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| 3 | %% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks! |
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| 6 | ---- |
| 7 | !!In General |
| 8 | * There is a subgenre of SpeculativeFiction referred to as ''Dying Earth'', named after the Creator/JackVance series, ''Literature/DyingEarth''. Often, these works have a sword and sorcery feel, but with clear hints that this is the future. To clarify, ''The Dying Earth'' is set millions, if not billions, of years in the future, where the Sun is dying and civilization has risen and fallen countless times, and now science has been forgotten and magic has re-emerged. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | !!By Author |
| 11 | * Creator/KathrynLasky's ''Literature/GuardiansOfGaHoole'' series is indicated to take place in a future world where humans (called "Others" by the sentient owls) have [[ApocalypseHow/Class3A gone]] [[ApocalypseHow/Class3B extinct]], leaving behind ruins and artifacts. |
| 12 | * Creator/MargaretAtwood: |
| 13 | ** ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'' takes place in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic country heavily implied to be the US in the near future, in which the majority of people have been rendered infertile. [[spoiler:However, because of the religious fundamentalist styled patriarchy instated by the regime, it is women who are blamed, the concept that men might be equally infertile tantamount to treason.]] The handful of remaining fertile women are rounded up and forced to act as broodmares for high-status men, and executed or exiled if they fail to conceive. |
| 14 | ** ''Literature/OryxAndCrake'' and its companion novels ''Literature/TheYearOfTheFlood'' and ''Literature/{{Maddaddam}}'' take place after ThePlague wipes out all but a tiny handful of humans. Via flashbacks, they also tell of the events in the years before TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt from various characters' perspectives. |
| 15 | * Creator/PaoloBacigalupi works tend to be set almost exclusively in universes that either just get through their collapse or collapsed centuries ago, with characters having to deal with the aftermath. The selling point tends to be a hefty helping of BioPunk, along with making each separate setting varied enough from the others to never hit the same mark twice, unless spinning a series out of it. |
| 16 | * Most of Creator/EndMaster's ''Literature/GroundZero'' and parts of ''Literature/SuzysStrangeSaga'' take place after nuclear war destroys much of the country. ''Ground Zero'' in particular focuses on life in the aftermath of the apocalypse, as the main character encounters raiders, mutants, and short-tempered compound leaders. |
| 17 | * Mark S. Geston's first two novels are set in decaying future worlds, some thousands of years after an unspecified catastrophe. In ''Literature/LordsOfTheStarship'' a scheme is devised to revitalize the economy of a dying country by using its resources to build a seven-mile-long spaceship. [[spoiler:Once the ship is built a huge battle is fought over it, then the ship turns on its engines and fries the armies who are fighting over it - and then destroys itself. It has all been a hoax by a Mordor-like country, aimed at depopulating and demilitarizing the rest of the world.]] ''Literature/OutOfTheMouthOfTheDragon'' takes place some centuries later when the world's ecology is in its death throes. A young man sets off to prove himself as a soldier, only to realize that there are no noble causes left to fight for. [[spoiler:By the end of the book he seems to be the last man alive, sustained by prosthetic body parts, and as the world slowly dies and the sun goes out he realizes that his prosthetics may keep him alive forever in a dead world.]] |
| 18 | * Creator/JamesHerbert has played with this one a time or two. In ''Literature/FortyEight'', most of the population has been decimated by the Blood Death, a virus borne by [[spoiler: rockets sent out by Hitler towards the end of the war]]. |
| 19 | * Creator/StephenKing has played with this trope several times. |
| 20 | ** ''Literature/TheDarkTower'' novels, in which the world has been devastated so many times in so many different eras that reality itself is starting to break down. |
| 21 | ** ''Literature/{{Cell}}'' opens right before a mysterious cell-phone-transmitted brainwipe brings about TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. |
| 22 | ** ''Literature/TheStand'' opens right before a viral bioweapon brings about TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. ''Night Surf'' from the short story collection ''Literature/NightShift'', written ten years earlier, features the same scenario and is set after the virus has wiped out most of humanity. |
| 23 | ** ''Home Delivery'' from ''Literature/NightmaresAndDreamscapes'', which is set during a global ZombieApocalypse. This collection also features ''The End of the Whole Mess'', where the world is already on the brink of a JustBeforeTheEnd situation (among other things, a nuclear terrorist attack has destroyed London) when an attempt at curbing humanity's violent and hateful tendencies with a special enzyme inserted into the water cycle instead dooms it due to an unknown side effect -- extremely early-onset Alzheimers. |
| 24 | * Creator/TJKlune has two works that take place after the end of the world, both of which include solitary survivors with [[RobotBuddy humorous robot pals]] and the main characters falling in love with dangerous killers. |
| 25 | ** The ''Literature/ImmemorialYear'' duology is set one hundred years after a nuclear war that wiped out most of humanity. What's left is a ScavengerWorld where a psychopath has amassed an army of cannibalistic raiders and is attempting to bring back the powerful "Before" technology. |
| 26 | ** ''Literature/InTheLivesOfPuppets'' takes place centuries after all of humanity has been wiped out in a RobotWar except for a single young man who is raised by his robot father. |
| 27 | * Creator/JohnLangan has a couple short stories set after various apocalypses: |
| 28 | ** "Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of Purple Flowers" takes place in the aftermath of a mysterious plague that has turned its victims corpses into collections of purple flowers, as the two protagonists attempt to fight off a pack of unnaturally aggressive and persistent canine-like animals. |
| 29 | ** "The Shallows" features an old man going about his day-to-day survival after Lovecraft's Great Old Ones have arisen and turned the laws of nature upside down. |
| 30 | * Creator/AndreNorton examples: |
| 31 | ** ''Breed to Come'' is set in a post-human world in which the disease that wiped out the humans led to the rise of several other [[IntelligentGerbil intelligent species]], among them [[CatFolk the protagonist's]]. His eldest surviving relative has spent his life studying the remains of human civilization and acquiring any technological advances that might benefit his people. |
| 32 | ** The short story "The Gifts of Asti" opens just as Memphir, the protagonist's homeland, is falling to a barbarian invasion. She - the last priestess of a mostly-forsaken religion - follows a standing order about what to do AfterTheEnd (which was mentioned in prophecy), and takes a prepared escape route. She ends up on the far side of a mountain range to find a vast plain that was glassed in a now-forgotten war. |
| 33 | ** ''No Night Without Stars'' opens several generations after TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, which appears to have been due to a ColonyDrop. |
| 34 | ** ''Sea Siege'' opens on a small Caribbean island that is having trouble with {{mutant|s}} sea creatures -- just before WorldWarIII. |
| 35 | ** ''Star Man's Son'' (a.k.a. ''Daybreak -- 2250 A.D.'') opens generations after WorldWarIII. The protagonist is suffering from his culture's prejudice against {{mutants}}. |
| 36 | * Creator/EdgarPangborn's novels ''Davy'' and ''The Company of Glory'', together with related short stories in ''Still I Persist in Wondering'' and others uncollected, take place in the decades and centuries following the 30 Minute War and the Red Plague, a devastating "limited" nuclear and biological war. As civilization slowly and painfully rebuilds itself in what used to be NewEngland the stories focus on individual struggles, triumphs, and tragedies. The rigid, mutant-fearing feudal societies depicted therein seem to owe something to ''The Chrysalids''. |
| 37 | * From Creator/CTPhipps: |
| 38 | ** ''Literature/CthulhuArmageddon'' is a story about the Great Old Ones having destroyed the Earth with their rising and reducing humanity to a WeirdWest future of scattered towns as well as tribal peoples. The human race is slowly going extinct but also ''changing.'' |
| 39 | ** ''[[Literature/AgentG Agent G: Assassin]]'' and ''Literature/TheCyberDragonsTrilogy'' takes place a couple of decades after a volcano destroyed Wyoming and covered the United States in a year long Winter. It has rebuilt itself into a cyberpunk dystopia using AI-created technology and millions of bots. |
| 40 | * Creator/MatthewReilly: |
| 41 | ** ''Literature/TheSecretRunnersOfNewYork'': The characters travel to a post-apocalyptic New York over two decades in their future. |
| 42 | ** ''Literature/TrollMountain'': Strongly hinted to be the setting, as what is on the surface a standard medieval fantasy world also has a few relics from previous societies, plus scurvy exists in it exactly the same as in ours. |
| 43 | * From Creator/BrandonSanderson: |
