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🧲 Books like this

The Purple Cloud

M.P. Shiel · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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The Last Man

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley · 362 pages

Mary Shelley, the author of [*Frankenstein*][1], wrote the apocalyptic novel The Last Man in 1826. Its first person narrative tells the story of our world standing at the end of the twenty-first century and - after the devastating effects of a plague - at the end of humanity. In the book Shelley writes of weaving this story from a discovery of prophetic writings uncovered in a cave near Naples. Th

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Earth Abides

George R. Stewart · 368 pages

The story of rebuilding civilization after a plague nearly wipes out the human race.

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I Am Legend and Other Stories

Richard Matheson · 312 pages

Neville is essentially the last man on earth, and the loneliness of his situation is the central part of the story. Matheson is able to communicate Neville's emotional feelings vividly, making him very real. We gradually acquire the story of the deaths of Neville's wife and daughter, essentially experiencing the pain he goes through when these memories overcome him. We watch him drink himself into

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I Am Legend

Richard Matheson; Foreword by Joe R. Lansdale

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The Last Ship

William Brinkley · 619 pages

The unimaginable has happened. The world has been plunged into all-out nuclear war. Sailing near the Arctic Circle, the U.S.S. Nathan James is relatively unscathed, but the future is grim and Captain Thomas is facing mutiny from the tattered remnants of his crew. With civilization in ruins, he urges those that remain—one-hundred-and-fifty-two men and twenty-six women—to pull together in search

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The Death of Grass

John Christopher · 222 pages

At first the virus wiping out grass and crops is of little concern to John Custance. It has decimated Asia, causing mass starvation and riots, but Europe is safe and a counter-virus is expected any day. Except, it turns out, the governments have been lying to their people. When the deadly disease hits Britain, society starts to descend into barbarism.

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The Night Land

William Hope Hodgson · 375 pages

Described by H. P. Lovecraft as being "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written", The Night Land is a classic horror fantasy novel by William Hope Hodgson published in 1912. Telling the story of a dying earth, The Night Land starts with a man from the 17th century who, mourning the death of his true love, is given a vision through the eyes his future incarnation. In that d

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The Day of the Triffids

John Wyndham · 272 pages

When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who can see: everyone else, doctors and patients alike, have been blinded by a meteor shower. Now, with civilization in chaos, the triffids - huge, venomous, large-rooted plants able to 'walk', feeding on human flesh - can have their day

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A Canticle for Leibowitz

Walter M. Miller Jr. · 320 pages

Highly unusual After the Holocaust novel. In the far future, 20th century texts are preserved in a monastery, as "sacred books". The monks preserve for centuries what little science there is, and have saved the science texts and blueprints from destruction many times, also making beautifully illuminated copies. As the story opens to a world run on a basically fuedal lines, science is again beco

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Parable of the Sower

Octavia E. Butler · 299 pages

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future. Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been d

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The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (Illustrated)

H G Wells · 84 pages

For more than one hundred years H. G. Wells' classic science fiction tale of the Martian invasion of Earth has enthralled readers with a combination of imagination and incisive commentary on the imbalance of power that continues to be relevant today. No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater

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The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (Illustrated Classics)

H. G. H. G. Wells · 88 pages

For more than one hundred years H. G. Wells' classic science fiction tale of the Martian invasion of Earth has enthralled readers with a combination of imagination and incisive commentary on the imbalance of power that continues to be relevant today. No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater

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Alas, Babylon

Pat Frank · 295 pages

A story of a group of people who rely on their own courage and ingenuity to survive in a town which escaped nuclear bombing.

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The Scarlet Plague

Jack London · 80 pages

It is the year 2072, sixty years on from the scarlet plague that decimated the earth's population. As one of the few who knew life before the plague, James Howard Smith tries to impart what he knows to his grandsons while he still can. Jack London's visionary post-apocalyptic novel The Scarlet Plague was written in 1912.

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Metro 2033

Dmitry Glukhovsky · 458 pages

"The novel that gave birth to the video games 'Metro 2033' and 'Metro: Last Light.' ... In 2013 the world was devastated by an apocalyptic event, annihilating almost all mankind and turning the earth's surface into a poisonous wasteland. A handful of survivors took refuge in the depths of the Moscow underground, and human civilization entered a new Dark Age. The year is 2033. An entire generation

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Swan Song

Robert McCammon · 956 pages

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Greybeard

Brian W. Aldiss · 237 pages

"After the 'Accident, ' all males on Earth become sterile. Society ages and falls apart bit by bit. First, toy companies go under. Then record companies. Then cities cease to function. Now Earth's population lives in spread-out, isolated villages, with its youngest members in their fifties"--Amazon.com.

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On the Beach

Nevil Shute · 311 pages

A novel about the survivors of an atomic war, who face an inevitable end as radiation poisoning moves toward Australia from the North.

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By the Waters of Babylon

Stephen Vincent Benet · 32 pages

After the Great Burning, when fire fell out of the sky, a young priest explores the forbidden Place of the Gods and discovers what kind of beings lived there before their cities were destroyed.

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Z for Zachariah

Robert C. O'Brien · 240 pages

A girl named ann thought she was the only one left after the war, but that becomes a mystery because she found some one!

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The Drought

J.G. Ballard · 240 pages

"Water. Man's most precious commodity is a luxury of the past. Radioactive waste from years of industrial dumping has caused the sea to form a protective skin strong enough to devastate the Earth it once sustained. And while the remorseless sun beats down on the dying land, civilization itself begins to crack."--P. [4] of cover.

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Revelations

Paul Antony Jones · 306 pages

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick · 216 pages

It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignment--find them and then..."retire" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found!

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The Children of Men

P.D. James · 279 pages

"The year is 2021, and the human race is - quite literally - coming to an end. Since 1995 no babies have been born, because in that year all males unexpectedly became infertile. Great Britain is ruled by a dictator, and the population is inexorably growing older. Theodore Faron, Oxford historian and, incidentally, cousin of the all-powerful Warden of England, watches in growing despair as society

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