Seveneves (2015) novel

Seveneves (2015) by acclaimed Seattle author Neal Stephenson is set in the near future. It opens with the explosion of the moon by an unknown agent. Earth has about a year to prepare itself for its utter destruction as the moon pieces rain down. Only those humans in outer space, deep in the ocean (think nuclear submarines) and survivalists in deep underground Arctic mines will remain alive for the next 5,000 years. While not his most challenging read, the story is mostly satisfying though not without some obvious questions around how any human society, especially one trapped in outer space, could actually survive for 5,000 years.

The Dead Lands (2015) novel

The Dead Lands (2015) novel by Benjamin Percy is an imaginative retelling of Lewis and Clark's journey across the west, except this time the setting is a post-apocalyptic North America where people have been killed off by a superflu and nuclear warfare. The intrepid future explorers, Lewis Meriwether and Mina Clark, set out from a walled version of St. Louis, Missouri, known as The Sanctuary.

Station Eleven (2014) novel

Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven sees the world depopulated by a plague. The work is set in two timelines, the period before the plague and twenty years after. The novel has been reviewed as part thriller, part dystopian future commentary.

Domain (2001) novel

Steve Alten's 2001 novel Domain about the Mayan Long Count Calendar "prediction" that the world would end on December 21, 2012 was well ahead of the spate of novels that started appearing the closer we approached 2012. Domain intermixes so-called ancient mysteries that are essentially unconnected with the 2012 doomsday scenario. It would not be giving too much away to say that the aliens did it. The novel also contains maps and photographs along with lengthy quotations from a fictional archaeologist's journal whose son, deemed mentally ill, is the protagonist. Domain, which ends in 2013, is the first of a trilogy known as, likely for marketing purposes, the "Mayan Prophecy series". The second novel is Resurrection (2004) and the third is Phobos: Mayan Fear (2011).

The Mist (1980) novella

Stephen King's 1980 novella The Mist, originally published as a short story of the same title and later a 2007 movie, contains a far bleaker ending than what was depicted in the movie, though that too was pretty horrific. The movie pretty well follows the novella up until the point at which the group of characters including the "hero", David Drayton, leave the supermarket to try and escape. The impression you are left with in the novella is that The Mist has enveloped all of Massachusetts and possibly even more of the New England states so that the end of the world may very well be at hand. The Mist is in many ways a precursor to Stephen King's epic novel Under the Dome (2009), except in the latter there are no extra-dimensional monsters. Quoting Stephen King, the Wikipedia entry on Under the Dome notes that the novel "concerns itself with how people behave when they are cut off from the society they've always belonged to." This is exactly what happens in both the novella and movie versions of The Mist.

Endworld: Doomsday (2009) novel

David Robbins' 2009 novel Endworld: Doomsday is the first in "an explosive series of survival in a postapocalyptic age".

Robopocalypse (2011) novel

Here we go again: robots (intelligent machines) revolt and begin the extermination of humanity. Haven't we had one too many doomsday movies on this theme already? I guess if its a meme, a formula and it works, why not. Daniel H. Wilson gives his novel Robopocalypse an authentic touch since he has a PhD in robotics from the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and had previously publish a non-fiction guide called How to Survive a Robot Uprising, possibly modeled on Max Brooks' 2003 handbook The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead.

 According to this report from The National Post,

The story is set no more than a decade in the future, and at the centre of it all is Archos, a powerful artificial intelligence that orchestrates the entire uprising from the depths of a radioactive cavern in Alaska. The novel begins after the war is over, when a leader of the human resistance discovers a black box on the war, filled with accounts of the various heroes. The transcripts of these stories take us back to the pre-war world, and then lay out the uprising as it unfolded.

Someone named Steven Spielberg even optioned the movie rights before Dr. Wilson had completed it. If all this sounds very familiar, just watch the four Terminator or the Matrix trilogy movies. You might also want to dig up Colossus: The Forbin Project, a 1970 movie, that is also eerily similar to Robopocalypse.

