Interesting TEOTWAWKI books

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jnojr

jnojr

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The first of the series is "Left Behind" by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. It's about the Rapture and the seven years of tribulations that follow. I'm not a very religious person, but the book is not overly preachy at all. There are some very odd "facts" that the authors obviously contrived quite a bit to match the prophesies in Revelations, but not so bad as to detract from the story. I've only just finished the first one, and there are eight more to go, it looks like. I have a feeling that firearms and other means of worldly self-defense won't come into play much, if at all, but still...
 
My wife has read all 13 or how many ever there are. She likes them but I never could get started on them.

Greg
 
I don't want this to turn into a flame fest, but I'm curious to know if this is a local issue or not.

A few years ago around here, these books were in the non-fiction section. There was a lot of controversy when one store moved them to Fiction.
Lots of crying about how it's non fiction because it's based on an interpretation of the Bible. I think they were moved to a Religious and/or New Age section, which calmed some people while outraging others.

I haven't kept up with the story on this, but I'll try to drop by some book stores and see which section they're located in now. So, was this a localized deal, or did it happen other places?
 
I've not paid attention to where these books are located, but they are clearly fiction, and I am not sure why someone would think otherwise. The main characters are not in the Bible, though the events are biblically based.
 
I read the first 5 or 6 books with great interest - usually blew throught them in an afternoon. As I got further into the series, their writing just got worse and worse. For how much research they put into technology issues, they could have put a little into other areas: like guns and weapons. The story got to be so bad, I just put the book (10 or 11?) down half way through it and never picked them up again.

Some of the "classic" SHTF/TEOTWAWKI books IMO are:
Alas, Babylon and Lucifer's Hammer.
 
A few years ago around here, these books were in the non-fiction section. There was a lot of controversy when one store moved them to Fiction.
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Stuff like that makes me WANT the world to end. It is a story that is LOOSELY Bible-based. I mean REAL loosely. Religious nutjobs too retarded to read their own scripture... oy, vey. :rolleyes:
 
_alas, babylon_ is definitely a classic. i think it's been like 20 years since i read that.
 
"The Postman" by David Brin
"The Stand" by Stephen King
"Wolf and Iron" by Gordon Dickson
"Warday" by Whitley Strieber
"The Forge of God" by Greg Bear
Any of the books by James Axler
 
Pournelle & Niven, "Lucifer's Hammer". Aftermath of asteroid impact. Quite real-world, really.

There is quite a large number of post-apocalypse novels in SF. A fair number of them are quite reasonable as to the probable social behaviors...

Mel Tappan wrote a good bit on the technical aspects of "survivalism", back in the 1970s. Lotsa good advice.

Art
 
Lucifer's Hammer, Larry Niven,Jerry Pournelle
Footfall, Larry Niven,Jerry Pournelle



The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven,Jerry Pournelle
Had to throw that last one in, its a favorite of mine. Those Moties are messed up... :D
 
Yeah, Niven and Pournelle are teh win. I loved a lot of the Known Space stories. Pournelle recently wrote a great piece on how the TSA is a test of how much tyranny the american people will tolerate. He felt we were failing the test.
 
I found this link to the thread in which I originally saw it:
THR thread

But he seems to have removed it the original article because someone frightened him. I found this on his website.
what the TSA does best- employ TSA employees

I liked this quote I found here
Remember Heinlein's Space Cadet, where he discussed the difference between officers in the Patrol and the Marines? If a large part of your workforce has IQs between 70 and 110, you can't expect them to make the kinds of critical judgments that you might expect from a workforce with significantly higher IQs. Instead, you need to define their jobs procedurally, and you can still expect to have situations arising that are beyond them. That's what supervisors are for. In the US Army in WWII, the Corps of Engineers had the brightest officers (AFQT Cat 1) and dumbest enlisted men (AFQT Cat 4-5), and generally functioned well.
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At the behest of some fellow THR'ers in another thread discussing TEOTWAKI novels I just finished Lucifer's Hammer by Pournelle and Niven. Though I found it dated, ('77 copyright) I thought it was pretty solid. I'm working on The Rift by Walter Williams now...and would rate it 3 out of 5.

Always give high marks to The Stand by King...and I am open to other suggestions. I've got 8 more weeks of unemployment to kill before I start school again. :banghead:
 
I got them online mostly because they are hard to find in stores. The original "Ringworld" is awesome on many levels. The sequels are relatively weak although Ringworld Engineers is ok. Throne is a waste of a read.

Niven certainly didnt pull an Orson Scott Card or anything (he is the guy who wrote the great Ender's Game and followed it up with various "sequels" that sucked and werent even real sequels). The suckyness of the sequels is mostly in relation to the awesomeness of the first book.

Most of the Known Space short stories are pretty good. Some suck horribly though, so dont expect much. The later Man-Kzin War books have more than their share of tedious hackery although some of the better stories are really good.

Oh yeah, if you like good short stories, download "berserker" by Fred Saberhagen. Sadly most of the berserker series is out of print, but the original was a quite entertaining collection of short stories. It is about giant planet eating robots and pretty much defined the genre lol unicron.
 
Stuff like that makes me WANT the world to end. It is a story that is LOOSELY Bible-based. I mean REAL loosely. Religious nutjobs too retarded to read their own scripture... oy, vey
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Not that they don't read it, but a lot of them are very, very attached to the eschatological scheme ("dispensational premillenialism") fictionalized in the Left Behind books, despite the fact that, well, nevermind. :) There's a whole long arguement there that would be very offtopic here.

Haven't read a one of them, don't intend to. I'm thousands of pages behind in stuff I want to read.
 
The other day checked the local libraries for Lucifer's Hammer so I could read it, I've heard good things about it, but none of them carry it. So I guess I'm going to have to buy it.
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My local library is part of a system (the San Diego City Library system). Their website has a search feature, and I can request books to be delivered to my local branch. And if they don't have it, so far, the County library system has... it's a little bit more of a drive to get to the closest County library, but well worth it when I want a particular book.

God, I love the library... I would be so broke if I had to buy all the books I read :)
 
Oh yeah, if you like good short stories, download "berserker" by Fred Saberhagen. Sadly most of the berserker series is out of print, but the original was a quite entertaining collection of short stories.
Click to expand...

Where can you download them?

But that's a last resort for me. I hate reading from a computer screen.
 
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