Castle Romeo was the code name given to one of the tests in the Operation Castle series of American thermonuclear tests beginning in March 1954 at Bikini Atoll. 1954. It followed Operation Upshot-Knothole. The ultimate objective was to test designs for an aircraft deliverable thermonuclear weapon. Marshall Islands, Pacific. (PHoto by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)
The end of the world doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. Here are 20 post-apocalyptic tales that are actually hopeful.
For centuries, post-apocalyptic stories have been featured throughout literary genres. Mary Shelley, she of Frankenstein fame, created one of the first works of apocalyptic fiction in Western literature. Go back even further in time and farther afield, and you’ll encounter earlier works about the end of the world, like the 13th century Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis.
The point is, people have been dreaming of the end of the world for many centuries now. Regardless of whether or not apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is currently out of fashion, it remains an important part of our cultural imagination.
Naturally, tales of the end of the world tend towards the grim and cynical. It’s hard not to feel that way when the apocalypse is often touched off by human selfishness and frailty. Even if the end is touched off by something outside of ourselves, such as disease or meteors, the aftereffects can be harsh. People starve, burn, fight, and struggle through their strange new world.
But what if it didn’t have to be that way? Tales of life after apocalypse don’t automatically carry suffering and woe with them. In fact, in the hands of the right author, the end of the world can be a fresh start. After all, if the previous world was deeply flawed, it may be better to fictionally burn it all down and start anew.
Of course, even good things often require some struggle, and post-apocalyptic fiction is no different. The protagonists featured here typically have to deal with, at the very least, utterly alien situations. After all, many stories would be terribly boring if it weren’t for at least a little conflict.
Despite any plot-driven clashes, however, the works listed here all have good endings. Well, at least they have hopeful endings. Anyway, just because the world has ended, that doesn’t mean you have to stop, too. Read on for some of the more confident tales of the apocalypse and beyond.
Cover of Childhood’s End (Image via Del Rey)
1. Childhood’s End
At first, it’s not entirely clear that Childhood’s End is an apocalyptic novel. This 1953 tale, written by famed science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, starts off as a strange, but generally calm story. A series of vast alien ships park themselves above major Earth cities. After the initial freaking out period, the aliens (who refuse to show themselves) claim that all is well. They’ll be taking over management of the planet in order to keep humanity from killing itself.
Humanity is generally okay with this, as the aliens, eventually called the “Overlords,” make things pretty great. Everyone is healthy and well off, though creativity suffers without the force of pain or unhappiness behind it.
Then, the Overlords reveal themselves. This is a delicate procedure for, you see, the Overlords are the inspiration for many of society’s devils. I mean, they have horns, cloven hooves, gigantic, leathery wings, the whole package. Given that it’s now fifty years after their first contact, the humans just sort of roll with it.
However, the Overlords are really here to usher in a new era. The coming generation of children will be so vastly changed that they may no longer be considered human. Indeed, they develop new psychic powers in order to prepare for an eventual merging with something called the “Overmind”. Eventually, all of the old-style humans fail to reproduce and die out.
This is not exactly a cheerful situation, but it’s a far distance from total annihilation of our species. If you’ve paid attention in biology class, then surely you understand that evolution is natural and implacable. While the change of Childhood’s End is admittedly rough on the adults, the new children have a much better deal of it, even if it means that end of our species as we know it.
Cover of Alas, Babylon (Image via Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
2. Alas, Babylon
In Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank’s 1959 novel, people definitively suffer from the effects of nuclear war. However, despite the considerable trials presented to them, the people of Fort Repose, Florida manage to build a solid, mutually supportive community.
Alas, Babylon was one of the first works of fiction to deal with a nuclear apocalypse. In it, Randy Bragg, a somewhat aimless though good-hearted man, is living in small-town Central Florida. Then, he receives a telegram from his older brother, Mark, an Air Force Colonel and intelligence officer. The message is simple: “Alas, Babylon”. However, its meaning is clear and devastating. For “alas, Babylon” is a predetermined code between the two brothers. It means looming disaster. Mark sends his family to Fort Repose, though he stays behind in Omaha to continue work.
