Apocalyptic Fiction

When our protagonist, Andrei, discovers that his girlfriend has cheated on him, he finds himself with an unexpected choice to make: a quick death or a new life in another world he knows absolutely nothing about. Andrei chooses life and sets off alongside his pet, a ginger cat with a limp, for a primeval world fraught with danger. The trouble is...who is whose pet becomes entirely unclear; the man's consciousness is split between both creatures, and the little cat gets a far greater share of intelligence and wit than his hulking master.

With their supplies reclaimed and food enough for the future, the group at Barry's cabin can do more than just scrape by. Between fruitful gardens, great friends, and sturdy fences—not to mention karaoke—life in the zompoc is better than ever. Nothing is perfect, however. Across the country, safe zones are mysteriously going dark, and Oregon's summer weather has turned the forest into a tinderbox. As the unknown danger closes in and smoke begins to fill the sky, the survivors are all too aware of how quickly plans unravel, fences fall, and luck runs out.

On Zero Day of the first and last cyberwar in human history, the internet went dark, transport and power grids collapsed and cities began to starve, showing just how vulnerable the world could be to a targeted campaign of online sabotage. This final installment of this prescient epic of civilisation collapse finds the small ragtag band of survivors come together to face a new, but eerily familiar threat - the rise of a fascist militia among the ruins of a failing country.

Wherever Hel looks, New York City is both reassuringly familiar and terribly wrong. As one of the thousands who fled the outbreak of nuclear war in an alternate US - an alternate timeline - she finds herself living as a refugee in our own not-so-parallel New York. The slang and technology are foreign to her, the politics and art unrecognizable. While others, like her partner Vikram, attempt to assimilate, Hel refuses to reclaim her former career or create a new life. Instead, she obsessively rereads Vikram's copy of The Pyronauts - a science-fiction masterwork in her world.

All Ruby Behl wants for her 17th birthday is a good career path match, and to kiss her best friend and longtime crush, Wesley Fairchild. Unfortunately, the simplicity of teenage wishes evaporated a decade ago when the Tercera virus nearly wiped out the human race. Transmitted through touch, the slightest contact is prohibited in the safe haven community of Port Gibson.

With less than a month left to prepare the Earth for what is about to happen, Silas must pull out all the stops to save as many people as possible. Of course, if one system wasn't bad enough, Earth has been declared a contested world. Now, it isn't just the Earth competing any longer but at least two systems trying to gain control of the Earth.

The galaxy burns. The enemy, a race of alien scorpions, storms from star to star. Planets smolder in their wake. Across the galaxy, they hunt humans. Long ago, we humans had a planet of our own. Long ago, we could have resisted the scorpions. But today we are refugees. We are lost in darkness. We haven't seen Earth in 2,000 years. We, the last humans, must band together. We must resist. We must fight the scorpions. And we must find Earth! Only Earth can unite us. Only Earth can kindle our hope. Only on Earth can we defend our species.

The future is divided by Perimeters: high-security gated communities where life goes on as normal. If you're inside, you're lucky. If you're outside, life expectancy takes a nose dive. Riley is fortunate to have been born on the right side of the fence. But her life of privilege comes crashing down when someone breaks through and murders her sister. She forsakes her own safety to go in search of the killer. Luc decides to go with her; otherwise she'll be dead before she's past the security gate. But what awaits her outside is more unbelievable than she ever imagined.

It's now two years since the zombie apocalypse changed the world. Survival is precarious for Zach Gunderson and his friends. They are encountering zombies who are evolving into something more than mindless automatons, and the group dynamic is threatened by the revelation of a murderer in their midst. They handle each situation in their own special manner, but a seemingly innocent encounter with a group of Marines leads to disastrous consequences.

The world didn't end with a bang, it didn't go out in a ball of fire and fury, nor did it end in ice. But in some strange way, ice was the end - or maybe it was the beginning of something more. When Bethany finds herself suddenly alone in a world that was alive only moments before, she flees into the streets of her town in search of her family. Panicked by the immobile people surrounding her, she is almost captured by the monsters hunting her until Cade steps in.

The Krakau came to Earth to invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species. However, they happened to arrive after a mutated plague wiped out half the planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically destroyed human civilization. You know - your standard apocalypse. The Krakau's first impulse was to turn around and go home. Their second impulse was to try to fix us. Now, a century later, human beings might not be what they once were, but at least they're no longer trying to eat everyone. Mostly.

From out of the clear blue sky, an unknown chunk of rock from the frozen void strikes the Earth with unimaginable force, gouging a wound into the very crust of the planet. Millions die in an instant, and millions more await the end as the looming catastrophe unfolds...Thousands of miles away from the disaster, a call comes in the middle of the night. Families act, and react, and while panic spreads, the world keeps on spinning. Maybe a little slower, and perhaps with a teeny bit more of a tilt, but such things are a mere trifle to the existence of a planet.

Vivian and Hadley find themselves in a situation that is even more threatening than the dead walking the earth. Kidnapped by armed men and taken deep into Las Vegas, they're cut off from anyone who cares about them and thrust into a world so sick and twisted that it can only be described as madness. With little hope of being found, Vivian and Hadley must team up with one of the very men who abducted them if they have any hope of escaping their new nightmare.

Shining Smith and her crew have obtained the weapons they need to rescue one of their own from the grips of their mortal enemy, Clarisse Warhammer. But to mount an assault on her fortified bunker, they have to cobble together an army of fighters. That could be the biggest battle of them all. Shining will need to step back into the biker world she left behind to broker an uneasy peace, then lead rival factions into a certain death trap.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are widely considered the greatest of Russian science fiction masters, yet the novel they worked hardest on, the one that was their own favorite and that listeners worldwide have acclaimed their magnum opus, has never before been published in English. The Doomed City was so politically risky that the Strugatskys kept its existence a secret even from their closest friends for 16 years. It was only published in Russia during perestroika in the late 1980s, the last of their works to see publication.

Eco-terrorists unleash the worst attack the world has ever seen. Over 25,000 autonomous combat drones are released in Manhattan. Hundreds of thousands are dead, and the entire island is evacuated and quarantined in just a few days' time. Ten years later, Manhattan is still empty of humans, with the exception of the salvage specialists of the most watched reality show in history: Zone War. Produced live and unedited, the show follows five teams of armored vehicle specialists who brave the active drones to recover lost riches and collect bounties on dead ones.

The Krakau came to Earth to invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species. However, they happened to arrive after a mutated plague wiped out half the planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically destroyed human civilization. You know - your standard apocalypse. The Krakau’s first impulse was to turn around and go home. (After all, it’s hard to have diplomatic relations with mindless savages who eat your diplomats.) Their second impulse was to try to fix us.

Vergil's innovative experiment restructuring the cells of a common virus becomes a nightmare when, in order to save his research, Vergil injects the entire culture into his bloodstream.

World of the Changed completely modified human consciousness. The incredible graphics that worked even on the simplest of phones. The intuitive interface that made the game accessible for absolutely anyone. The aggressive marketing campaign that put news about the game on every TV, every phone, every tablet. By the time the launch was a few days away, an entire army of fans was out there waiting for just one thing: Hour X. That was what the mysterious developers were calling the release time.

The new post-apocalyptic collection by master anthologist John Joseph Adams, featuring never-before-published stories and curated reprints by some of the genre's most popular and critically-acclaimed authors. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.