Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Entertainment and Arts > Books
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 06-14-2011, 06:26 PM
 
Location: Planet Earth
1,084 posts, read 3,281,926 times
Reputation: 857

Advertisements

My favorite series ever is The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. I'm looking for good books/series in the following genres:

-Apocalyptic/Post Apocalyptic
-Alternate/Parallel Universes
-Zombies
-Dystopia

Let's see if we can get a nice list and discussion going on these genres. And no I'm not a morbid and miserable human, just enjoy the books.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 06-14-2011, 09:11 PM
 
1,245 posts, read 2,207,865 times
Reputation: 1267
The Time Machine
The Man in the High Castle
Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?
The Sleeper Awakes
1984
We
Brave New World
The Last Man
I Am Legend
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-14-2011, 10:20 PM
 
3,724 posts, read 9,305,191 times
Reputation: 1427
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenMaster2008 View Post
My favorite series ever is The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. I'm looking for good books/series in the following genres:

-Apocalyptic/Post Apocalyptic
-Alternate/Parallel Universes
-Zombies
-Dystopia

Let's see if we can get a nice list and discussion going on these genres. And no I'm not a morbid and miserable human, just enjoy the books.
Islandia
Red Mars
Green Mars
Blue Mars

Tons of others I can't think of at the moment.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-15-2011, 11:26 AM
 
78 posts, read 329,884 times
Reputation: 56
cantel for lewowitz
alas babalon
earth abides
death wind
omaha abides
sorry for the spelling mistakes
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-15-2011, 09:38 PM
 
Location: ATL suburb
1,364 posts, read 4,140,596 times
Reputation: 1580
World War Z
Starship Troopers
The Puppet Masters
The Ruins
Enders Game
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-15-2011, 10:53 PM
 
Location: Columbus, GA
27 posts, read 29,333 times
Reputation: 20
Eric Flint's 1632 series is really good. So are Harry Turledove's books.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-16-2011, 08:49 AM
 
Location: Belgium
1,164 posts, read 1,968,139 times
Reputation: 1435
Quote:
Originally Posted by poletop1 View Post
The Time Machine
The Man in the High Castle
Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?
The Sleeper Awakes
1984
We
Brave New World
The Last Man
I Am Legend
All great classics.

The Man In the High Castle is one of the best books I've ever read, btw. Alternate history at its very best.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-17-2011, 03:08 PM
 
3,774 posts, read 11,205,541 times
Reputation: 1862
The three books of the series, "The Hunger Games".
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Stand on Zanzibar
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-17-2011, 04:36 PM
 
3,804 posts, read 6,157,956 times
Reputation: 3338
Post-Apocalyptic

I'll recommend the Hungry City Chronicles even though I've only ever read the third book Predator's Gold. Basically its a thousand years after a nuclear war wiped out the US. Cities are built on giant caterpillar treads and travel around eating each other and enslaving the people on the devoured cities. Municipal Darwinism FTW!

The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling - A comet struck central Europe in the late 1800s. Now its around 2100, and the children of British nobleman have come into the targets of assassins. Who's after them? Why are the Russians cannibals? Is there any timeline in which zeppelins aren't cool? You'll know the answer by the end of the book.

The Postman by David Brin - I don't know if you liked the movie or not. Doesn't matter because Hollywood was only kept about 1% of the book intact when they made the movie.

Alas, Babylon - Another great one about a town in Florida in the year or so following a nuclear war between the US and USSR.

Apocalypse by Zombies

Dwarves by Markus Heitz - This one is more low brow than a lot of books, but you'll be hard pressed to find a book where a higher percentage of population becomes zombies. It is fantasy though.

Apocalypse by Alien Invasion

War of the Worlds is of course the classic single volume version of this, but I think the modern standard is probably Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It isn't without its flaws as some big questions are brought up and just left hanging, but the invasion is fairly well developed.

Alternate History

First off I'll recommend the entire cycle of the Race books. If you just want action though you should probably stop after the end of the World War series. The books afterwards are more political intrigue. However, I think Turtledove did a better job developing his aliens than Niven and Pournelle did, and it makes the political intrigue more interesting since you have humans and aliens who still fundamentally don't understand each other 20 and 60 years after first contact.

How Few Remain by Turtledove - This is the starting point of series of book series, but this is a stand alone novel. It is also the best of the bunch in my opinion. The historical characters act largely as you would expect them to (with one exception and you'll have to make your own decisions on Lincoln's actions), and they are the main players which makes everything more interesting. Plus you don't have the problem of seeing characters come back in future books while losing their character development or not making a return appearance at all. Although four characters do make a return in the future if I remember correctly one stays largely in character as we know him from history, and the other three are cameo appearance in this book or the future ones.

Roads Not Taken - An anthology with some great short stories. "How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn back the German Invasion" and "The Forest of Time" are my two favorites.

If the South Had Won the Civil War by MacKinlay Cantor - Not the first, but probably the first alternate history to have a major impact on the American public. It details the history of the lands that were the USA from the end of the Civil War until the 1960s.

The 1632 books are great (at least the first two I've read), and I think most readers feel the same way. Sadly it seems Eric Flint lost interest in this after the first two books, and it is only still going due to the fanbase (seriously two or three of the novels and several short stories in the published series are by fans with little or no other published works). It is more of a gung ho adventure than any serious examination of alternate history.

In addition I've heard nothing but favorable things about Fatherland, but I've never read it or even seen it in bookstores. I think it is a lot bigger in Europe than the US.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-17-2011, 07:19 PM
 
1,245 posts, read 2,207,865 times
Reputation: 1267
Quote:
Originally Posted by Avondrood View Post
All great classics.

The Man In the High Castle is one of the best books I've ever read, btw. Alternate history at its very best.
I really liked those two Dick novels. Have you read Ubik? I want to check that out...could you give a spoiler-free review if you have? Anyway, gotta go watch Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends now
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:

Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Entertainment and Arts > Books
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 08:41 AM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top