The exact disaster is frighteningly plausible. After a series of military missteps and confusion, the Soviet Union takes the opportunity to launch a nuclear strike against the United States. Randy and his brother’s family soon wake to the earth-shattering thunder of nuclear bombs detonating.
After the initial devastation and chaos, though, Fort Repose begins to pull together. It is a painful process, punctuated by incidents with bandits, radiation sickness, and dwindling resources. However, despite the devastation wrought upon the United States, people in this community survive.
Cover of The Girl With All the Gifts (Image via Orbit)
3. The Girl with All the Gifts
Yet again, the glimmer of hope in this story comes at the expense of the adults. Growing pains within a generation aren’t often this intense, but it makes for a compelling plot.
The Girl with All the Gifts , by M. R. Carey, starts out in an exceedingly grim state. The book focuses on Melanie, a young child who has been infected with a mutant of the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus.
Two decades ago, when this fungus first came onto the scene, it infected people and turned them into mindless monsters called hungries. Surviving humans were forced to retreat to heavily fortified places, such as military installations or a city known as Beacon.
But something strange has been happening lately. People have been discovering children who, despite being infected by the fungus since birth, have retained their sentience. They still can’t control their hunger around uninfected people, however. In order to study the children, scientists and soldiers imprison them, while coating themselves in chemical compounds to disguise their delicious human smell. With the children strapped to wheelchairs, both groups are able to communicate.
One teacher at the base, Helen Justineau, grows especially fond of Melanie, who has a genius-level intellect. However, the base is soon overrun with hungries. Justineau takes Melanie and flees, along with a small group of scientists and soldiers.
However, it soon becomes clear that Melanie is the true future of humanity. Hungries and humans simply cannot coexist. Moreover, the humans are clearly losing.
Though uninfected humans resist with all their might, their world is ending. That’s plenty grim for them, but it is clear that thanks to the work of Justineau and others, the intelligence and spirit of humans will live on.
Day of the Triffids cover (Image via Penguin)
4. The Day of the Triffids
First of all, beware the 1950s sexist tropes ahead in The Day of the Triffids. Still, considering the grim fate for people of any gender in many post-apocalyptic scenarios, Triffids is worth considering.
In The Day of the Triffids, the end of the world doesn’t come about through nuclear wars or widespread pandemics. Instead, it’s a double-whammy of blinding comets and poisonous walking plants that bring human civilization to its knees.
Sound weird? It sure is, so let’s take a minute to consider the beginning of the end of the world here. This 1951 novel by John Wyndham begins with protagonist Bill Masen, a biologist who works with triffids. Triffids are tall, mobile plants that, if left unchecked, can roam the British countryside, spraying people and animals with venom and eating them. Masen is sent to the hospital after getting triffid venom in his eyes. He learns that he’ll be okay, but is stuck with bandages over his face in the interim.
That injury turns out to be spectacularly lucky, however. Soon after his admittance to the hospital, people observe a strange green meteor shower that renders them blind. Masen removes his bandages and discovers that he is now one of the very few sighted people left in England.
The rest of London and beyond has descended into anarchy. Some newly blind people have managed to capture sighted people and use them as guides. When Masen teams up with other sighted people, he is routinely taken aback by polygamist schemes and totalitarian governments, as one expects a good Englishman to do.
However, in the end, things work out. Masen eventually settles with a small group first in Sussex, then the Isle of Wight. Though they’re still menaced by triffids and other humans, the group’s closing situation sounds downright cozy.
Cover of James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips (Image via St. Martin’s Press)
5. Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
Written by James Tiptree, Jr. (a pseudonym of Alice Sheldon), Houston, Houston, Do You Read? at first follows three male astronauts. They are set adrift in space when a solar flare damages their craft. They finally come into contact with what they assume to be NASA’s flight control in Houston, Texas.
However, they quickly pick up on a few baffling details. All of the voices coming in over their radio are female, for one. Moreover, they all seem to speak with an Australian accent. Soon enough, they begin to pick up on strange figures of speech. Are they being hoaxed somehow?
As it turns out, the male astronauts have flown off course and skipped ahead in their timeline.