| 44 | ** In ''Literature/{{Elantris}}'', [[TheMagicGoesAway the magic has gone away]], leaving the eponymous city a crumbling ruin inhabited by zombies when it had been a borderline-utopia run by super-powered, nearly immortal mages before. The kingdom it was originally capital of is rapidly crumbling as a result, although the issue is entirely localized with the rest of the world being more or less fine ("being slowly conquered by a theocratic empire" isn't exactly "fine", but it is non-apocalyptic). |
| 45 | ** In ''Franchise/{{Mistborn}}'', ''something'' happened a thousand years ago that turned the world into a barren, ash-choked wasteland ruled by an EvilOverlord. Much of the trilogy involves piecing together what exactly happened [[spoiler: and in the end, fixing it]]. |
| 46 | ** ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'' the backstory reveals that the world is subjected to "desolations" on a regular basis, where the [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Voidbringers]] come to destroy humanity and it is the duty of the mythical [[OurAngelsAreDifferent Heralds]] to help humanity prepare for each desolation and help them survive. However, the Prologue reveals that it has been four thousand years since the last Desolation, giving the world time to recover, rebuild, and develop. Of course [[spoiler: by the time of the books another desolation is just around the corner.]] |
| 47 | ** ''Literature/TheReckonersTrilogy'' takes place in a world where people started getting superpowers and [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity inevitably becoming evil]]. With no way to stop them, they began claiming chunks of the country, ruling individual cities. By the time the series starts, the city of Newcago is one of the nicer places left in the "Fractured States" because it has electricity and running water. |
| 48 | * Creator/RogerZelazny: |
| 49 | ** His first full-length novel, ''This Immortal'' (which was originally serialized as ''...And Call Me Conrad'') deals with an immortal man who lives long enough to experience this. |
| 50 | ** ''Literature/DamnationAlley'' deals with a journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland (just about the only detail it has in common with the cheesy [[Film/DamnationAlley movie]] that is supposedly based on it). |
| 51 | |
| 52 | !!By Work |
| 53 | * ''Literature/NineteenEightyThreeDoomsday'' takes place after a nuclear war caused by [[PointOfDivergence a Soviet Air Defense Forces officer being reassigned to a different bunker]] and his replacement mistaking a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#1983_incident false alarm ]] for an American nuclear attack. The timeline continues to be updated in real time via the [[KentBrockmanNews WCRB NewsHour]]. |
| 54 | * ''Literature/AboveGround'': The remaing humans live underground due to the spreading of a disease which turned all those left on the surface into monsters. |
| 55 | * ''Literature/AboveTheTimberline'' takes place in the ruins of the modern world, which ended with a spectacular NaturalDisasterCascade 1,500 years prior to the start of the story. Humanity has since regained a roughly industrial footing and has started to excavate the ruins of the "old world" to rediscover ancient technological secrets. |
| 56 | * ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'' is set millions of years after the extinction of humanity and of most modern animals, leaving the descendants of rodents, rabbits, and other small, hardy animals to inherit the world and diversify into complex ecosystems. |
| 57 | * ''Literature/{{Aftertime}}'' and its two sequels are set after a worldwide disaster. |
| 58 | * ''Literature/AlasBabylon'' by Pat Frank opens just before WorldWarIII. |
| 59 | * ''Literature/AlongTheWindingRoad'' begins four years after the ZombieApocalypse. While it's never made clear just how much of humanity is gone, there sure aren't many people out and about. |
| 60 | * Creator/JonathanLethem's ''Amnesia Moon'' is set in a surreal post-apocalyptic world, after the US has been hit by nuclear bombs. The work is an {{homage}} to Creator/PhilipKDick, and reality itself seems to have become a bit unglued by the disaster. |
| 61 | * Patrick Tilley's ''The Amtrak Wars'' takes place about a thousand years after a nuclear war and revolves around the conflict between the surface-dwelling Mutes and the underground-based Amtrak Federation. |
| 62 | * Creator/NealStephenson's ''Literature/{{Anathem}}'' has its calendar set the year 0 as the "Terrible Events", a near-extinction level nuclear/nanotechnological war. A rough translation to Earth years puts this in the latter half of the 21st century. The main events of the novel are set more than 3500 years from this event. During this time, the planet has gone through at least three other civilization-reducing periods. The main characters' society has even categorized the kinds of post-apocalyptic civilizations that pop up afterward. During the story's events, civilization has returned to a level similar to the 21st century again, save for some holdouts. |
| 63 | * In ''Literature/{{Angelfall}}'' the apocalypse, caused by angels, happened six weeks ago. Humans already have adapted so far as to use an old computer to build a latrine wall. |
| 64 | * ''Literature/AngelNotes'', set in the Franchise/{{Nasuverse}}, starts years after Gaia (Earth) has died, but both actual Humans and two modified human races live in the theoretically uninhabitable hell caused by Gaia's death (normal Humans have to use special suits, though). The survivors have to deal with the [[EldritchAbomination Aristoteles]], sent by the other worlds to kill the survivors as asked by Gaia in her last breaths. |
| 65 | * In Creator/HBeamPiper's short story "The Answer", the protagonists -- an American and a Russian -- managed to survive the destruction of their respective nations, and are now working in South America. The titular answer is to the question of why was Auburn, New York, the first casualty of WorldWarIII -- particularly since the Soviets then threw away the advantage of a first strike and didn't follow it up? [[spoiler:The town wasn't destroyed by the Soviets, but by a ColonyDrop -- specifically, of an antimatter meteor -- and nobody recognized it for what it was until after one of the protagonists, who witnessed the destruction of Auburn and investigated it, witnessed the results of a similar, artificial antimatter experiment in South America.]] |
| 66 | * ''Literature/{{Anthem}}'' takes place after collectivization has destroyed civilization and reduced the city that is the book's setting to a medieval level. Some of Rand's critics posit that even though it was written before ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'' it's a sequel and that the abandoned house the hero finds is all that remains of Galt's Gulch. |
| 67 | * ''Literature/ArrivalsFromTheDark'' and ''Tevelyan's Mission'', Akhmanov's book series taking place in the same 'verse reveals that two of the setting's key HumanAlien races' current culture is the direct result of major catastrophes that wiped out former civilizations. The Bino Faata experienced ''two'' such catastrophes before the survivors decided that there would ''not'' be the third one and embarked on a campaign of endless conquest meant to prevent it. The Kni'lina also suffered two within a relatively short time frame. A rogue planetoid was captured by their homeworld and turned into a second moon, resulting in massive tides, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. To top it off, they were hit by a devastating plague that wiped out much of the population on the mainland. The semblance of civilization only remained on isolated islands, which used genetic engineering to make themselves immune to the disease, resulting in many clans, which are, in fact, subspecies. Humans had a mild version of this, when AntiMatter-filled Faata ships blew up in major cities all over the world, resulting in millions dead and much destruction. However, it could have been much worse, and humans emerged as a galactic superpower. |
| 68 | * ''As the Curtain Falls'': {{Exaggerated|trope}}; humanity has developed advanced technology, built a spacefaring empire, and been knocked back to the Stone Age ''three times''. The book is set when the third of those empires is just a legend, the Sun has swollen into a red giant, and the remnants of humanity live huddled on the dried-up seabeds. |
| 69 | * ''Literature/TheAscendantKingdomsSaga'' is a HighFantasy take on the concept, with a fairly standard MedievalEuropeanFantasy setting reduced to warlord barbarism after [[FantasticNuke the magical equivalent of a major nuclear exchange]] causes humanity's access to magic to be lost entirely. |
| 70 | * ''Literature/AshesAshes'', one of Creator/ReneBarjavel's novels, takes place in a world where electricity has completely disappeared, causing the end of civilization. [[spoiler: Humanity gets better in ''Literature/FutureTimesThree'' though, thanks to telekinesis and eusociality.]] |
| 71 | * ''Literature/{{Ashfall}}'' takes place in the aftermath of the Yellowstone supervolcanic eruption. |
| 72 | * Creator/RobertSilverberg's ''At Winter's End'' and ''The New Springtime''. [[spoiler:[[HumansThroughAlienEyes Humans as we know them are extinct]], and the viewpoint characters are [[{{Xenofiction}} mutant baboons]].]] |
| 73 | * "Literature/{{Autofac}}" is set after a five-year nuclear war destroyed human civilization, leaving cities as fields of ruins, the environment devastated, the landscape an alternating field of badlands, overgrown tangles of vegetation, and craters filled with irradiated water, and the remaining human settlements either entirely dependent on automated factories or reduced to a Stone Age existence. |
| 74 | * ''Literature/{{Bearheart}}'': Government and social collapse in the U.S. when people run out of gas. |
