WThe 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States is a speculative fiction novel by Jeffrey Lewis describing a hypothetical nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States of America, published by Mariner Books. It is written in the style of a government report written in the aftermath of the conflict, in 2023, and uses many real-world figures.
WAlas, Babylon is a 1959 novel by American writer Pat Frank. It was one of the first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age and has remained popular more than half a century after it was first published, consistently ranking in Amazon.com's Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories list and has an entry in David Pringle's book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. The novel deals with the effects of a nuclear war on the fictional small town of Fort Repose, Florida, which is based upon the actual city of Mount Dora, Florida. The novel's title is derived from the Book of Revelation: "Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come." The cover art for the Bantam paperback edition was made by Robert Hunt.
WArc Light is the debut novel by Eric L. Harry, a techno-thriller about limited nuclear war published in September 1994 and written in 1991 and 1992.
WThe Bear and the Dragon is a techno-thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on August 21, 2000. A direct sequel to Executive Orders (1996), President Jack Ryan deals with a war between Russia and China, referred respectively in the title as the Russian Bear and the Chinese Dragon. At over 1,028 pages, it is Clancy's longest novel. The book debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.
WBetween the Strokes of Night (1985) is a science fiction novel by English-American writer Charles Sheffield. It first appeared in the March to June 1985 issues of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact before being published by Baen Books in July 1985. The story is divided in two vastly separated time periods: the near future of 2010, and the far future of 29,000 AD. Due to the unique technological mechanisms of the novel, the same cast of characters appears in both parts, though it is not a time travel story.
WA Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.
WThe Compound is a 2008 fictional young adult novel by S. A. Bodeen. The book was first released on April 29, 2008, through Feiwel & Friends and centers upon a young man named Eli who has been living in a compound for six years. Bodeen came up with the idea of including cannibalism in the novel after watching a television show where "a dinosaur fed a favorite offspring the bodies of its less fortunate brothers and sisters."
WDebt of Honor is a techno-thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on August 17, 1994. A direct sequel to The Sum of All Fears (1991), Jack Ryan becomes the National Security Advisor when a secret cabal of Japanese industrialists seize control of their country’s government and wage war on the United States. The book debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list. The novel was later noted as containing plot elements which were similar to the circumstances of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93.
WDr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb is a 1965 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965.
WFail-Safe is a bestselling American novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. The story was initially serialized in three installments in the Saturday Evening Post, on October 13, 20, and 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
WThe Fifth Horseman is a 1980 techno-thriller novel written by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. The story revolves around Libyan leader Gaddafi holding New York City hostage with the threat of setting off a hidden nuclear bomb. The book had such a shocking effect that the French government cancelled the sale of nuclear reactors to Libya, even though they were meant for peaceful purposes.
WFootfall is a 1985 science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The book depicts the arrival of members of an alien species called the Fithp that have traveled to the solar system from Alpha Centauri in a large spacecraft driven by a Bussard ramjet. Their intent is conquest of the planet Earth.
WThe Fourth Protocol is a thriller novel by British writer Frederick Forsyth and published in August 1984.
WThe Graveyard Game is a science fiction novel by American writer Kage Baker, the fourth installment in the time travel series concerning the exploits of The Company.
WHomeward Bound (2004) is a science fiction and alternate history novel by Harry Turtledove. It is the eighth and final work in his Worldwar series fictional universe. It follows the events of the Colonization trilogy and gives some closure to the storylines.
WThe Iron Dream is a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel by American author Norman Spinrad. The book has a nested narrative that tells a story within a story. On the surface, the novel presents a post-apocalyptic adventure tale entitled Lord of the Swastika, written by an alternate-history Adolf Hitler shortly before his death in 1953. In this timeline, Hitler emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1919 after the Great War, and used his modest artistic skills to become first a pulp–science fiction illustrator and later a successful writer, telling lurid, purple-prosed, pro-fascism stories under a thin science fiction veneer. The nested narrative is followed by a faux scholarly analysis by a fictional literary critic Homer Whipple which is said to have been written in 1959.
WThe Last Children of Schewenborn is a 1983 novel by Gudrun Pausewang, depicting life in rural Germany in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
WLevel 7 is a 1959 science fiction novel by the Ukrainian-born Israeli writer Mordecai Roshwald. It is told from the first-person perspective of a modern soldier, X-127, living in the underground military complex Level 7, where he and several hundred others are expected to reside permanently. X-127 fulfills the role of 'push-button' offensive initiator of his nation's nuclear weapons capacity against an unspecified enemy. X-127 narrates life within a deep shelter before, during and after a nuclear war that wipes out the human species.
WThe Long Earth is the first novel in a collaborative science fiction series by British authors Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.
WNineteen Eighty-Four, often referred to as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by the English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the totalitarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated.
WQuantico is a 2005 science fiction/thriller novel by Greg Bear. The novel concerns a group of FBI agents trying to prevent a massive bioterrorist attack. A sequel, Mariposa, was published in 2009.
WRed Alert is a 1958 novel by Peter George about nuclear war. The book was the underlying inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Kubrick's film differs significantly from the novel in that the film is a black comedy.
WRed Jihad: Battle for South Asia is an political/military thriller by Sami Ahmad Khan. It was published by Rupa & Co. in June 2012. Red Jihad was hailed as one of the first novels to fictionalize the Maoist-Mujahideen nexus in the Indian Red Corridor and for dramatizing the links between religious fundamentalism and political terrorism in India.
WSacred Games is a mystery/thriller novel by Indian-American author Vikram Chandra published in 2006. Upon release, it received critical acclaim and subsequently won the Vodafone Crossword Book Award.
WThe Simulacra is a 1964 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The novel portrays a future totalitarian society apparently dominated by a matriarch, Nicole Thibodeaux. It revolves around the themes of reality and illusionary beliefs, as do many of Dick's works. Additionally, it touches on Nazi ideology.
WSome Time Never: A Fable for Supermen is a 1948 book by Roald Dahl, his first adult novel. Dahl began writing it after editor Maxwell Perkins expressed an interest in publishing a novel length book if Dahl were to write it. The book was met with predominantly poor reception and was considered to be a failure, although it is historically noteworthy as the first novel about nuclear war to be published in the United States after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The story is a darker take on the same premise as Dahl's first children's novel, The Gremlins.
WThe Sum of All Fears is a political thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on August 14, 1991. Serving as the sequel to Clear and Present Danger (1989), main character Jack Ryan, who is now the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, tries to stop a crisis concerning the Middle East peace process where Palestinian and former East German terrorists conspire to bring the United States and Soviet Union into nuclear war. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation, which is a reboot of the Jack Ryan film series and starring Ben Affleck as the younger iteration of the CIA analyst, was released on May 31, 2002.