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- The Andromeda Strain
series2 books1969
similar bysurvivalscience fictioncontemporary+2 more
Michael Crichton's 1969 novel The Andromeda Strain follows a team of scientists racing to contain a lethal extraterrestrial microorganism that crash-lands in Arizona, told in the clinical, document-driven style that helped establish the techno-thriller genre. Daniel H. Wilson's authorized 2019 sequel The Andromeda Evolution revisits the same threat five decades later. Together the two books form a two-part outbreak story separated by a fifty-year gap in publication.
- The Triffids
series3 books1951
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondarkour world
John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1951) opens with a meteor-shower-like event that leaves most of Britain's population blind, throwing civilization into collapse just as triffids, an aggressive and mobile species of poisonous plant, become free to hunt the helpless survivors. Simon Clark's authorized sequel The Night of the Triffids (2001) picks up a generation later, narrated by the original protagonist's son as he confronts a new triffid-dominated world, and John Whitbourn's The Age of the Triffids extends the shared setting further still. Together the three novels form a loose post-apocalyptic trilogy built on Wyndham's original premise rather than a tightly plotted single story.
- Patternist
series6 books1976
completed
similar byscience fictiondark+2 more
The Patternist series is a group of science fiction novels by Octavia E. Butler that detail a secret history continuing from the Ancient Egyptian period to the far future that involves telepathic mind control and an extraterrestrial plague. A profile of Butler in Black Women in America notes that the themes of the series include "racial and gender-based animosity, the ethical implications of biological engineering, the question of what it means to be human, ethical and unethical uses of power, and how the assumption of power changes people."
- Cell
Stephen Kingstandalone novel2006
similar bysurvivaldarkscience fictionour worldcontemporary
In Cell, King taps into readers fears of technological warfare and terrorism. Mobile phones deliver the apocalypse to millions of unsuspecting humans by wiping their brains of any humanity, leaving only aggressive and destructive impulses behind. Those without cell phones, like illustrator Clayton Riddell and his small band of "normies," must fight for survival, and their journey to find Clayton's estranged wife and young son rockets the book toward resolution.
- Prey
Michael Crichtonstandalone novel2002
similar bysurvivalscience fictionour worldcontemporary+1 more
Prey is the thirteenth novel by Michael Crichton under his own name and his twenty-third novel overall. It was first published in November 2002, making it his first novel of the twenty-first century. An excerpt was first published in the January–February 2003 issue of Seed magazine. Prey brings together themes from two earlier Crichton best-selling novels, Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain, and serves as a cautionary tale about developments in science and technology: in particular, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and distributed artificial intelligence.
- The Kraken Wakes
John Wyndhamstandalone novel1953
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondarkour world
" Behind a spectacular meteor shower actually hides the beginning of an invasion by a mysterious and powerful alien race. Earth's life is disrupted by the attacks of extraterrestrials whose war machines, emerging from the depths of the oceans, seem indestructible. The coalitioned forces of the whole world are worthless, powerless in the face of the indecipherable and deadly plans of a superior intelligence, capable of bringing the entire planet to the brink of catastrophe" Goodreads May 20, 2022
- Invasion
Robin Cookstandalone novel1997
similar byscience fictionour worldcontemporary+2 more
Earth is bombarded from space by small disks which, in addition to having powerful physical armaments, when handled activate latent viral DNA which causes humans to mutate into alien beings; a small group recognize the danger and attempt to develop a biological counterweapon.
- Earthseed
series7 books1993
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondark+1 more
Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed novels, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, follow Lauren Olamina as she survives the collapse of a climate-ravaged, near-future United States and founds a belief system built on the idea that "God is Change." The two-book series was left unfinished at Butler's death; a planned third novel, Parable of the Trickster, was never completed. Later graphic-novel adaptations retell the same two stories rather than continuing the narrative.
- Under the Skin
Michel Faberstandalone novel2000
similar byscience fictiondarkour worldcontemporary+1 more
Under the Skin is a 2000 science fiction novel by Michel Faber. Set on the coast in north-central Scotland, it traces an alien who, assuming human form, drives around the countryside picking up male hitchhikers whom she drugs and delivers to her home planet. The novel, which was Faber's debut, was shortlisted for the 2000 Whitbread Award. It was later loosely adapted into a 2013 film of the same name directed by Jonathan Glazer.
- The Swarm
Frank Schätzingstandalone novel2004
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondarkour worldcontemporary
The Swarm is a science fiction novel by German author Frank Schätzing. It was first published in 2004 and soon became a bestseller.
- Make Room! Make Room!
