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.

Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse (2014) anthology

Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse (Holstein, Ont.: Exile Editions, 2014) is an anthology of 23 stories exploring possible scenarios on Canadian soil after the world ends.

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.

The Last Man on Earth (2015-) TV series

Given time, all things are possibly in TV-land, including a romantic comedy of post-apocalyptic proportions. Starring Will Forte as Phil Miller, who believes himself to be the last human on the planet after a virus epidemic, The Last Man on Earth is a promising and fresh comedy that debuted on the Fox Network on March 1, 2015.

Endworld: Doomsday (2009) novel

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

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.

The Mammoth Book of the End of the World (2010) anthology

Editor Mike Ashley has compiled an apocalyptic fiction anthology titled The Mammoth Book of the End of the World (2010). The collection includes several original pieces for this anthology and the oldest work is Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air" from 1951. For any collector of apocalyptic tales, this is an essential publication.

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)

Daybreakers (2010) movie

The 2010 movie Daybreakers movie starring Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Isabel Lucas and Sam Neill asks the burning question: what if almost the whole human population had turned into vampires? We find out in all the bloody details as we look at the world in 2019 through Hawke's vampire character who works for a company that both farms humans for their blood supply and which is also working on a blood substitute because there is simply not enough human blood around for all the vampires to survive. Naturally, there is a cure, but it is a very painful one for any vampire to endure and for many vampires, the virus that gave them immortality is no longer seen as a disease but a blessing if only those last humans would cooperate.

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 Quiet Earth (1985) movie

The 1985 New Zealand movie The Quiet Earth is based on Craig Harrison's 1981 novel The Quiet Earth. As with the 2009-2010 TV adaptation of Robert Sawyer's 1999 novel Flash Forward, which begins with the premise of a science experiment gone wrong, in The Quiet Earth its experiment causes nearly everyone who had not been on the verge of death to disappear from the world. Three survivors, possibly the last humans in their part of New Zealand, including a Maori man, emerge and try to make sense of what has happened. In the end, one of the scientists involved in the experiment sacrifices himself to try and turn the world back to its previous state. Only the consequences for him are literally out of this world.

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.

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.

Catching Fire (2009) novel

Suzanne Collins' second young adult novel in her trilogy about a future, post-apocalyptic North America is called Catching Fire (2009). In this part one of the heroes of The Hunger Games (2008) becames a symbolic leader of a rebellion against the rule of Panem, the nation that has replaced the United States.

Dollhouse TV series finale (January 29, 2010)

In the Dollhouse TV series finale broadcast on January 29, 2010, the heroes are living in or have copied themselves into the nightmarish world of 2020 after something they did created zombies out of much of the world's population. At the end of the show the world's set right though the apocalyptic devastation remained.