When the men are finally rescued by the ship Gloria, the all-female crew explains what has happened in the interim. A great plague nearly wiped out humanity, and in fact killed all the men on the planet. The remaining women built an entirely female society and have reproduced through cloning and genetic manipulation. Everyone now seems to get along fairly well, without any major conflicts.
The men don’t take it well. The commanding officer is practically heartbroken, believing that it’s his divine duty to lead the women back to a patriarchal society. Another one slavers at the prospect of so many “waiting” women. The third, though a little more sympathetic, also engages in violent thoughts. The women determine that the three men would be a detriment to the peaceful lives of their sisters and plan to dispose of the astronauts.
So, pretty grim if you’re a man. Certainly, Tiptree/Sheldon wasn’t interested in catering to gender equality concerns. However, a peaceful matriarchy does sound awful tempting for many others.
Always Coming Home cover (Image via Grafton/Harper Collins)
6. Always Coming Home
At first, you may not realize that Always Coming Home is set in a post-apocalyptic world. Written by Ursula K. LeGuin, the daughter of noted anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the novel often comes off as a cultural study. After all, it does set out to describe the life of a people known as the Kesh, who “might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California.”
However, details throughout the story hint at the events that must have occurred between now and the emergence of the Kesh. They use some technology that appears eerily familiar, such as guns, rail transport, electricity, and even limited computers. However, the Kesh reject other more familiar aspects of our modern Western society. They recoil at the thought of cities and hierarchies. And while other neighboring societies have no qualms about militarism or patriarchy, the Kesh are a largely secular, egalitarian society.
It soon emerges that Always Coming Home is set in a post-apocalyptic world so far into the future that the events of the apocalypse are nearly forgotten. A scattering of tales recall the distant past and the people who brought about the end, but that is all. Other than the aforementioned computer system and the occasional bit of styrofoam, we are forgotten by the Kesh.
Perhaps that sounds tragic to you, but I take comfort in a fictional society that has learned to move on. The Kesh and their neighbors certainly aren’t perfect, to be fair. For one, they suffer from accumulated genetic defects that produce a sky-high infant mortality rate. However, they appear to be far more peaceful and thoughtful that the ancient society that preceded them.
7. Zombieland
Who said the end of the world couldn’t be funny?
Zombieland is a crackling-smart, self-aware movie that fully embraces the weirdness of the apocalypse. As you may have guessed by the title, the particular catastrophe in this world centers on the undead. Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a college student, travels the wasteland on his own. It’s an uncomfortable situation for the awkward loner, but what else should he do?
While Columbus is evading zombies and attempting to reach his family, he meets up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson). Tallahassee takes joy in running down the zombies. He is also on a single-minded quest to find some of the last remaining Twinkies. A crashed Hostess truck full of Sno Balls only fills him with frustrated rage.
The pair travels together and eventually pick up Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), two con-artist sisters. Though the women initially swindle Columbus and Tallahassee, the four of them eventually team up to find a near-mythical zombie-free place.
Now, this is still a dark reality. Corpses, both semi-living and otherwise, litter the landscape. There are few creature comforts to be enjoyed. Yet, Zombieland shows that the apocalypse can sometimes be fun, given the right group of people. Also, it helps if you manage to meet up with Bill Murray – but I’ll let you discover that particular plot point yourself.
8. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Yes, it’s true that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has the end of the world as one of its major plot points. Many people have missed that. I mean, there’s Zaphod Beeblebrox, an alien with multiple heads and a time-bending ship. There’s Marvin, the Paranoid Android, who has a “brain the size of a planet” and still manages to become bored and depressed.
And, of course, you also may remember the Vogons, a bureaucratic species with awful taste in poetry. In the words of the Hitchhiker’s Guide itself: “On no account should you allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.”
But, at the center of it all, there’s the apocalypse. At least, there is one for Earth people. The Vogons, when they’re not busy with paperwork or their mind-bendingly bad poems, are constructing an intergalactic bypass. Earth, as it turns out, is right in their way. So, naturally, the Vogons blow it up. It’s only business, after all.
Now, most of humanity does apparently die. That’s certainly sad, but that doesn’t quite bother protagonist Arthur Dent (who is also one of the most English people to walk the… well, to have walked the former planet Earth). He’s far too busy going on crazy, hilarious adventures with Zaphod and Dent’s friend, Ford Prefect.
