Top 10 Los Gatos Library Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Novels

1. The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi

What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when this forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? This is a tale of Bangkok struggling for survival in a post-oil era of rising sea levels and out-of-control mutation.

2. The Passage: a Novel, Justin Cronin

A security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment that only six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte can stop.

3. The Host, Stephenie Meyer

A member of a species that takes over the minds of human bodies, Wanderer is unable to disregard her host's love for a man in hiding, a situation that forces both possessor and host to become unwilling allies.

4. The Pesthouse: A Novel, Jim Crace

In a futuristic American wasteland, an injured Franklin Lopez joins forces with Margaret, a woman suffering from a deadly infection and confined to the Pesthouse, as the two discover that their dreams of a safe future mean following an unexpected path.

5. Deus Irae: A Novel, Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny

In the years following World War III, a new and powerful faith has arisen from a scorched and poisoned Earth, a faith that embraces the architect of world wide devastation.

6. World Made by Hand, James Howard Kunstler

In the wake of global catastrophes that have destroyed industrial civilization, the inhabitants of Union Grove, a small New York town, do anything they can to get by, as they struggle to deal with a new way of life over the course of an eventful summer.

7. The Year of the Blood: a Novel, Margaret Eleanor Atwood

Following a cataclysmic natural disaster, Adam One, leader of the religion known as God's Gardeners, and his followers make their way through an altered, depopulated world, while Ren, a performer trapped in a high-end sex club, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa, try to decide how to proceed

8. Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

Describes Riddley Walker's attempt to understand the past and present of a world which continues to exist two thousand years after the ultimate catastrophe

9. Dies the Fire, S.M. Stirling

When a strange electrical storm over the island of Nantucket suddenly causes all electronic devices to cease to function, the world is faced with an unimaginable transformation.

10. Parable of the Power, Octavia E. Butler

A hopeful tale set in a dystopian future United States of walled cities, disease, fires, and madness.

—Compiled by Los Gatos Librarian Henry Bankhead