The Crystal Skull (2008) novel

British novelist Manda Scott in her 2008 novel The Crystal Skull tackles the 2012 Mayan Long Count calendar "prediction" of the end of the world by mashing it up with the mysterious and completely fabricated Mesoamerican crystal skulls (all known examples that have been authenticated were created in the 19th century present era and later, not by Aztecs or Mayans). She claims that the Mayans "carved thirteen crystal skulls" (paperback back cover blurb) and that the Mayans "to protect humankind ... sent them to the four corners of the globe" (paperback back cover blurb). The Mayans are not known to have had deep seafaring capabilities, so she must an ingenious explanation as to how they got the skulls to the four corners of the globe.

Shades of Grey (2009) novel

Jasper Fforde's highly imaginative and satirical look at a post-apocalyptic world organized around color scheme is one of the few novels to take a lighthearted approach to doomsday. In Shades of Grey, Fforde slowly reveals the strange workings of the Colortocracy that rules Chromatica, the world that exists after Something That Happened and where to be a Yellow, Red, Blue or any of the other acceptable colors, even Grey, defines one's sole being.

World Made by Hand (2008) novel

James Howard Kunstler's 2008 novel World Made by Hand examines the impact of an oil-less world and how infrastructure could be rebuilt.

One Second After (2009) novel

William R. Forstchen's 2009 novel One Second After is set in an idyllic North Carolina town where his hero, a retired military officer who teaches history, turns survivalist in the wake of a electromagnetic pulse from a atmospheric bomb that destroys our fragile computerized world. Some but not all of his novel is plausible as the U.S. military has long known about EMP devices and supposedly much of their gear, particularly in command and control structures, is hardened against this kind of force.

Flood (2009) novel

British author Stephen Baxter's 2009 novel Flood sets the stage for a stunning apocalyptic nightmare: a global flood of Biblical proportions that covers nearly the entire world, turning it into a water world not too unlike the film Waterworld starring Kevin Costner. This novel sets the stage for a sequel titled Ark (2010).

Novels of the Change series by S.M. Stirling

The Novels of the Change series by S.M. Stirling are set in the 2020s (for example, Change Year 22) of North America, part of a brilliantly imagined post-apocalyptic world.

The novels are:

The Sword of the Lady (2009)

Blind Faith (2007) novel

According to the Amazon description of Ben Elton's 2007 novel Blind Faith, he "imagines a post-apocalyptic society where religious intolerance combines with a confessional sex-obsessed, self-centric culture to create a world where nakedness is modesty, ignorance is wisdom and privacy is a dangerous perversion."

The Year of the Flood (2009) novel

The Year of the Flood in Margaret Atwood's 2009 sequel to her Oryx and Crake (2003) novel refers to a manmade pandemic that destroys most of our species.

Oryx and Crake (2003) novel

Margaret Atwood's 2003 novel Oryx and Crake was shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year. It's an end-of-the-world tale caused by a manmade pandemic and she continued the story from a different perspective in The Year of the Flood (2009).

The Passage (2010) novel

The Passage (2010), a lengthy, rambling novel by Justin Cronin, combines some familiar apocalyptic plot elements into an end of the world odyssey. We have a military-induced virus that turns people into vampire-like creatures, beginning with test subjects who are soldiers in an underground installation (shades of Resident Evil), we have errant nuclear bombs going off and we have a future earth, largely depopulated, but with enough survivors to carry on.

Sins of the Assassin (2008) Novel

Sins of the Assassin (2008) by Robert Ferrigno is the second of a trilogy set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic United States. The first novel is Sins of the Assassin and the third novel is Heart of the Assassin. The novels bear some superficial resemblance to Jeff Carlson's Plague Year, Plague War and Plague Zone novels.

Plague War (2008) Novel

Plague War (2008) by Jeff Carlson is the sequel to Plague Year (2007) and was followed by Plague Zone (2009). As you might expect the titles, the cause of humanity's near extinction was a plague, this one caused by nanotechnology run amuck. Luckily the nanotech could not survive above 10,000 feet. Plague War is set in United States and features a joint Russian and Chinese invasion of the devastated country.

Judgment Day (2005) Novel

Judgment Day (2005) is a novel by James F. David, that, like the Left Behind series, takes the New Testament's Revelation to John (the last book of that part of the Bible) as a starting point for a fictional romp through apocalyptic times.