If you’re going to live through the end of your planet and species, you may as well have fun like Dent. Plus, you’ll have your pick from a radio adaptation, a television one, a film version, and, of course, the book series by Douglas Adams.
The 100 — “We Will Rise” — Image HU406a_0068 — Pictured (L-R): Zachary McGowan as Roan and Eliza Taylor as Clarke — Credit: Cate Cameron/The CW — © 2017 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved
9. The 100
Young adult fiction is practically bursting at the seams with post-apocalyptic stories. There’s just something about the end of the world that seems to resonate with modern teens. Maybe, for a group of young people that are just beginning to navigate their own independence, it can seem easier to simply do away with the existing world. It may be easier, in some cases, to construct both yourself and your society from the ground up.
Now, that’s not entirely the case of The 100, the popular showing currently airing on The CW. In this future, 97 years after a thermonuclear apocalypse, human society still exists. One can’t say it’s thriving, however. The remaining members of our species cram aboard an orbiting space station known as the Ark.
There, they quarrel over resources and enforcing increasingly strict population control measures. In fact, everything is so scarce that even the most innocuous crime is enough to shoot someone out into space.
Still, this doesn’t alleviate the issues aboard the Ark. When someone discovers that the life support systems are failing, 100 juvenile offenders are sent down to Earth. These “expendable” kids soon discover that the planet’s environment has greatly recovered from the nuclear apocalypse. However, they also learn that they’re not alone. Humans who did not make it onto the Ark managed to survive. Their descendants don’t necessarily want to share the planet.
Still, at least the Earth is thriving. Moreover, these kids, though subject to both a dystopian society on the Ark and a more blatantly violent one on Earth, have managed to escape. Down on the planet, they have a chance to survive and even thrive.
Dawn cover (Image via Warner Books/Grand Central Publishing)
10. Lilith’s Brood
Octavia Butler is rightly considered to be a master of science fiction. Her works are often brutally honest about the flaws of our society and humans themselves. However, Butler also possessed the ability to offer comfort, however strange it may seem to readers. Those dual traits are perhaps best on display in the three works collectively known as Lilith’s Brood.
The first novel in this trio, Dawn, debuted in 1987. In its opening pages, nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union has nearly decimated the planet and the human species. However, an alien species known as the Oankali manage to save a small group of survivors. These humans go into stasis for centuries. Lilith, the first to awaken, soon realizes that she is far, far from home.
At first, the Oankali, though kind, disgust her. However, she is soon intrigued by their offer, which could help the human race survive. The Oankali have three sexes: male, female, and a third gender known as Ooloi. The Ooloi have the ability to consciously manipulate genetic material while creating offspring. This means that they could take human genes and create Oankali-human hybrids. In this manner, humanity might survive its own worst impulses.
Of course, this creates considerable conflict. Some of the humans don’t want to dilute their genes. They become a kind of resistance fighters, though it eventually becomes clear that the Oankali-human people are the future.
Strange as such a fate may seem for our species, it’s far better than a long, lingering death at the hands of nuclear war or genetic bottleneck.
World War Z cover (Image via Three Rivers Press)
11. World War Z
You just can’t get away from zombies in pop culture. Though you may think that the zombie’s moment has passed, they still linger on, as they are wont to do. Like it or not, we not have a giant, squirming heap of zombie media to dig through.
Of course, just because something’s about zombies doesn’t mean it’s bad or not worth your time. Take World War Z, for instance. Its author, Max Brooks, first rose to prominence for his Zombie Survival Guide, a tongue-in-cheek practical guide to surviving the zombie apocalypse.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, however, is a very different beast. Instead of Romero films or comics, it was based on The Good War, an oral history of World War II collected by journalist Studs Terkel.
This collection of fictional interviews and documents spans the vast, worldwide conflict that nearly endangered the human race. However, it’s pretty clear that our species made it through, though at great cost. While reading World War Z, you could almost convince yourself that such a major event really happened. It gives us hope for the tenacity and ingenuity of our fellow humans and ourselves, as well as a realistic look at our darker side.