| 75 | * In Rebecca Ore's ''Being Alien'' trilogy, Gwyngs are a sapient bat species, but they are the second generation of intelligent life on their planet. They are aware of the "Old Ones" who "died/killed themselves". They don't know which. |
| 76 | * In Creator/JohnCalvinBatchelor's novel ''The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica'', a convincingly-portrayed international social breakdown is summed up by one character as "There's been no war. Just a bloody shuffle." It is implied that by the narrator's "present", new global social patterns have developed, without detailing them. |
| 77 | * Parts of ''The Book of Dave'' by Will Self take place in a flooded out England five hundred years after the titular book is discovered and religion is founded on it. |
| 78 | * In ''Literature/TheBooksOfEmber'', [[spoiler:human society was destroyed by the Disaster, a combination of "the Four Wars and the Three Plagues". However, the titular city was built underground as a safehold for human culture and survives for 200-odd years after the war ended... [[OhCrap and then the lights start going out]]]]. By the end of the series, [[spoiler:people start rebuilding on the surface and things are looking up]]. |
| 79 | * Carrie Patel's ''The Buried Life'' takes place in the UndergroundCity of Recolleta after the Catastrophe, the nature of which has been suppressed by the city's government. |
| 80 | * ''Literature/ByTheWatersOfBabylon'': The story is revealed to take place in the future close to the former New York City, after the city was ruined during a war long ago, with the survivors of the region tribal foragers once again. Due to loss of knowledge, they view the long-ago humans as gods, and New York City has been forbidden to enter (apparently initially out of fear because the poison was leftover there from the war before it grew into a superstition). |
| 81 | * ''Literature/ACanticleForLeibowitz'', by Walter Miller, is an interesting version of this trope. The storyline spans over a thousand years, beginning in a post-nuclear war Dark Age. The second part is set in a second Renaissance, with the re-flourishing of scientific knowledge, and the third and final part is set in the equivalent of the contemporary age. [[spoiler: The novel concludes with a second nuclear war. One assumes the cycle is due to start again, though, as human beings are by now capable of interstellar travel and at least some of them get off Earth before the bombs land.]] |
| 82 | * Creator/MikhailAkhmanov and Christopher Gilmore's novel ''Literature/CaptainFrenchOrTheQuestForParadise'' has the titular character describe several human colonies that ended up destroying themselves or suffered some sort of natural calamity. Some of these planets remain empty of human life, while one (which suffered a nuclear holocaust) is noted to have been re-colonized by another colony (who then renamed it in honor of their hard work). The novel itself starts on planet Murphy, which has suffered a comet strike half a century before, and the population is now firmly in the hands of a theocracy that preaches that the comet was God's Hammer punishing humans for their sins. Prior to the theocracy taking over, the population of Murphy suffered a brief period of cannibalism and overall chaos. |
| 83 | * ''Literature/ChildrenOfMotherEarth'' takes place after global warming has more or less destroyed most of the planet. Greenland, though, turned green, and the people there developed a nice, stable government. |
| 84 | * Neil Cross's ''Literature/{{Christendom}}'' takes place sometime after a massive series of global conflicts during which, among other things, [[DividedStatesOfAmerica America fragmented]], the entire population of Japan was wiped out by a Chinese bioweapon, and crashing nuclear satellites bathed large chunks of the planet in radiation. |
| 85 | * ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'': In ''Literature/TheMagiciansNephew'', Charn is absolutely dead except for Jadis herself. |
| 86 | * ''Literature/ChroniclesOfThePneumaticZeppelin'': Alien devices that sabotage electronics have turned people back into a SteamPunk world. |
| 87 | * ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfThomasCovenant'': |
| 88 | ** In the First Chronicles, the Land is recovering from the effects of Kevin's Desecration which apparently wiped out all life at the time. |
| 89 | ** The ''Second Chronicles'' take place in The Land after it's been changed in many apocalyptic ways. |
| 90 | * ''Literature/TheChrysalids'' by Creator/JohnWyndham, who liked this sort of thing, is about a society recovering after a catastrophe, which the hyper-Christian characters call "The Tribulation" and is implied to be a nuclear war/disaster. In the protagonist's community, any living thing showing signs of genetic abnormality is considered a Satanic abomination, including human beings. His having telepathy is therefore something of a concern. |
| 91 | * Robert Wingrove's ''Literature/ChungKuo'' presents a world-spanning empire built after a devastating war ended the world as we know it. |
| 92 | * ''Literature/TheCityAndTheDungeon'': ''Something'' happened before (or right around the same time as) the Dungeon was discovered. Mention is made of "Earlier" cities that have been destroyed, and ruined cities still covered in the claw marks of massive monsters. |
| 93 | * ''Literature/CityOfBones1995'' by Creator/MarthaWells: The Ancients brought about some catastrophe that reduced most of the known world to a desert wasteland that's populated with isolated human city-states, bio-engineered "krisman" enclaves, and cannibalistic bandit bands. There is a thriving trade in Ancient cultural artifacts and in the few surviving scraps of {{Magitek}}. [[spoiler:Ultimately, the characters have to fend off the same threat that the Ancients did.]] |
| 94 | * David Mitchell's ''Literature/CloudAtlas'' delivers this in two stages. In "An Orison of Sonmi-451" The skirmishes, apparently, a series of limited nuclear exchanges have turned much of Earth's surface into "deadlands". Most of what's left is a corporate dystopia run by {{Megacorp}}s. By the time of "Sloosha's Crossin' an Ev'rythin' After" some other disaster, presumably another nuclear war, has finished even that off and only a few places, like the Hawaiian Islands, remain inhabitable. |
| 95 | * ''Comet Dis'aster'' is set after a destructive comet hits the Earth. |
| 96 | * ''Literature/ConcienciaYVoluntad'' takes action in the year 2057, after the collapse of western civilization from a long, non-nuclear war, economic crisis, and climatic change. But it could be worse. |
| 97 | * ''Literature/CradleSeries'': The world of Cradle has gone through at ''least'' one major planetary apocalypse that knocked the entire world back into the Stone Age, likely more. There are a number of impossible ruins filled with LostTechnology scattered around, continent-sized landscapes are little more than blasted plains corrupted by horrible monsters, and every known country is built on the bones of an older one. The one apocalypse known for sure was when the previous generation of [[PhysicalGod Monarchs]] tried to kill off the [[GodOfEvil Dreadgods]]; this resulted in the Dreadgods going berserk, killing all the existing Monarchs, and destroying every existing civilization. This is likely a different event from when the Dreadgods were born in the first place, which also destroyed every existing civilization. |
| 98 | * The short story "The Days of Perky Pat" by Creator/PhilipKDick plays the trope for laughs. Society is split between the younger, more practical generation that is intent on rebuilding and maintaining a functioning civilization, and the older generation, which devotes all its time to escapism in the form of a [[HilariousInHindsight mass role-playing game]] involving dolls. |
| 99 | * ''Literature/DaystarAndShadow'' takes place about a thousand years after a devastating event called the Holocaust. Now, much of America is an uninhabitable wasteland. |
| 100 | * ''Literature/DarkLife'' take place in a future where [[FloodedFutureWorld the ocean has risen due to Gobal Warming and the North American east coast has somehow fallen into the sea]]. The people who live on land are [[OverpopulationCrisis crammed in tiny apartment in gigantic building and see space as a status symbol]], There are people who are [[SettlingTheFrontier actively colonizing the ocean floor]], as well as people living in repurpose oil rigs along the coast, house boats and [[MobileCity mobile]] [[CityOnTheWater floating cities]] and the Government [[GovernmentExploitedCrisis keep using this situation as an excuse to stay in (and even abuse its) power.]] |
| 101 | * ''Literature/TheDeathGateCycle'' takes place after ''two'' ends. Originally, the world [[spoiler: our world, in fact]] had an advanced technological civilization that destroyed itself through what appears to have been a nuclear war. Shortly thereafter, the [[TheMagicComesBack return of magic]] and appearance of elves, dwarves, and two MageSpecies turned the world into a ''Literature/{{Shannara}}''-esque version of the StandardFantasySetting. ''Then'' the two MageSpecies ([[WellIntentionedExtremist the Sartan]] and [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy the Patryns]]) went to war using the other races as proxies, culminating in the Sartan, fearing that the Patryns would win, completely destroying the world and rebuilding it as ''four'' worlds patterned after the four classical elements, plus a DeathWorld where they stuck the Patryns. Then [[NeglectfulPrecursors they vanished]]. The series picks up a millennium or so after this "Sundering". |
| 102 | * The Gold Eagle adventure series ''Literature/DeathLands'' takes place in the post-WorldWarIII United States plagued by crazed mutants and power-hungry barons. |