Harry Harrisonstandalone novel1966
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondarkour world
Make Room! Make Room! is a 1966 science fiction novel written by Harry Harrison exploring the consequences of both unchecked population growth on society and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority. It was originally serialized in Impulse magazine.
- The Fog
James Herbertstandalone novel1975
similar bysurvivaldarkour worldcontemporary+1 more
The Fog is a horror novel by English writer James Herbert, published in 1975. It is about a deadly fog that drives its victims insane when they come into contact with it.
- The Purple Cloud
M. P. Shielstandalone novel1901
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondarkour world
Around 1900, the author receives a packet of writings of a psychic, who recounts her vision of the multi-decade diary of an arctic explorer of the future, the first to reach the north pole; but during his multiyear trek, an unknown eruption temporarily poisons the atmosphere with cyanide, killing all human and animal life, sparing only the arctic latitudes and leaving him the last man on earth.
- I Am Legend
Richard Mathesonstandalone novel1954
similar bysurvivaldarkscience fictionour world
The last human survivor of the vampire epidemic has to maintain his defences against their onslaught, while attempting to research the cause and possibly solution to the plague. Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth... but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can a man survive like this?
- The 5th Wave
series4 books2013
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Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave opens after a series of escalating alien attacks has already devastated Earth's population and infrastructure, following sixteen-year-old survivor Cassie Sullivan as she searches for her younger brother while trying to work out who, among the remaining humans, can still be trusted. The trilogy is young-adult science fiction that treats its alien-invasion premise as a survival and paranoia story more than a war story.
- Jerusalem's Lot
series3 books1975
similar bydarkcontemporaryour world+1 more
Stephen King's 1975 novel 'Salem's Lot follows writer Ben Mears as he returns to his childhood town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, only to discover that its residents are being turned into vampires by a newly arrived stranger. It transplants Gothic vampire horror into a small New England community, tracking that community's collapse under a supernatural siege. It is a single, self-contained novel.
- H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds
universe65 books1898
Start hereThe War of the Worlds · Start here
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No one would have believed, in the closing years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely from the timeless worlds of space. And then the cylinders fell. H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds opens in the quiet of the Surrey commons, where a falling star proves to be the first Martian craft — and from the pit rise the towering tripods, the Heat-Ray, the choking Black Smoke and the creeping red weed, wielded by minds that regard mankind much as we regard the creatures we boil for supper. This is invasion rendered as natural disaster: cold, methodical, and vast beyond argument. Wells' 1898 novel is the seed; everything else grows from that Martian soil. The catalogue gathers direct sequels and continuations alongside a wide field of other hands. In War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches the invasion is retold across the whole planet through the eyes of Twain, Verne, Tolstoy, Lowell and Kipling; in the Manly Wade and Wade Wellman crossover, Sherlock Holmes, Watson and Professor Challenger take the field against the machines; and Scott Washburn's Great Martian War stretches the fighting into a decades-long alternate history of steam, artillery and grinding attrition. It is a loose shared world — no single decreed sequence, many voices answering one calamity. What sets this world apart is its refusal of heroics: the invaders fall not to generals but to the smallest things of Earth, humbling and indifferent. Begin, always, with Wells' original novel — it is short, and it is the ground every later book stands upon. From there follow your appetite: Global Dispatches for the panorama, the Holmes campaign for adventure, Washburn for the long war.
- Ancestor
Scott Siglerstandalone novel2007
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondarkour worldcontemporary
Ancestor is a science fiction thriller novel by American writer Scott Sigler. The novel was released in podcast format in 2006, with it also being released in print via Dragon Moon Press in 2007. Ancestor was later re-released by Crown Publishing in 2010.
- Lord Tyger
Philip José Farmerstandalone novel1970
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondarkcontemporaryour world
What if Tarzan had been written by William S. Burroughs instead of Edgar Rice Burroughs? A rich, insane, old racist attempts to raise a white Lord of the Jungle, but things don't turn out that way, and the product of this obsession and the jungle he is supposed to become Lord over must live with the consequences.
- City at World's End
Edmond Hamiltonstandalone novel1951
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondarkour world
An experimental atomic weapons test in small-town America goes catastrophically wrong, hurling the entire town of Middletown, buildings, streets and all, untold ages into Earth's future, to a time when the sun is dying and humanity's last city struggles on beneath a darkening sky. Cut off from everything and everyone they knew, the townspeople have to find a way to survive in a world that has nothing left to spare for latecomers. Edmond Hamilton's novel strands a slice of mid-century America at the literal end of the world.
