A Post Apocalyptic Ecological Fiction List
It’s an era where so many of us are dealing with climate anxiety, where our phones bring us news of earthquakes, cyclones, floods and extreme weather with unjustifiable frequency. So we decided to lean into the general sense of foreboding and pick out a few novels through the ages that have used natural disasters or events as central aspects of their narrative, bringing us alternate futures with clarity and occasionally even hope.
The Death of Grass - John Christopher (1956)
A 1956 novel that involves a deadly virus and a journey across a country descending into anarchy, this novel could well have been a prelude to The Last of Us, more than sixty years earlier. It’s as much about disaster as about human nature and the will to destruction that seems to be a part of our species, and is something of a cult classic.
The Drowned World - JG Ballard (1962)
JG Ballard could be considered one of the forefathers of both science fiction and eco-fiction, writing post-apocalyptic novels over fifty years ago and creating a vast body of work. The Drowned World is presciently set in future London, where global warming has devastated the city and nature has engulfed and reclaimed most of human society.
After the Quake - Haruki Murakami (2000)
This series of short stories by Murakami, explores the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, through the lives of individuals who are either directly or tangentially affected by the tragedy. It presents some stylistic departures from Murakami’s regular writing, as he attempts to explore an event that permeated Japan’s national consciousness.
The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh (2004)
Though it’s not quite post-apocalyptic, the beauty of this novel is the way it unveils the undercurrents of the Sunderbans and the hinterlands of Bengal, charting the unlikely journey of a marine biologist searching for rare river dolphins with great humanity and environmental acumen.
American War - Omar El Akkad (2017)
Egyptian author and journalist Omar El Akkad’s debut novel is a story of war, reimagined and placed in 2075, where the second American Civil War has broken out amidst natural disasters, plague and extremely limited resources. Bringing together political critique, speculative fiction, ecological disaster and the visceral brutality of war, it’s a book that serves as a metaphor for the war on terror and a warning for the future.
The Overstory - Richard Powers (2018)
Richard Powers’ innovative Pulitzer winning novel unfolds ‘in concentric rings of interlocking fables’, at once a paean to the natural world and the history of trees that also contains various stories within it. Divided into different sections that make up the roots, trunk and branches of this wildly ambitious, fragmented work touches upon personal and ecological histories in a powerful manner.
Bangkok Wakes to Rain - Pitchaya Sudbanthad (2019)
Occupying the space between novel and story collection, this ode to Bangkok does a brilliant job conveying the feel of the city. Over the course of several stories, it drifts between past, present and imagined future of Bangkok with seemingly unrelated characters gradually coming together, going from historical fiction to climate speculation with deftness and depth.
The Uninhabitable Earth - David Wallace Wells (2019)
The only book on our list that is not a novel, David Wallace Wells’ deeply researched volume is a sobering but essential read - one of the most seminal books on climate change and global warming of recent years, that explores future possibilities as temperatures continue to rise, looking at prospective weather events, extinction, droughts, famines, disease, floods, earthquakes and more through a scientific and justifiably terrifying lens.