| 103 | * A localized version in the Russian SharedUniverse ''Literature/DeathZone'' is a semi-sequel to the ''VideoGame/{{Stalker}}'' series. In ''Death Zone'', a mysterious explosion occurs in Chernobyl and four other areas in Europe and Asia, including major cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg. After the explosions, the areas are covered by bubble-like gravity Barriers that create mini-{{Scavenger World}}s in each one. Anomalies can be found all over the Five Zones, usually of the deadly kind. Most machines have been turned into strange bio-mechanical hybrids called mechanoids whose behavior mimics that of ordinary animals. Nanobots can be found everywhere with the risk of being "infected" by them and becoming a zombie-like biomechanical creature called a staltech (or techzombie, according to some authors). Most of the populations of the Zones are either dead, turned into staltechs, or evacuated during the initial post-explosion days. Life outside the Barriers continues just as before (even though two major cities are now in ruins), but life in the Zones is very different. At the center of each Zone is an extradimensional tornado that acts as a gateway between them. The only people who can survive in the Zones are called stalkers. |
| 104 | * ''Literature/DinnerAtDeviantsPalace'' is set after a calamity left a number of radioactive holes in southern California (and presumably other places further afield, whence news no longer comes since civilization collapsed). Society has rebuilt in a number of walled cities that use distilled alcohol (a fuel, a disinfectant, ''and'' a drink) as PracticalCurrency. |
| 105 | * ''Literature/TheDinosaurLords'': There are scattered hints throughout the series that Paradise is actually a [[LostColony lost space colony]] that underwent some kind of societal collapse. Notably, it’s [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane left ambiguous if the magical elements]] are really LostTechnology or genuine supernatural occurrences, and the question is raised as to whether [[ClarkesThirdLaw there’s even any meaningful difference]]. |
| 106 | * ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'' is implied to be after a major war. [[spoiler:Subverted with ''Allegiant'' where its revealed that while there was a war, society is still somewhat intact with the US Government still existing but as a shadow of its former self. Though half the US population is dead, many of the Metro areas are filled with crime and fantastic racism. It's also revealed that Chicago is a closed-off experiment, one of a few in the Midwest. It’s also implied that the west coast is either uninhabited or possibly isolated. (It’s not clear as the fringe groups don't go there because the terrain is too rough to traverse)]]. |
| 107 | * In ''Literature/TheDivineCities'', life as the people of the Continent knew it ended when their gods were killed in a rebellion over 75 years before the events of ''City of Stairs''. With their gods, most of their infrastructure -- which was originally created by said gods -- disappeared; entire city blocks just vanished, taking their inhabitants with them and leaving behind a wasteland peppered with random areas where reality has permanently forgotten how it's supposed to work. Effectively, civilization ended on the Continent. |
| 108 | * ''Literature/DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep'' by Philip K. Dick: Earth was nuked, a lot, the few remaining survivors wear clothes made of lead when going outside. |
| 109 | * The {{Creepypasta}} [[http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Dogscape "Dogscape"]] takes place in a world overwhelmed by MeatMoss made of dog flesh. |
| 110 | * ''Literature/TheDogStars'' is set nine years after a super-flu wiped out almost all of the human population and a mysterious blood virus swept in to waste away many of those who remain. Humanity is limited to small packs of marauders and survivors who pretty much kill anyone they see on sight. The environment has also gone a bit haywire for unknown reasons, with many species dying off and the temperature rising. |
| 111 | * Most of the ''Literature/{{Dragonlance}}'' novels and adventure modules are set after the Cataclysm, an event in which a fiery mountain (i.e., meteor) fell on the city of Istar and destroyed it and much of civilization with it. |
| 112 | * The story in ''Literature/DreamDelusionAndReality'' is set in a post-apocalyptic world during the 23rd century after a mysterious race of invading creatures ruined the Earth. |
| 113 | * David Gemmell's ''Literature/{{Drenai}}'' series, initially straight HeroicFantasy, has increasing hints as it progresses that it's set after the collapse of a high-tech civilization and that its magic is MagicFromTechnology. |
| 114 | * ''Literature/EarthAbides'', by George Stewart, depicts life in California after a pandemic wipes out most of humanity. |
| 115 | * Creator/SMStirling's ''Literature/{{Emberverse}}'' series begins with a mysterious "Change" in the laws of physics that abruptly makes all powered machinery (even steam engines) inoperable and explosives inert. (Eventually, it's revealed that this was caused by [[spoiler: what might be called the Universal Mind attempting to stave off an even worse fate for humanity.]]) Before long most of humanity dies of starvation and the survivors have to rebuild society on a low-tech basis. "Ethnogenesis", the emergence of new cultures, ensues. One state, founded by [[UsefulNotes/SocietyForCreativeAnachronism SCAdians]], is modeled on Medieval Normandy; another, founded by Wiccans or neopagans, consciously imitates a Medieval Scottish clan; etc. Large areas are inhabited only by [[ImAHumanitarian cannibals]] who have forgotten about civilized culture entirely. The new states are often at war with each other, using armor, swords, and bows. |
| 116 | * A Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom work, ''The End, And Afterwards'', by AndyC, builds up to the destruction of a good chunk of the planet, after an unmanned probe mysteriously goes haywire and ends up crashing into the Indian Ocean just off the coast of Madagascar, thus prompting the evacuation of as many of the survivors of humanity as possible. |
| 117 | * Creator/FredSaberhagen's ''Literature/EmpireOfTheEast'' and its sequel series ''Literature/TheBookOfSwords'' and ''The Books of Lost Swords'' are set on earth thousands of years after civilization was ''not'' destroyed in a nuclear war. Instead, the United States activated a device that actually changed the laws of nature to prevent the destruction of humanity by making nuclear fission so much less likely that the nuclear bombs wouldn't work. The good news is that it worked. The bad news is that changing the laws of nature also caused advanced technology to stop functioning, and caused magic to start working. As a result, civilization collapsed anyway, but it did eventually rebuild, albeit along rather different lines. |
| 118 | * Creator/WayneBarlowe’s ''Literature/{{Expedition}}'' has Darwin IV itself, possibly. There are many indications from the drones' observations that, as beautiful and unspoiled as the planet is, its biosphere is a mere shadow of its former self. Apparently, the planet is currently in the process of recovering from [[UnspecifiedApocalypse a mass extinction event of uncertain origin]] sometime in the recent ([[TimeAbyss as in a couple million years]]) evolutionary past that was so horrific it wiped out most of the planet's lifeforms and radically altered the composition of its atmosphere and oceans -- in fact, all surface water is gone; this catastrophe led to the evolution of the Amoebic Sea, as organisms banded together to trap what water was left. It's possibly similar to prehistoric Earth's "Oxygen Catastrophe" or, [[AbusivePrecursors more ominously]], certain scientists’ worst case scenarios for a runaway Greenhouse Effect. |
| 119 | * ''Literature/ExpeditionZ'' begins 20 years after the actual ZombieApocalypse, hence jumpstarting the plot to find survivors since zombie activity has, with high confidence, [[{{Pun}} died down]] significantly. |
| 120 | * In Creator/SamuelRDelany's ''The Fall of the Towers'' trilogy, hundreds of years have passed since the legendary "Great Fire", which left most of the world an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland. Most of what survived are islands. The kingdom of Toromon started on an island, and now controls many islands as well as a rare habitable chunk of the mainland. |
| 121 | * Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/FarnhamsFreehold'' starts off with WorldWarIII, and the rest takes place After. |
| 122 | * The short story "Fields" by Creator/DesmondWarzel takes place in UsefulNotes/{{Cleveland}} after the world has been taken over by mutant wheat and most of humanity has vanished. |
| 123 | * ''Literature/FineStructure'''s [[spoiler:{{dystopia}}n]] "[[http://qntm.org/?crushed Crushed Underground]]" chapter takes place after a nonspecific [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt apocalypse]] called the "Hot Wars". The surface is uninhabitable and humanity is reduced to a small population. |
| 124 | ** MAJOR SPOILERS** [[spoiler:Actually, we learn in later chapters (after Earth is sealed off from the rest of the universe by a Black Hole, much like a piece of a twisted balloon animal,) that humanity suffers a Crash EVERY FEW CENTURIES. Just when humanity is on the verge of discovering subatomic theory, everyone on the face of the planet has his or her memories and technological knowledge wiped in an instant. Surrounded by working vehicles, factories, and skyscrapers, civilization recovers pretty quickly. It turns out this is the plan of two protagonists to keep humanity from rendering Earth uninhabitable via nuclear war.]] |
| 125 | *** [[spoiler: Again.]] |
