Any book suggestions for "apocalyptica" in particular?

Hi all!

Running my AW game I feel I lack in one area. I really want some more language to spew apocalyptica forth with, it's hard to come up with evocative words about the apocalypse sometimes. Got a picture in my head but it just doesn't come out with the impact I'd like it to have.

Was hoping to get a suggestion or two about an author who writes in an especially good descriptive way about this kind of subject.  And I do mean books rather than film or other media cause I'm looking to get better at finding the right words.

Cheers!

Start with Clockwork Orange, honestly.  The made-up language in there feels natural and gives good cadence.  Watching the movie helps get a grip on it.

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King has some pretty great post-apocalyptic imagery.

The Stand by the same author does as well, although it's much closer to the apocalypse than AW.

You could also try A Canticle for Leibowitz for some ideas. (It's the shortest of these three.)

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Engine-Summer-John-Crowley/dp/0553233602">Engine Summer</a> by John Crowley is a good one, too.

Also: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

Has maybe three settings worth of different types of imagery as the characters do the whole journey thing.

Neuromancer by William Gibson and Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson stick with me because of how they describe things.

Gibson has a flash fiction feel to his stuff, and Stephenson is really great with detail.

I think The Road has the most evocative post-apocalyptic descriptions I've ever read.

There's a bit describing how the nights are so cold you can hear the rocks cracking that dragged the apocalypse I was playing in into VIVID detail.

I second The Road.

Also, watch Blindness. That movie is FULL of Apocalypse World imagery. Filthy living conditions, desperate people, scarcity, violence, it's got it all. That's not a book, but fuck it.

I second The Road.

Also, watch Blindness. That movie is FULL of Apocalypse World imagery. Filthy living conditions, desperate people, scarcity, violence, it's got it all. That's not a book, but fuck it.

Well it started as a book, so that might also be worth taking a look at...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness_(novel)

-Jim C.

Well it started as a book, so that might also be worth taking a look at...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness_(novel)

-Jim C.

I wouldn't recommend the book. I didn't like it much, and I thought the translation wasn't very good.

Harlan Ellison.

He has a lot of angry sci-fi imagery and ideas in most of his stories.  In particular I'd recommend A Boy and His Dog - lots of post-apoc sex and violence, and weird new concepts, places and monsters that he partially describes to leave to the imagination. 

Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America

It's a "different" book, to be sure, but the narrative style, characters, and descriptives are all pure Apocalypse World. I really want to run a game in this setting, one day.

Joe Haldeman, Worlds Apart.  Earth after a war disease is introduced that kills everyone past puberty.  Some of it's kind of Haldeman-meandering (which I like but isn't everyone's brandy & coffee) but the parts that are gritty and visceral are really striking.  Language not as clipped and spare as Gibson, less bombastic than Stephenson.  Kind of that clinical vibe that Stephen King sometimes gets.

Come to think of it, same author's Accidental Time Machine is good too.  A scant third of the novel is set in a post-apoc theocracy, very hocus and hardholderish.

~Gary

I write daily post-apocalyptic poetry, if that's of any help.

If you're looking to describe some post-apocalyptic diseases, you could do worse than tongueworm and still stomach.