Also, don’t bother with the movie. I mean, World War Z is decent enough as an action flick, but it has none of the elegiac quality of the book. You’re better off sitting down with Max Brooks’ initial work.
LOS ANGELES – JULY 14: Things are quiet and peaceful in small-town Jericho, Kansas, but when a baffling mushroom cloud appears on the horizon Jericho’s residents are plunged into chaos. (Photo by CBS/CBS Photo Archive via Getty Images)
12. Jericho
Haven’t heard of Jericho? That’s a shame, really. Though this 2006 series has long since disappeared from television screens, its brief two seasons (plus a couple extra “seasons” carried out in comics form) present an interesting portrait of a community after the apocalypse.
Jericho is a small town in Kansas. At the beginning of the series, 23 major cities throughout the United States suffer nuclear attacks. The explosion in Denver, Colorado is large enough that residents of Jericho, though far to the east, can see it. Though communications are quickly limited, townspeople soon learn that the attacks were all intentional. In fact, just who orchestrated the attacks makes for some major plot points throughout the series.
However, the saga of small town dynamics in the face of the apocalypse is just as fascinating. Jake Green, the closest thing we have to the main character, is something of a drifter, though he’s the son of Jericho’s mayor. Despite his rambling nature, though, the nuclear attacks effectively trap him in the town. This forces him into a leadership role that bolsters his relationships with his family and other townspeople.
Of course, this wouldn’t be an exciting TV show if we only watched people get along for an hour each week. There’s plenty of drama with what remains of the government, independent militia forces, and more. Yet, at the heart of it all lies Jericho and its people, struggling and oftentimes succeeding in their quest to remain good in the face of disaster.
Y: The Last Man (Image via Vertigo)
13. Y: The Last Man
I promise that I don’t have anything against men as a group. Though, between this entry and Houston, Houston Do You Read?, it certainly may seem that way. Frankly, there are nearly no entries dealing with the eventual extinction of women. The ones that do are incredibly depressing indeed, such as the short story The Screwfly Solution, also by James Tiptree, Jr.
However, just because something deals broadly with a trope doesn’t mean it can’t be good. Y: The Last Man, a comic series from Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra, as such, is worth your time. It follows Yorick, the titular “Y”, who is apparently the last man on Earth.
In fact, Yorick is very nearly the last male of any species left on the planet. A mysterious plague has wiped out every single being with a Y chromosome. Even sperm and fertilized eggs with the chromosome perished. Somehow, Yorick and his male pet monkey, Ampersand, survive.
This means that Yorick has suddenly become a very rare and, to some, desirable person. Nearly everyone either wants to secure Yorick in order to save him, destroy him, and/or discover just what has happened to humanity.
While Yorick travels the globe and tries to find answers for his own benefit, society rebuilds itself. Initially, everything is in shambles. It would be, considering that modern governments are often full of men. And, while violent militant groups arise, other associations of women end up doing just fine.
None of this spells the end of men entirely, though I won’t dare to spoil the rest of the series. In fact, despite the terrorist groups, the brainwashing, and multiple attempted murders, things turn out okay for Yorick and the others.
14. Warm Bodies
I’m going to come a little out of left field here and tell you to watch the film version of Warm Bodies. It’s not as if the book of the same name by Isaac Marion isn’t good. The novel is actually pretty entertaining if a little dark in places. However, if you’re looking for a slightly cheerier tale with just a touch less death and destruction (though with plenty of the undead), I urge you to go for the movie.
Warm Bodies follows R, a zombie who only just manages to remember the first letter of his name. He makes his home in an airport, which has become a hive of zombies. Along with his “friend” M and other zombies, R goes out into the nearby city to feed on surviving humans. On one trip, they encounter a group of teenagers searching for medical supplies.
There, R pounces on Perry, a young man and boyfriend of Julie, another human on the team. Julie catches his eye and so, after snacking a bit on Perry’s brains, he decides to rescue her from the other zombies. Eventually, however, it becomes clear that R must help her get back to the human enclave and regain his own humanity.
What’s most interesting about this entry in the seemingly endless succession of zombie pop culture is R’s journey. He begins as a practically mindless undead corpse, shuffling aimlessly around the airport and snacking on brains. However, thanks in part to memories contained in Perry’s brain that are somehow transferred to R, he begins to become more and more self-aware. His slow and steady back to humanity is by far the most hopeful, if mysterious, part of both the novel and the film.
