Letter Re: Survival Fiction Recommendations

Mr. Rawles;

I really enjoyed your novel [“Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”.] It was great, and I was amazed at the quantity of useful facts that you squeezed into a piece of fiction. I’ve read it three time and have given away a copies to a couple of my friends and to my dad. It helped him extract his head from the sand. For that alone, I am very grateful.

What other “survival” fiction do you recommend that has any real educational value? (Not just motivational or “what if” situations.) Are there any novels like yours, or perhaps some movies that are “musts”? Thanks, – Ken H., in Cleveland, Ohio

JWR Replies: I enjoyed reading all of the following novels:

Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (Classic nuke scenario)
Pulling Through by Dean Ing (a more modern nuke scenario + a mini nuke survival manual) Not to be confused with my screenplay that has the same title.
Some Will Not Die by Algis Budrys (Plague total wipe out scenario)
No Blade of Grass by John Christopher (Massive crop disease/social breakdown scenario, from the British perspective.)
Vandenberg by Oliver Lange (Invasion scenario) later republished under the title “Defiance”.
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Last of the Breed by Louis L’amour

For my movie recommendations, scroll down near the bottom of the SurvivalBlog Bookshelf page. OBTW, if you enjoy movies with survival themes, then you will like reading my “Pulling Through” screenplay (available–at least for now–for free download.)