| 126 | * Francesca Haig's ''Literature/TheFireSermon'' takes place four hundred years after a global nuclear war. The ruins of the Before are considered taboo and off-limits to everyone, and society now shuns the technology used in [[TheBeforetimes the Before]] in favor of medieval tech. And the best part? Seers like the protagonist get to relive the Blast in their dreams. |
| 127 | * ''Literature/FitzpatricksWar'' takes place centuries after the Storm Times in the late 21st Century, which trashed all electrical and electronic technology as well as devastated the developed world. The SteamPunk Yukon Confederacy in particular emerged from the ashes of the United States. |
| 128 | * ''Literature/TheFlowerThatBloomedNowhere'' takes place after the old Universe was destroyed by a false vacuum decay. However, the [[{{Precursors}} Ironworkers]] managed to save humanity [[spoiler:by sheltering inside a black hole]], and then building a new plane of existence anchored to the Tower of Asphodel, an iron megastructure [[spoiler:which contains the bodies and [[OurSoulsAreDifferent Pneumas]] of the humans they could save.]] |
| 129 | * ''Literature/TheForestOfHandsAndTeeth'' takes place generations after a ZombieApocalypse. |
| 130 | * In ''Literature/TheGirlFromTheMiraclesDistrict'', the setting, the cities of Wars and Sawa, are very much a CrapsackWorld in miniature thanks to a magical catastrophe sixty years prior. As the cities are connected by emotion-based {{Ley Line}}s to Warszawa, when World War Two came to the city, the entire place was poisoned, causing random, murderous mutations that continue to this day and rendering sections of Wars and all of Sawa uninhabitable. |
| 131 | * ''Literature/TheGirlWhoOwnedACity'' takes place in a [[TeenageWasteland Pre-Teen Wasteland]] after a disease kills everyone over the age of puberty. |
| 132 | * Rachelle [=McCalla=]'s ''Literature/TheGirlWhoStartedTheWarToEndAllWars'' begins in a [[DomedHometown domed settlement]] in Nunavut, Canada, housing some of the last remnants of humanity two hundred years after a nuclear war [[spoiler:caused by Franz Ferdinand's efforts to make Austria-Hungary a superpower through the development of atomic weapons]]. |
| 133 | * In ''Literature/TheGiverQuartet'', while the first book ''Literature/TheGiver'' implies that the world "evolved" for lack of a better term, into Sameness, the second book ''Literature/GatheringBlue'' shows that the world takes place after a major upheaval known as The Ruin. Not much detail is given about it, but it is said to been a combination of both man-made and natural disasters. |
| 134 | * ''The Green Gods'' is set on an Earth where, due to a [[HollywoodScience badly mangled version]] of the Greenhouse Effect, plants have evolved sentience and enslaved humans, who have regressed to a medieval level. |
| 135 | * ''Literature/{{Grydscaen}}'' is a cyberpunk series set after a "Great War" in the setting's past. |
| 136 | * By Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin: |
| 137 | ** ''Literature/AlwaysComingHome'' takes place on Earth after our civilization has collapsed. Poisoned lands, styrofoam on the beaches, genetic diseases... |
| 138 | ** ''Literature/{{Hainish}}'' short story "Solitude" takes place on the planet Eleven-Soro, well after TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, the cause of which is never exactly spelled out but which is implied to have been due largely to massive overpopulation. |
| 139 | * Due to being an anthology, ''Literature/HardaHorda'' comes with three different variants: |
| 140 | ** ''Rail Station Attendant'': Probably the most mundane form of apocalypse present. Rather than having some big, dramatic event, it's a slow and very mundane combination of depletion of resources, climate change, regular wars and an odd pandemic between it all... yet the "present" is most definitely a completely different - and in many ways worse or at least less convenient - world. |
| 141 | ** ''They Don't Watch From Above'': The story is set decades after climate change [[FloodedFutureWorld raised sea levels]], changing the world forever (Kent is all that's left of southern England, Low Countries are no more and so on). However, after initial chaos subsided, the life goes as usual, just with a bit less land. |
| 142 | ** ''Fiery Tail'': The Earth ecosystem got almost entirely annihilated by a [[ColonyDrop swarm of asteroids]] and the story is set at an unspecified time in the future, with survivors stored on a [[SleeperShip space]] [[TheArk ark]] recolonising the Earth. |
| 143 | * ''Literature/HeartOfDread'' is set after some wars and a climatic catastrophe known as the Big Freeze, so the whole world is covered in ice and only a few countries are left standing. |
| 144 | * Sterling Lanier's ''Hiero Desteen'' books (''Hiero's Journey'' and ''The Unforsaken Hiero'') are set mainly in what used to be Canada, prior to WorldWarIII (now long past). [[BadassPreacher The protagonist's]] mission in the first book is to [[LostTechnology rediscover computer technology]] because his people are running into information management problems and have enough historical knowledge to realize that computer information retrieval could solve them. |
| 145 | * ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' starts with the Earth being destroyed. |
| 146 | * Several stories in ''Literature/HitherbyDragons'', although the intro to "[[http://imago.hitherby.com/2004/09/the-arena-and-what-happened-there/ The Arena and what happened there]]" sums it up rather well. |
| 147 | * ''Literature/HollowKingdom2019'': The bulk of the story takes place in the months after a ZombieApocalypse sweeps Seattle [[spoiler:and the rest of the world]], leaving various animals to try to survive in the ruins of the Emerald City. |
| 148 | %%* ''Literature/{{Horseclans}}'' series by Robert Adams. |
| 149 | * ''Literature/{{Hothouse}}'' by Brian Aldiss. The Sun is going nova, half of Earth is covered by a single Banyan Tree, and the few remaining scattered tribes of humans are dying out. |
| 150 | * ''Literature/TheHungerGames'', which is set sometime several hundred years after a gigantic, unexplained apocalypse which is implied to be some combination of war and natural disasters that leaves North America as mostly ash and destroyed the rest of the world. Hundreds of years later, the nation of Panem is set up. There are implications that Panem represents the entire human species. Panem is thrown into a civil war with its Districts, which ends with the destruction of the 13th District. After this event, the Capitol sets up the Hunger Games, and the book picks up 74 years later. District 12, the smallest District (possibly excluding 13), has a population of between 8,000 and 10,000. [[spoiler: District 13 is revealed at the end of book 2 to have survived the ass-kicking it received by the Capitol, and the reason it hasn't been destroyed since is that its dedicated industry is nuclear materials, and its own nuclear arsenal allowed them to strike a deal with the Capitol to be left alone. The small population explains why, for all his machinations, Snow doesn't want to risk nuclear war.]] |
| 151 | %% * This is why things are the way they are in "Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream". |
| 152 | * In the Creator/BrianEvenson novel ''Immobility'', protagonist Josef Horkai is a HumanPopsicle who wakes up paralyzed from the waste down to a BadFuture where some unspecified disaster has been destroyed almost all life on earth. |
| 153 | * ''Literature/TheImmortalJourney'' is set two years after an unspecified incident called "The Ecuador Explosion", which turned almost all of humanity into zombies. By the time the story starts, killing the undead has already become a routine for the few surviving humans, including the protagonist Emily. The situation is so fucked up, in fact, that even ''[[TheGrimReaper Death himself]]'' is out of a job − the zombies are not technically dead, nor can they truly die, meaning that Death can't reap their lives. This threatens what he calls the "balance", hence why finding a cure to zombieness is so crucial to him too. |
| 154 | %%* ''Literature/{{Indigo}}'': |
| 155 | * ''Literature/InTheKeepOfTime'': The future that the kids visit is this scenario, albeit one which takes place after [[GreenAesop global warming and the energy crisis]] instead of [[ApocalypseHow nuclear war]]. |
| 156 | * In ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'', Martian civilization peaked millennia before the events of the novels -- the Barsoom that Carter finds himself on is a ScavengerWorld. |
| 157 | %%* ''Literature/JonShannow'' trilogy is a postapocalyptic series, with elements of TheWildWest. |
| 158 | * ''Literature/KateDaniels'': [[MagicVersusScience The world is plagued by magic waves]]. Most of the human population was destroyed during the first magic flare when monsters flooded back into the world and magic reduced skyscrapers to rubble. The rest of the humans survive by keeping one hand on their weapons or banding together in tightly knit neighborhoods. |
| 159 | * ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'': 99% of humanity is wiped out in a huge geological upheaval, with humanity thrown back to the Stone Age and forced to crawl back to dominance over several million years, and evolving into the Second Men, who are then destroyed in a war with aliens and leave behind the Third Men, who evolve into the Fourth Men, who create [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters and are destroyed by]] the Fifth Men, who then abandon Earth after the Moon [[ColonyDrop comes crashing down]] and {{Terraform}} Venus. Eventually, Venus has to be abandoned when the Sun starts expanding into a Red Giant, and the Ninth Men flee to Neptune. Finally, the Eighteenth (and Last) Men die when the Sun unexpectedly goes Nova. |