15. Adventure Time
By now, even the most casual fan of Adventure Time, the gloriously weird animated series on Cartoon Network, knows that the show is set far into the future. When Adventure Time first began, however, the post-apocalyptic setting wasn’t quite so obvious. Viewers focused more on the quirky adventures of the human Finn and his intelligent, shape-shifting dog companion, Jake.
However, little clues soon began to appear, hinting at an ancient “Mushroom War.” The opening title sequence shows various discarded weapons, including what looks like a nuclear bomb. The rusted out remains of vehicles and buildings appear the background of episodes. It’s even implied that the Candy Kingdom (a land of gigantic, sentient candy people, of course) sits atop a giant river of nuclear waste.
Eventually, viewers began to realize that Finn was the only human on the show. As it turns out, he is the only known human alive throughout the Land of Ooo, implied to formerly be the planet Earth.
Other characters, like the Ice King and Marceline the Vampire Queen, are long-lived enough to even remember the 1,000-year-old war. One of the big villains, the Lich King, appears to have been born from the Mushroom War, too.
Despite all of this ancient devastation, however, Adventure Time is a lot of quirky, goofy fun. Strange as it may be, Adventure Time is more likely to leave you smiling than crying.
MaddAddam cover Image via Bloomsbury)
16. MaddAddam
The MaddAddam trilogy by famed Canadian writer Margaret Atwood has become one of the more recent and beloved sagas of life in a post-apocalyptic world. The series presents an uncompromising portrait of humanity’s greed and hubris that will make you shrink back in your seat as you read. However, it ultimately ends on a hopeful note.
The series begins with Oryx and Crake, published in 2003. Snowman, the main character, lives and interacts with the Crakers, a humanoid society that experiences no sexuality and eats only plants. In his previous life, Snowman was once known as Jimmy, a young man who befriended another man named Glenn, and more often called “Crake.”
Crake, a pre-apocalypse scientist, engineers the destruction of humanity, whom he has judged to become far too selfish and destructive. The protagonists of The Year of the Flood, which occurs more or less simultaneously to the events of Oryx and Crake, manages to survive this bioengineered pandemic. Some of them are members of a religious group known as God’s Gardeners, an association of environmentalist vegetarians who may or may not be a cult.
MaddAddam, the final entry, ties together both previous stories. Although Atwood does not hold back her characteristically dark wit, the series ends on a hopeful note.
17. Nausicaä
Everyone knows of Hayao Miyazaki, the famed Japanese director and animator. He’s best known in the west for films such as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and My Neighbor Totoro. While he’s rightfully hailed for these wonderful, magical works, Miyazaki has many more films up his sleeve. One of his slightly lesser-known, though no less compelling films is Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
Nausicaä is a daring, curious young woman who explores the jungles surrounding her people’s valley. It’s a dangerous venture, however, given that humans are menaced by giant mutated insects and the jungles themselves are almost entirely poisonous. The jungles are also populated by Ohm, massive arthropods. They’re generally docile but fly into a murderous rage whenever a human dares to hurt one of the insects.
A war known as the Seven Days of Fire nearly destroyed humanity and created the toxic jungles throughout the land. Nausicaä has been working to learn more about the treacherous environment beyond the valley, in order to help humans gain a safer way of life.
This mission becomes complicated thanks to the neighboring kingdom of Tolmekia, a highly militaristic state. The Tolmekians are sick of the ravenous insects. As a result, they’ve acquired an ancient bioweapon and plan to deploy against their enemies.
Nausicaä isn’t entirely on board with this, however. She’s discovered that the toxic plants are just fine when grown in non-toxic soil. She also suspects that the Ohm and the insects are not as blatantly evil as others would have her believe.
Though she goes through considerable struggle throughout the film, Nausicaä manages to avert yet another war and brings about an unexpected peace. Like many of Miyazaki’s films, it has a strong environmentalist message that will give you plenty of hope.
