More like Snowfall
but
- The Triffids
series3 books1951
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdark+1 more
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.
- H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds
universe65 books1898
Start hereThe War of the Worlds · Start here
similar byscience fiction+1 more
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.
- I Am Legend
Richard Mathesonstandalone novel1954
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdarktense
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?
- Farnham's Freehold
Robert A. Heinleinstandalone novel1964
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalyptictense+1 more
Farnham's Freehold is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. A serialized version, edited by Frederik Pohl, appeared in Worlds of If magazine. The complete version was published in novel form by G. P. Putnam later in 1964.
- The Hunger Games Universe
universe5 books2008
Start hereThe Hunger Games · Start here
similar bysurvivalscience fictiondarktense+1 more
Panem, they call it now — a nation raised on the drowned bones of North America, a glittering Capitol ringed by twelve districts it once starved into obedience. Every year the Capitol collects its debt in children: two tributes from each district, drawn by lottery, dropped into an engineered arena, and made to kill one another on live television while the whole country is required to watch. This is the Hunger Games — entertainment, punishment, and government at once. Suzanne Collins tells it in a compact, unified body of work. The founding trilogy — The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay — follows Katniss Everdeen, a girl from the coal-mining District 12 who volunteers in her sister's place and becomes something the Capitol never scripted. Two prequels reach back into the same machinery: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes traces a young Coriolanus Snow long before he is President, and Sunrise on the Reaping returns to District 12 a generation ahead of Katniss. Begin with the trilogy, in order — it is Katniss's voice, close and present-tense, that makes Panem breathe, and the prequels land hardest once you know how her story ends. Beneath the spectacle sits one steady, uncomfortable question: who profits when we agree to look away.
- The Hunger Games
series3 books2008
part of The Hunger Games Universe
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdarktense
The Hunger Games is a series of young adult dystopian novels written by American author Suzanne Collins. The series consists of a trilogy that follows teenage protagonist Katniss Everdeen, as well as two prequels. The Hunger Games universe is a dystopia set in Panem, a post-apocalyptic North American country consisting of the wealthy Capitol and 12 districts in varying states of poverty. As punishment for rebellion, the Capitol hosts an annual battle royale competition called The Hunger Games. Each of the 12 districts must send two children between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate, and the last surviving child is dubbed the victor.
- The Kraken Wakes
John Wyndhamstandalone novel1953
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdarktense
" 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
- Lucifer's Hammer
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournellestandalone novel1977
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdarktense
Lucifer's Hammer is a science fiction post-apocalypse-survival novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle that was first published in 1977. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978.
- Dune
series20 books1963
part of Dune Universe
similar byscience fiction+2 more
Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles opens with 1965's Dune, set on the desert planet Arrakis where House Atreides takes control of the only source of the vital spice melange and young Paul Atreides is pulled into a struggle over its politics and religion. Herbert carried the story forward across five further novels — Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune — following Paul's line over the following millennia, before Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson later extended the saga. Many other editions of these six novels are omnibus and box-set repackagings rather than separate stories.
- Tripods
series4 books1967
completed
similar byscience fictionpost-apocalyptictense+1 more
The Tripods is a series of young adult science fiction novels by John Christopher. The series takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity is enslaved by "Tripods"—gigantic three-legged walking machines piloted by an alien race later identified as the "Masters". The first two books were the basis of a science fiction TV series, produced in the United Kingdom in the 1980s.
- Maze Runner
series11 books2009
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalyptictense+1 more
The Maze Runner is a series of young adult dystopian science fiction novels written by American author James Dashner. The series consists of the trilogy The Maze Runner (2009), The Scorch Trials (2010) and The Death Cure (2011), as well as two prequel novels, The Kill Order (2012) and The Fever Code (2016). A novella titled Crank Palace (2020) and a companion book titled The Maze Runner Files (2013) have also been released. A sequel trilogy in the series titled The Maze Cutter takes place 73 years following the events of The Death Cure and consists of the novels The Maze Cutter (2022), The Godhead Complex (2023), and The Infinite Glade (2025).
- 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."
- Rats
series4 books1974
completed
similar bysurvivaldarktense+2 more
The Rats, James Herbert's 1974 debut novel, imagines a plague of giant mutant rats overrunning London, told through a rotating cast of victims and survivors in the tradition of British disaster horror. It was followed by two sequels, Lair and Domain, which widen the outbreak first to the countryside and then to a besieged, apocalyptic city, completing a three-book trilogy.
- Cell
Stephen Kingstandalone novel2006
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdarktense
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.
- The 5th Wave
series4 books2013
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdarktense
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.
- The Passage
series3 books2010
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdarktense
The Passage is a novel series by Justin Cronin. There are three published books in the series. The film rights were acquired by Fox Entertainment Group in 2007 for adaptation into a film trilogy, but after 12 years of development and planning, it was changed to a television series, which premiered in January 2019 and was canceled after the first season.
- Hungry City Chronicles / Mortal Engines
series5 books2001
part of Mortal Engines Universe
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalyptic+1 more
The Mortal Engines Quartet, also known as the Predator Cities Quartet, is a series of epic young adult science fiction novels by the English novelist and illustrator Philip Reeve. He began the first volume of the series, Mortal Engines, in the 1980s, and it was published in 2001. Reeve then published three further novels, Predator's Gold (2003), Infernal Devices (2005), and A Darkling Plain (2006).
- Xenogenesis / Lilith's Brood
series4 books1987
completed
similar byscience fiction+4 more
Lilith's Brood, previously known as the Xenogenesis Trilogy, is a collection of three science fiction works by Octavia E. Butler: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago.
- City at World's End
Edmond Hamiltonstandalone novel1951
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdarktense
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.
- Saint Leibowitz
series6 books1955
completed
similar byscience fictionpost-apocalyptic+2 more
Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), assembled from three novellas he had published earlier in the decade, follows the monks of a Catholic monastery in the post-nuclear American Southwest as they preserve fragments of scientific knowledge across centuries, watching civilization slowly rebuild itself and edge back toward the mistakes that destroyed it. Miller's posthumous sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, completed by Terry Bisson from his notes after his death and published in 1997, returns to the same abbey and its world decades later. Together the two novels form a sparse, decades-spanning series about memory, faith, and the cycles of civilization.
- The Death of Grass
John Christopherstandalone novel1956
similar bysurvivalscience fictionpost-apocalypticdarktense
The Death of Grass is a 1956 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel written by the English author Sam Youd under the pen name John Christopher. The plot concerns a virus that kills off grass species, including rice and wheat. The Death of Grass was the first of several post-apocalyptic novels written by Youd. The novel was written in a matter of weeks and liberated him from his day job.