| 160 | * ''Literature/TheLastDragon'' takes place in a world where the rain never stops and society has kind of crumbled to pieces. Plus FantasticRacism. |
| 161 | * ''Literature/TheLastGirlScout'' is set in Appalachia 200 years after a combo zombie apocalypse and nuclear war. |
| 162 | * ''Literature/TheLastShip'' is last because of a nuclear war that left most of Earth uninhabitable. |
| 163 | * ''Literature/LastSurvivors'': There are very few humans, the moon is out of whack, there are early winters and seething hot summers, and people move around in packs like animals and steal from their former neighbors just to live another day. |
| 164 | * ''Literature/{{Limes}}'' is set two centuries later the Fall of the Western Empire (when incidentally the events of ''Literature/TheLastLegion'' took place). Italy has been invaded and sacked multiple times and now is almost entirely ruled by the Lombards (save for Rome, where the Pope resides, and Ravenna along with most of Southern Italy, who have stayed in the the Eastern Empire). The DecoyProtagonist is one of the few Roman patricians that have survived the Lombard invasion and are less and less relevant, when not treated as second-class citizens. The patrician's son-in-law remarks that his being able to keep his lands and his fortune almost untouched is more the exception than the rule, if not a miracle. |
| 165 | * ''Literature/LittleMushroom'' takes place about a century after Earth's geomagnetic field suddenly disappeared and led to the human population becoming decimated by cosmic radiation, disease, and infection caused by animals who have mutated into far more powerful and deadly xenogenics. Most of the remaining humans live in two dystopian bases overseen by military officers who mercilessly kill any and all people suspected of being xenogenics. |
| 166 | * ''Literature/LordOfTheWorld'' by Monsignor Creator/RobertHughBenson is a dystopian novel centered on the reign of the Antichrist and the end of the world. |
| 167 | * The setting of ''Literature/LostBoysOfTheCascades'', a world where almost all adults were killed in a pandemic a year prior. |
| 168 | * ''Literature/LucifersHammer'': Much of the story takes place after a massive comet destroys most of civilization, with only a few enclaves left. |
| 169 | * ''Literature/LumbanicoTheCubicPlanet'' is set seven hundred years after the Great Shame, when the ancient Lumbanician civilization was destroyed by the Black Cloud, a massive toxic cloud created by rampant overuse of contaminant fuels, which descended upon the planet's inhabited valleys and wiped out many animal and plant species, as well as most of the planet's forests. Lumbanicians have always shunned polluting sources of energy since then, but large areas of Lumbanico remain deforested after so many centuries. |
| 170 | * ''Literature/MaddigansFantasia'', by Creator/MargaretMahy, is set some time 'after the Great Chaos changed the shape of the world'. The Chaos itself is never described or hinted at, but the entire series is spent trying to ensure that the existing state of things doesn't get any worse -- which, according to time-travelers Timon and Eden, it's about to. |
| 171 | * ''Literature/{{Maddrax}}'' takes place after a comet hits the Earth, moving the axis of rotation, and causing all sorts of mutations and retardations. Intelligent rats, vampires, primitive people, world conspiracies, and more arise out of the ashes. |
| 172 | * ''Literature/MadgieWhatDidYouDo'' tends to feature this trope, when Bunny and Madgie return to find a BadFuture and much of the stories involve them trying to reverse it. This tends to be more prominent in the stories that feature [[WorldWarIII nuclear wars]], where the world is plunged into a [[EndlessWinter nuclear winter]], two examples being ''Nuclear Snow'' and ''"It looked like falling snow...."''. |
| 173 | * ''Literature/{{Malevil}}'' takes place after a nuclear war on Easter Sunday, 1977. The characters are struggling to survive after the apocalypse but they have a key advantage: the titular Malevil is a stone castle and returns to its original purpose as a fortified stronghold. |
| 174 | %%* ''Literature/TheMazeRunner'': |
| 175 | * Manuel de Pedrolo's ''Mecanoscrito del segundo origen'' (Second origin typescript) deals with two young survivors of an alien attack on earth trying to repopulate it and preserve human culture, with the few other survivors they come across no longer being quite as the sound of mind as they may once have been. |
| 176 | * This is the primary setting of ''Men''. The world population is reduced to ONE, then back up to eleven, before the main plot takes place. Unfortunately for the human race, all eleven of those people are men. Fortunately for the human race, they don't age and are MadeOfIron. |
| 177 | * ''Literature/Metro2033'' and the [[VideoGame/Metro2033 eponymous game]] take place 20 years after a nuclear holocaust. The only survivors (that we know of) inhabit what used to be the Moscow Metro with various stations being city-states on their own. Factions have sprung up, and death is around every corner. Going to the surface is a death sentence. |
| 178 | * ''Literature/{{Mindscape}}'', by Andrea Hairston, has a living barrier suddenly appear and cut off parts of the world from each other. Humans divide into three refugee camps: New Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, Lost Santos in the western U.S., and Paradigma in Europe. A virus appears and threatens populations in all areas. Only the phase-shifting Vermittlers are able to penetrate the barrier and distribute the cure. |
| 179 | * In the short story "Literature/AModelLife", the second model James is given the chance to live in is a post-apocalyptic nightmare, where he'd be an all-powerful cop. |
| 180 | * Philip Reeves's ''Literature/MortalEngines'' takes place after not only the Sixty Minute War, a conflict so devastating it caused centuries of geological instability and fundamentally changed the geography of the Earth (the North American continent is glassed, and severed from South America through the ''complete obliteration'' of Central America. ''Entire seas'' have evaporated and changed places, and there is a ''[[ArtisticLicenseGeology mountain so high its top is in space, generated by volcanic activity]]''. Half of China is underwater, and everything north of New York is an icy wasteland with five-hundred-mile-an-hour winds), but [[HumansAreWarriors at least]] [[EarthIsABattlefield two]] [[ForeverWar other]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters wars]]. ''And'', [[SerialEscalation there is a third nearly-apocalyptic war going on in the last two books.]] The human race is forced into gigantic mobile cities... which then consume all surface resources and have to eat each other. |
| 181 | * ''Literature/NaturalLaw'' is set centuries after a meteor struck the Earth. Most of the old world is either submerged or covered by ice. |
| 182 | * ''Literature/{{Newsflesh}}'' is set twenty years after the ZombieApocalypse. Humanity's survival is credited to Creator/GeorgeRomero (for making lots of people GenreSavvy) and bloggers (who immediately reported the apocalypse at face value, while traditional media initially wrote it off as an elaborate prank or something). |
| 183 | * ''Literature/TheNightLand'' is set twenty million years in the future, where the Sun has guttered out and died, leaving Earth in utter darkness. The few remaining humans live in a vast pyramid, while the outside is uninhabitable and overrun by {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. |
| 184 | * ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' is set sometime after an unspecified cataclysm (hinted to be [[AtomicHate nuclear war]]) caused the collapse of the democratic governments and prepared the way for the rise of the [[SpaceFillingEmpire three world powers.]] Much of the story's creepiness derives from the fact that [[spoiler: we can't be sure if anything the Party says is correct, or even if the other enemy states exist at all.]] |
| 185 | * ''Literature/NuclearDream'' novel takes place in what used to be the US after a nuclear holocaust. Most survivors remain in bunkers, fearing the harsh life on the surface, where only people who call themselves "dragons" (by rejecting all that makes them human and looking out only for number one) can survive. The protagonist's goal is to try to prevent a delayed launch of a nuclear missile at an unspecified enemy. |
| 186 | * ''Literature/OnTheBeach'' follows the [[spoiler: short]] lives of people living in southern Victoria, Australia, after the rest of the world has blown each other to bits with nuclear bombs. [[spoiler: Everybody dies, All of them. Yes even the baby. And the dog. They all die. Incredibly depressing, but still a brilliant book.]] |
| 187 | * ''Literature/TheOne'' follows a thirteen-year-old girl who is the only one left in her town after a deadly flesh-eating parasite kills the entire population and is forced to find a cure for it. [[spoiler: She wasn't the only one left in her town, her friends had the parasite as well, but since she was one of the last ones affected, they didn't trust her any longer and left town.]] |
| 188 | * Creator/WilliamRForstchen's ''One Second After'' is a CozyCatastrophe that begins with an EMP attack on the US and tells what happens in the [[ChinaTakesOverTheWorld following]] [[MexicoCalledTheyWantTexasBack year]]. |
| 189 | * ''Literature/ThePassage'' by Justin Cronin has this in spades, due to a DepopulationBomb resulting in [[spoiler: rampant vampires wiping out most of the American Continent]]. |