Cover of Orion Shall Rise Image via Baen Books)
18. Orion Shall Rise
Orion Shall Rise is a pretty complicated novel. Considering that it clocks in at 463 pages and deals with four major post-apocalyptic societies, it would be a surprise if it was anything but massive.
The novel, written by famed science fiction author Poul Anderson, takes place several centuries after a worldwide nuclear war. The war had devastated societies across the globe. Many societies are still stuck in a kind of feudal age. Peasants have limited access to technology or communication networks enjoyed by elites.
However, others have access to a growing list of technological advances, including supersonic jets, massive ironclad warships, and, alas, more weapons. The Northwest Union, based in what was formerly the Pacific Northwest of North America, is even secretly redeveloping nuclear weapons.
Sounds pretty terrible, but life isn’t necessarily bad in the world of Anderson’s novel. Of course, it all depends on where you live. The people recreating life as feudal peasants aren’t exactly enjoying themselves, though their aristocratic overlords seem to be doing well, if selfishly so.
The Maurai Federation, meanwhile, is pursuing interests based on sustainable power and maritime-based expansionism. They’re almost Victorian in their desire to establish a new colonial power, though their cultural and sexual mores would be plenty to make Queen Victoria blush for days. Still, despite the burgeoning conflicts, it sounds like it would be far more comfortable to live in the post-apocalyptic realm of the Maurai than in some modern day locations today.
Children of the Dust cover Image via Red Fox Books)
19. Children of the Dust
In Children of the Dust, humanity must once again grapple with its own growing pains. Some people, it seems, just can’t move on.
Like many of the works on this list, Children of the Dust begins with nuclear war. Sarah, a young school-age girl in England, hurries home as soon as she hears air raid sirens. She manages to make it back just before the nuclear blast, along with her stepmother Veronica and Veronica’s young children, William and Catherine. Eventually, however, most of the family succumbs to radiation sickness after drinking contaminated water. Only young Catherine has any real chance of survival.
And survive she does. Catherine eventually marries and goes through multiple pregnancies. Unfortunately, many of her children die in infancy, thanks to radiation and genetic mutations. Her only surviving daughter, Lilith, is born with pale hairs covering her body, as well as white eyes.
This new mutation is creepy to the other humans, but it soon becomes clear that these are the beginnings of genetic changes that will help humanity survive. The nuclear war has stripped much of the atmosphere, allowing dramatic amounts of ultraviolet radiation to make it to the planet’s surface.
Meanwhile, a society of “normal” humans manages to survive in underground bunkers. When a select few begin to emerge into the devastated outside world, they discover Catherine’s descendants. These new humans, who dub themselves Homo superior, are covered in hair. This mutation protects them from the rampant UV radiation.
These new people have also developed psychic powers, including telepathy and telekinesis. Now, all they need is the technological knowledge of the bunker people to reach their full potential.
Cover of The Postman (Image via Bantam)
20. The Postman
Okay, first of all, you can simply avoid the 1997 film, The Postman. Roger Ebert called it “goofy… and pretentious.” If that didn’t convince you, remember that The Postman won five separate Razzie Awards, including two for Kevin Costner as worst actor and director.
Instead, set aside your recollection of this movie dud, and turn your attention towards the novel. I promise you’ll have a much better time.
The Postman, written by David Brin and published in 1985, is a far more enjoyable work. It won numerous science fiction prizes, including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
In The Postman, Gordon Krantz, a post-apocalyptic drifter, takes a discarded post office uniform in order to keep warm. He eventually finds a postal van and some undelivered mail. Thinking that he might be able to barter the letters for food and shelter, he takes the bag of mail to a nearby town. The people there, desperate to believe that the United States is beginning to recover, take him for a real postal worker.
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Krantz continues to wander. He crosses paths with scientists at Oregon State University who pretend to be a sentient supercomputer in order to maintain peace in their community. Krantz teams up with the scientists and a Native American group to fight violent and “hyper survivalists” known as Holnists.
Ultimately, The Postman thrives on an abiding sense of hope. Despite the conflict provided by the Holnists, many other people are intent on coming together to rebuild civilization. With the looming defeat of the survivalists, the remaining communities may finally succeed.
Though these stories may deal with the end of the world, they all are a bit more cheerful than you might expect. Enjoy.