the American South struggling to survive. Between all the dust kicked up into the atmosphere by the impact, and the smoke from the massive fires which followed, the planet is perpetually shrouded in thick clouds that block sunlight. No plants grow and the biological cycle has broken down. All that remains to eat are increasingly rare stores of canned goods from 'before'. And other humans.
To say that this book is searing understates it. Parts of it are a gut-punch, but never gratuitously so. McCarthy's prose is aching beautiful even when it concerns a wasted land, and the tale is gripping even as it is at its heart about love and innocence and hope over despair. The book transcends the post-apocalyptic genre. Highly, highly recommended.
The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller
A decade after a pandemic kills almost everyone, the protagonist and his dog and his dour survivalist-type companion live at a rural airport north of Denver. He flies a Cessna, scouting nearby areas for game and intruders. And for years he ponders a brief message that came over his aircraft's radio one day, a snippet from the control tower at Grand Junction, across the state and beyond the there-and-back range of his small plane.
Eventually, yearning with the hope of some sort of order or semi-civilization, he decides to go to Grand Junction and search for the source of that message. Entertaining and thoughtful. Highly recommended.
Good suggestions; in the same vein, I would suggest Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham.
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