Apocalyptic Fiction

Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of 20th-century literature—a chilling and still-provocative look at a postapocalyptic future.

Shane McDonald is working at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant when a solar storm wipes out the grid. He's desperate to reach his family, but they're hundreds of miles away, and the world is falling apart around him. With a blind daughter to protect, finding his way back to his loved ones will be a dangerous journey, across treacherous terrain.

Two years after a global pandemic, 20 survivors (most of them children) have relocated from their Coastal Maine island full of sad memories to a mansion on a small, neighboring island where they have school and farm chores. When Gabe and his dog, Mud, find Relle Douglas alone in the woods on the mainland, they take the strange new girl across the channel to live with them.

Sixteen-year-old Nate is a Gem - a Genetically Engineered Medical Surrogate - created by Gathos City scientists as a cure for the elite from the fatal lung-rot ravaging the population. As a child, Nate was smuggled out of the laboratory where he was held captive and taken into the Withers - a quarantined, lawless region. He manages to survive by becoming a Tinkerer, fixing broken tech in exchange for food or a safe place to sleep. When he meets Reed, a kind and fiercely protective boy who makes his heart race, Nate finds the family he's always longed for.

Killing the sadistic warlord known as the Dog Tongue took everything Gus Berry had, including the woman he loved. Now, all he wants is to get away from the bloody scene of their final showdown. But when he heads west in a stolen truck, a brutal snowstorm forces him to turn back—and seek refuge in the Dog Tongue’s former headquarters. Though it’s littered with human carnage, the abandoned luxury hotel has a lot to offer a guy like Gus. But in addition to soft beds and working toilets, he encounters still-lurking dangers both living and undead.

A strange vine is uncovered beneath the remains of a lost civilization. Before anyone can examine the alien plant, pink pollen erupts from its huge buds. Moments later, 99 percent of the archeological team freeze like statues, but only for a minute. They brutally attack anyone unaffected by the phenomenon, dragging victims away for what becomes a chilling evolutionary process beyond anyone’s worst nightmare. As this happens, the pollen drifts toward the wider world.

Sold to a vampire cartel at a young age so her starving family could eat, Marianna Rojas is accustomed to fighting for her survival. When her temper leads her to make a terrible mistake, the vampire master of the Lágrima Sangrienta Cartel decides to make an example of her. Near death, her life is spared by mere chance, but she opens her eyes in the wilderness to find two moons hanging in the sky above her.

Miles “Shrug” Lindstrom received a quest years ago. He was the only person who could see the window, and in addition to the quest, he could also see a countdown to the end of the world. Part of him was hoping that he was just insane and had been hallucinating when he first started seeing the window. Then again, if the quest was just his imagination, he was going to be massively in debt with a rental full of useless junk. But when the countdown finally stops, what happens is nothing like he could have imagined.

Growing up, she was the girl down the street. Even then, I knew she was different. She was tough, rough, and had the strength to stop a speeding car with her bare hands. We were as thick as thieves, sharing every adventure. Then one day she revealed a secret. She wasn't from Earth. She was from a distant place called the Arcadia Multiverse. Her people lived under the rule of a god-like entity known as the System. That System had its gaze fixed on Earth. And it was only a matter of time before it came for us.

Hal Mason's still going to find surviving the System Apocalypse challenging. While bringing in his latest fugitive, Hal's payday is interrupted by the translucent blue boxes that herald Earth's introduction to the System - a galaxy spanning wave of structured mystical energy that destroys all electronics and bestows game-like abilities upon mankind. With society breaking down and mutating wildlife rampaging through the city of Pittsburgh, those who remain will sacrifice anything for a chance at earning their next Level.

Sam survived the end of the world. He fought demons and forged a unique legend that he has only begun to tap into the potential of. With his talking cat and a mysterious sage, Sam ventured to a multiverse shattered into floating islands, and then claimed one for his own. Now, his growing camp of survivors from two worlds is beset by danger from all sides. At least fighting these roaming monsters from the broken sky doubles as training for his newly awakened War Incarnate bloodline and Void magic.

After securing a vast government bunker, Collie Jones is heading west to challenge the sinister road clan known as the Leather. And she won’t stop until she’s killed its maniacal leader: the Dog Tongue. Gus Berry is at her side every step of the way, his growing affection for the operator matched only by his dislike of the former prisoner Milo, whom Collie insists on bringing along.

The world watches the sky with trepidation. The insanity of Xenocide knew no bounds, and all will soon suffer the effects he had planned for a millennium. Though none know what is to come, they all know it isn't going to be easy to survive. The Master has a plan, one that can give the world at large a way to escape the onrushing desolation. It may be on the bleeding edge of morality and what he needs might prove too difficult to secure, but the Master asks for trust. Cal and Dale both have their role to play as the world hurtles toward destruction.

When the Zombie Apocalypse came, one country had shut down its borders in response to a major terrorist attack. Now Fortress Britain is the last bastion of the living - with 50 million beleaguered survivors facing down a world of seven billion animated corpses. And one international team of elite special operators - supremely trained and armed, always the most skilled, resolved, and unstoppable amongst us - are humanity's last best hope for survival....

Three survivors travel the ruins of a collapsed society, sifting through the rusted relics of the Ancients' civilization as they search for a better future, hoping to escape the horrors of the past. But among those treasures lurks danger. And what they discover might be worse than what they left behind.

After the Last War destroyed most of the world, survivors form a new society in four self-sustaining cities in the Mojave Desert. Everything is carefully planned and controlled: the seasons, the weather - and the residents. To prevent mankind from destroying each other again, its citizens undergo a memory wipe every four years in a process called tabula rasa, a blank slate, to remove learned prejudices. With each new cycle, they begin again with new names, jobs, homes, and lives. No memories. No attachments. No wars.

After nearly a year and a half without power, Jim Powell’s community has begun to stabilize. The Reset Roadhouse—Jim’s apocalyptic bar, restaurant, and trading post—gave his people something to do and helped expand his network of friends and contacts. The establishment has become a hub of the community and is allowing Jim to better monitor what goes on in the town. Then the promise of electricity changes everything.

Hugh Howey is known for crafting riveting and immersive tales of boundless imagination. Now comes Machine Learning, an impressive collection of Howey's science fiction and fantasy short fiction, including three stories set in the world of Wool, two never-before-published tales written exclusively for this volume, and 15 additional stories collected here for the first time. These stories explore everything from artificial intelligence to parallel universes to video games, and each story is accompanied by an author's note.

As if nearly burning up in a freak accident on her way to Earth wasn't bad enough, Daisy had a whole mess of other trouble on her plate. Big trouble. And she was going to get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing she'd do, which it was starting to look like it very well might be. The thing is, Daisy had a simple rule for space travel. Don't blow up, and so far she'd been managing to abide by that, but mere survival wasn't enough.

Cassie Forrest isn't surprised to learn that the day she’s decided to get her life together is also the day the world ends. After all, she’s been on a self-imposed losing streak since her survivalist parents died: she’s stopped painting, broken off her engagement to Adrian and dated a real jerk. Rectifying her mistakes has to wait, however, because Cassie and her friends have just enough time to escape Brooklyn for her parents’ cabin before Bornavirus LX turns them into zombies, too.