| 190 | * ''Literature/PastwatchTheRedemptionOfChristopherColumbus'' takes place in a CozyCatastrophe setting, where society is recovering from an unspecified ecological disaster. [[spoiler:Except the recovery efforts are failing. The ecological damage is too extensive, and human civilization is doomed. While humankind will likely endure in some form, scientists agree that there is no way for civilization to rise again due to the exhaustion of all easily-accessible natural resources (i.e. can't have another Bronze Age without bronze or an Iron Age without iron). The only solution is TimeTravel to attempt to prevent the ecological disaster in the first place]]. |
| 191 | * ''Literature/{{Pelbar}}'', a series by Paul O. Williams, is set in North America 1,000 years after a nuclear war, describing how the communities along the Heart River (formerly the Mississippi) are trying to reforge anything resembling a nation. |
| 192 | * ''Literature/ThePendragonAdventure'': In ''The Pilgrims of Rayne'', Bobby discovers that [[spoiler: the tropical island paradise of Ibara is actually part of Veelox, after three hundred years have passed since Aja Killian's time. The rest of Veelox is a crumbling wasteland and the people not living in Ibara aren't much better than animals.]] In ''Raven Rise'', [[spoiler: Third Earth]] could probably also fit this trope well. |
| 193 | * ''Literature/ThePeripheral'': The slow cataclysm named the Jackpot wasn't a single event, but rather, slow decay and worsening of everything until all of a sudden the richest and most powerful {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s took a look around and realized that somehow, civilization had mostly collapsed without anyone noticing. It's a world in recovery, with abundant nanotech and extensive changes made at every level to make everything more eco-friendly and to restore Earth... but that doesn't change the fact countless people died entirely needlessly and Earth's recovery is only possible because of how utterly reduced humanity has been. Small wonder that when the time travel technology was discovered, Lowbeer dedicates herself to monitoring the timelines and making an effort to save as many people as she can. |
| 194 | * ''Literature/ThePeshawarLancers'': The End came in the Victorian era in the form of a [[ColonyDrop Big Rock From The Sky]] and so much effort went into survival the technology and culture have more or less frozen at the time period (at least in the dominant culture). |
| 195 | * ''Literature/PiecingTogetherTheAshesReconstructingTheOldWorldOrder'' is a future-history work set centuries after a madman remembered only as "The Beast" [[PresidentEvil took over America and ruled as a dictator]] before eventually deciding to nuke the whole world. Human civilization has since recovered to a roughly early 20th century level, though many modern technologies remain lost (and in some cases are considered mythical); it doesn't help that much of recorded history has been lost or [[AllHailTheGreatGodMickey misremembered]]. |
| 196 | * ''Literature/PosterGirl'' takes place in a sector of a post collapse USA. In this case a MegaCity build in the Northwest between Seattle and Portland. The overall setting might be the same as ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'' by the same author. |
| 197 | * ''Literature/ThePower'': The FramingDevice is set in a future matriarchal society that's millennia after our civilization was destroyed by nuclear warfare. |
| 198 | * ''Literature/ThePracticeEffect'': Subverted. When Dennis finds himself on a parallel world called Tatir, he initially assumes the local HumanAliens are the survivors of some kind of global war or cataclysm, since all the old stuff is high-tech, while all the new stuff is crappy, assuming it to be a ScavengerWorld. The locals have no idea what he's talking about. The real reason is the titular practice effect. Instead of being worn out with time and use, inanimate objects get only better with use, which is why all new stuff looks like it was made in the Stone Age, while old stuff is beyond Earth's current science (e.g. anti-gravity, perfect lubricant). It's common for lords and other rich folks to hire the poor to "practice" their items for them, so by the time they get it, it's all nice and cool. On the flipside, objects left to their own devices atrophy and revert to their primitive origins. |
| 199 | * The Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom thread ''Protect and Survive'' is set in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, after a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the West. Newcastle is somewhat spared, but suffers in the aftermath of the nuclear war. |
| 200 | * ''Literature/ThePureTrilogy'' is set after a nuclear event that leaves many people fused to whatever they were near before the blast, be it objects, animals, or other people. The titular "pures", who are unharmed, live inside domed cities, while the others struggle to survive outside. |
| 201 | * Mike [=McQuay=]'s ''Pure Blood'' and ''Mother Earth'' involve North American culture devolving into feudalism, the use of [[HorseOfADifferentColor giant dogs]] (inexplicably renamed "[[CallARabbitASmeerp woofers]]") as mounts, and a seemingly randomly shifting hierarchy of humans and mutants. |
| 202 | * ''Literature/ThePurpleCloud'' finds a man returning from a Polar expedition to discover that seemingly all other humans and animals on the planet have been killed by the purple cloud of the title. |
| 203 | * ''Literature/RiddleyWalker'' is an example of this, as it takes place roughly 3,000 years after an apocalyptic event that left England in an Iron Age existence. Civilization, as it is, has been reduced to a mere shadow of what it once was: common religion is based on Punch-and-Judy shows, what metal supplies remain to have to be salvaged from ancient ruins, and years marked "AD" are said to stand for "All Done", and the English language is, if the narrator is to be relied upon, now written phonetically (making the book incredibly difficult to read without speaking it out loud). |
| 204 | * ''Literature/TheRoad'' takes place after an unspecified event that leaves humanity nearly extinct and destroyed the atmosphere to such a degree that nothing will grow. |
| 205 | * ''Literature/{{Safehold}}'': The planet Safehold is humanity's last desperate attempt to evade genocide at the hands of the Gbaba. It's a foregone conclusion that every human world except for Safehold itself has been wiped out. |
| 206 | * ''Literature/SaturnsChildren'' by Charles Stross explores a Solar System inhabited only by robots centuries after the mysterious extinction of humanity. |
| 207 | * ''Literature/SecondApocalypse'' takes place two thousand years after the First Apocalypse. Large parts of the continent are still a wasteland. |
| 208 | * ''Literature/SeptimusHeap'': The series is implied to take place long after the end of our world. ''Syren'' has characters discuss old stories about men flying to the moon in white tubes. Later, a relatively modern submarine is encountered, and a tower holds what seems to be a modern elevator, with a light that shows a down-pointing arrow when you, well, go down. The books also talk about Roman temples, and make constant references to real-world places, like Peru, China, and Persia. |
| 209 | %%** ''Fyre'' adds more fuel to the, er, fire of this theory. Septimus writes the date on the snow outside [[spoiler:the House of Foryx]]. It's... quite surprising, to say the least.%%ZCE. What's the date? Why is it relevant? |
| 210 | * ''Literature/ShadesChildren'' is set at [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture some unspecified point in the near future]], in a time after powerful interdimensional beings called the Overlords made all adults vanish and took over the Earth, using the children since then as fodder for [[TranshumanAbomination horrific creatures they make]] and use in deadly games, with a small struggling resistance fighting them. |
| 211 | * ''Literature/ShadesOfGrey'' takes place five hundred years after "the Something That Happened", which wiped out the Previous civilization and filled the world with its variety of high-tech ruins and peculiar animals. What that Something actually was is a mystery. |
| 212 | * ''Literature/{{Shannara}}'' is set after the Great Wars have dramatically altered the landscape and reduced civilization to medieval levels. Gnomes, dwarves, and trolls are mutant humans. Elves are real elves, having come out of hiding after the war. |
| 213 | * ''Literature/TheShatteredSea'' is set in a Norse flavored StandardFantasySetting which has been built on the ruins of a precursor "Elf" civilization that destroyed itself in a cataclysmic war and split continents (hence the series title). It's made increasingly clear throughout the series that the story's setting is EarthAllAlong and the cataclysm in question was a nuclear war. It's also suggested that the books are actually set in the relatively close future/civilization fell only recently, given that [[RagnarokProofing technology still works]] and some areas of the world are still irradiated. |
| 214 | * ''The Shattered World'' and ''The Burning Realm'' are fantasy novels set a thousand years AfterTheEnd of a world that got broken into fragments. Desperate damage-control by the resident mages has preserved the fragments in a vast envelope of air and equipped all the pieces big enough for settlements with Runestones that provide gravity and a regular orbit. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, the Runestones' magic is almost exhausted, making these both AfterTheEnd novels ''and'' JustBeforeTheEnd novels.]] |
| 215 | * ''Literature/TheSisterVerseAndTheTalonsOfRuin'' has the Dreadlands, a place that joins every universe, which was utterly destroyed by an EldritchAbomination and its army. The characters in the story are still recovering from it nearly a thousand years later. |
| 216 | * ''Literature/SkyJumpers'' by Peggy Eddleman is set in a world where much of society was destroyed by "[[FantasticNuke Green Bombs]]", which have altered the properties of a number of metals, and created deadly toxins in the atmosphere called "Bomb's Breath", a large cloud of which hangs around the perimeter of the town of White Rock. |
| 217 | * ''Literature/{{Skylark}}'' by Meagan Spooner is supposedly set after a nuclear war that wiped out most animal species and most of human civilization. |
| 218 | * ''Literature/SpectralShadows'' has Serial 11, which takes place "At the End of Time" on the planet Cygnus, where the {{Funny Animal}} People that live there now were the result of apocalyptic genetic warfare by the humans. |
| 219 | * ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': In ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear: Army of Terror'', most of the galaxy is chugging along just fine, but the heroes [[ClosedCircle crash land]] on Kiva, which used to support a thriving ecology and a native population, but has basically become like ''Literature/TheRoad'' -- ''everything'' is dead, there isn't so much as a blade of grass anywhere, and the natives [[spoiler: have become furious wraiths]] thanks to some kind of horrific experiment. |
| 220 | * ''Literature/{{Stormlands}}'': The ancients left a few new craters on the moon, and ferrous metals are a rare commodity. Also, there are [[CoolHorse four-horned horses]], [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe blue-skinned mutant babes]], and at least one [[HistoricalDomainCharacter Historical Domain]] CaptainErsatz. |
| 221 | * ''Literature/SummerOfTheApocalypse'' is set after a deadly flu pandemic. |
| 222 | * ''Literature/TheSundered'' is set in a flooded world ''where the water wants to eat you.'' |
| 223 | * ''Literature/TheSurvivalist'' is a 1980s series of adventure novels by Jerry Ahern about a CrazyPrepared ex-CIA man searching for his family in the post-WorldWarIII United States occupied by the [[DirtyCommunists Soviet military]]. Unfortunately, the series [[JumpTheShark jumps the shark]] somewhat after the hero and his family are [[ColdSleepColdFuture frozen for 500 years and wake up in a future world to battle neo-Nazis, and neo-communists led by his old enemy]]. |
| 224 | * ''Literature/SurvivorDogs'' is set after humans mysteriously vanish from the world, leaving the dog characters to inherit the ruins of civilization. |
| 225 | * ''Literature/SwanSong'' is a post-apocalyptic novel with fantasy/horror underpinnings. |
| 226 | * "Literature/TheTamariskHunter": Lolo encounters a town that has been abandoned and is being buried by sands and overrun by tumbleweeds. |
| 227 | * ''Literature/{{Technomancer}}'' by MK Gibson: The Biblical Apocalypse has occurred but God didn't show up and the world has fallen under the sway of demons. It has also become a Cyberpunk dystopia within the remaining cities, the rest of the world degenerating into lawless wastelands. |
| 228 | * "Literature/ThereWillComeSoftRains": in the aftermath of a nuclear war, there remains only an automated house and a dying dog. |
| 229 | * "Literature/TheyDontMakeLifeLikeTheyUsedTo", a seriocomic novella by Creator/AlfredBester, features the last man and woman on Earth -- at least, they think they might be -- trying to carry on with their daily lives in a decimated midtown Manhattan. |
| 230 | * ''Literature/ToTheStars'', a trilogy by Creator/HarryHarrison, is set a few centuries after a peak oil crash and subsequent world chaos. |
| 231 | * ''Literature/TowersTrilogy'': The series takes place after an event called the Fall, which wiped out modern civilization and caused a {{Magitek}}-based society to rise in its wake. The wealthy live in giant MageTower skyscrapers which float above the devastation, while the poor are forced to scrape out a living among the ruins on the ground. |
| 232 | * ''Literature/TrailOfLightning'' is set in the independent Navajo nation after the Big Water flooded much of the world, destroying global industry and killing billions. Other nations exist but since they are all subsistence-level economies there are few international interactions. |
| 233 | * ''Literature/TrailOfTheSeahawks'' involves North American culture devolving into feudalism and the use of giant dogs (albeit quite inexplicably called "riding dogs" in this case) as mounts. The only mutants present, however, are the [[PsychicPowers psionic]] [[IntelligentGerbil sapient]] monkeys; and they're mostly good and on friendly terms with everyone else. |
| 234 | * ''Literature/TheTripods'' series by Creator/JohnChristopher deals with a post-alien invasion future where the only humans not turned into zombie-like slaves are young children. |
| 235 | * ''Literature/TwitterStoryEarth5AR'' is set five years after the AlienInvasion, the nameless protagonist having grown used to their captured state by then. |
| 236 | * ''Literature/{{Uglies}}'', by Scott Westerfield, features a world where nothing using gas works, and apparently humanity's population is reduced and controlled, and segregated into a number of strict social castes. |
| 237 | * ''[[Literature/CrosstimeTraffic The Valley Westside War]]'' is set in a fairly typical post-nuclear world. The twist is that it's set in an AlternateHistory (this is a Creator/HarryTurtledove story after all) where the war happened in 1967 and the protagonists are scientists from a future history where travel across alternates has been discovered who are studying the world to see how and why things went wrong. |
| 238 | * ''Literature/VictoriaANovelOf4thGenerationWar'' displays the whole cycle of the fall and rebirth of the United States, from the tottering superpower's last days through the chaos and anarchy of the collapse, the wars of the successor states over the spoils, and the beginning of the new era as one of them emerges out of the wastelands as the local hegemon and commences the painful restoration of the past greatness. |
| 239 | * ''Literature/{{Ward}}'': The sequel to ''Literature/{{Worm}}'', it is set a few years after [[FinalBattle Gold Morning]], with over 10 billion people dead and Earth Bet rendered practically uninhabitable. Most of the survivors have moved to Earth Gimel and a few other uninhabited Earths in the neighboring dimensions, but a lack of a much of a formal government, the on-going evacuation of survivors from Bet, threats from the other parallel Earths that didn't get hit quite as hard, and, of course, good old fashioned parahuman villainy, to say things are in turmoil would be an understatement. |
| 240 | %%* ''Literature/{{Wasteworld}}'' by James Barton is another post-nuclear action pulp series from the 80s. |
| 241 | * ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'': Rand gets to see the history of the Aiel during the Breaking of the World when humanity went from CrystalSpiresAndTogas to near-extinction. |
| 242 | * ''Literature/WhoFearsDeath'' is implied to be set after this. There is technology, but it's mostly decayed and in disrepair. According to the Great Book, the Okeke created a great technological society but were crushed when Ani woke up to discover what her creations had done and created the Nuru to punish them. |
| 243 | * ''Literature/WingsOfFire'' takes place 5000 years after dragons took over the world in a mysterious event called the Scorching, and [[HumanPet humans are thought of as pets or food]] to almost the entire dragon race. |
| 244 | * ''Literature/WithoutWarning'': [[AlternateHistory In 2003, just before the Iraq War]], a mysterious energy field called "the Wave" wipes out all higher primates (and about half of an apparently random selection of any species with a spine) in the greater part of North America (about half of Canada, 95% of the Lower 48 states, and about 80% of Mexico as well as about 75% of Cuba). [[FromBadToWorse Things get worse]] when [[spoiler: feeling threatened by jihad, Israel nukes all its neighbors]]. Four years later (and three after the Wave disappears) the reformed US government, based in Seattle, is attempting to recolonize its former territory and is threatened by a [[DividedStatesOfAmerica breakaway Republic of Texas and an increasingly organized coalition of pirates and jihadis trying to take over the East Coast to create an Islamic homeland for refugees displaced by the aforementioned]] [[spoiler:nuking by Isreal]], the French Intifada, and the United Kingdom deporting most of its Muslims. |
| 245 | * ''Literature/{{Wool}}'' takes place after something devastated the entire planet and people must live in underground silos to stay safe from the incredibly toxic atmosphere. |
| 246 | * ''Literature/WorldMadeByHand'', by James Howard Kunstler, is set in a future where industrial civilization has collapsed simply from petroleum depletion and resultant stresses on socioeconomic systems.[[labelnote:*]]A series of violent events also destroyed such major cities as Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles with nuclear bombs, but there was never any all-out nuclear war.[[/labelnote]] This is one of a fairly new genre of [[http://www.energybulletin.net/node/44031 post-oil novels]]. |
| 247 | * ''Literature/WorldWarZ'' follows a ZombieApocalypse from its start to its eventual conclusion and the restoration of civilization. |
| 248 | * ''Literature/ZForZachariah'', a young adult novel by Robert C. O'Brien, takes place after a nuclear war that seems to have left only two people alive. |
| 249 | * ''Literature/TheZombieAutopsies'' is set after an intentionally released zombie virus. |
| 250 | * ''Literature/{{Zothique}}'' is set eight million years in the future, when the Sun is dying, civilization has long since collapsed, science has been forgotten, magic has returned, and humans are going extinct. |
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