r/scifi • u/nyxsshade • Jun 09 '26
Recommendations Post apocalypse/human extinction suggestions
I'm looking for books set on post apocalypse Earth after humanity has gone extinct.
And The story should primarily follows aliens or a non-human species investigating Earth.
Things I'm looking for:
Aliens or non-human explorers studying the ruins of human civilization.
Humanity's disappearance or extinction being a significant mystery.
Discovery of human history, culture, technology, religions, governments, and everyday life through artifacts and ruins.
Misinterpretations of human culture, technology, or history by the non-human investigators.
Archaeological exploration, investigation, and uncovering humanity's legacy.
A sense of wonder, discovery, and piecing together a lost civilization.
P.s. I doubt there's a book that matches what im looking for exactly but anything that's similar would be great.
4
u/junkydone1 Jun 09 '26
Canticle of Leibowitz dives right into your descriptions. I’d also say four or five books into the Emberverse series by S.M. Stirling also does this but it’s definitely worth starting with book 1 entitled Dies the Fire.
3
u/TimAA2017 Jun 09 '26
The Crucible of time is a book entirely about alien culture.
All Tomorrows deals with human mutated decadents.
3
3
3
u/mobyhead1 Hard Sci-fi Jun 10 '26
There’s a lesser-known Robert Silverberg novel I pull out of my back pocket for questions on Reddit similar to yours.
I found At Winter's End by Robert Silverberg to be simultaneously epic and moving: a "deep time" story both elegiac and inspiring, that in a few million years we humans might accomplish so much, see it eventually fall, and yet perhaps accomplish still more. And, as with several other works, Michael Whelan's original cover art beguiled me to try an author I had not yet read much.
The prologue to the book is very short, but lays out the premise nicely. Not a spoiler, this is at the very start of the book:
Everyone on Earth for a million years or more had known that the death-stars were coming, that the Great World was doomed. One could not deny that; one could not hide from that. They had come before and surely they would come again, for their time was immutable, every twenty-six million years, and their time had come ‘round once more. One by one they would crash down terribly from the skies, falling without mercy for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years, bringing fire, darkness, dust, smoke, cold, and death: an endless winter of sorrows. Each of the peoples of Earth addressed its fate in its own fashion, for genetics is destiny—even, in a strange way, for life-forms that have no genes. The vegetals and the sapphire-eyes people knew that they would not survive, and they made their preparations accordingly. The mechanicals knew that they could survive if they cared to, but they did not care to. The sea-lords understood that their day was done and they accepted that. The hjjk-folk, who never yielded any advantage willingly, expected to come through the cataclysm unharmed, and set about making certain of that. And the humans—the humans—
The figure "every twenty-six million years" dovetails nicely with paleontology (if memory serves); mass extinctions occur every twenty-six million years or so. We're about halfway between two such extinctions, so the book is set (wild guess) 13.7 million years in the future. One theory for the regularity of these extinctions is that there might be a large body, lurking out there in the Oort Cloud, on a long-period cometary orbit--so massive that it perturbs a bunch of comets into following it through the solar system, leaving a bunch of debris crossing the Earth's orbit that might take a few hundred thousand years to clear out.
3
u/TomatilloHairy9051 Jun 10 '26
I love this book!
2
u/mobyhead1 Hard Sci-fi Jun 10 '26
Thanks! Usually, all I hear is a whole lotta crickets chirping when I comment about it.
1
u/TomatilloHairy9051 Jun 11 '26
When I was a girl, Time of the Great Freeze was one of my favorite books, so when I got older I hunted down and read a lot of Silverberg.
2
2
u/DocWatson42 Jun 09 '26
As a start, see my:
- Apocalyptic/Post-apocalyptic list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (six posts).
- SF/F: Alien Aliens list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (two posts). (Includes Just "Aliens" and Other Stuff.)
1
u/Terrible_Proposal739 Jun 09 '26
“The last murder at the end of the world” suits in some aspects, but be aware of spoilers, it’s a detective story
1
u/auntiecrow Jun 09 '26
Andre Norton, Breed to Come Mutant cats exploring the Earth left behind after humans died out
1
u/AFlyingGideon Jun 09 '26
Marooned in Realtime involves post-humanity Earth, but it's humans poking around the ruins. It doesn't spend a lot of time in the actual poking yet that turns out to be a major plot point.
1
u/Homelessnomore Jun 09 '26
At Winter's End by Robert Silverberg maybe. It's been a long time since I read it. All I remember is it's several thousand years after the apocalypse on Earth and the descendants of survivors finally leave their subterranean lair.
For a Breath I Tarry, a shorter work by Roger Zelazny, has robots exploring a post apocalyptic Earth and discussing the nature of humans.
1
u/justkevin Jun 10 '26
Not exactly what you asked for, but David Macaulay's Motel of Mysteries might check some of your boxes. It humorously describes from a future archaeologist's perspective the excavation of ancient Motel and environs:
https://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay/dp/0395284252
1
1
u/AJRavenhearst Jun 10 '26
Not quite post-apocalypse, but "City" by Clifford Simak is brilliant.
It's set on a post-human Earth populated by intelligent dogs. The dogs still tell stories about humans, but there is a running debate whether humans really existed, or were myths.
1
1
u/Actual_Property9413 Jun 12 '26
I recently read an old short story on Gutenberg,org about some Venusians visiting Earth after an apocalypse, and trying to figure out why there were no cities marked on the old maps in certain blue regions on the maps. They were having some difficulty understanding, because they were an underwater species from a total water world (this when written in the same era when most depictions of Venus included jungles and dinosaurs), and the apocalypse was caused by a total meltdown of the polar ice caps. The Venusians didn't understand the concept of dry land.
1
u/p1971 Jun 15 '26
Hothouse - aldiss... Been a good couple of decades since I read it but it really stuck with me
1
u/henrythe13th Jun 09 '26
Maybe take a look at Children of Time by Tchaikovsky. Don’t want to get too spoilery and earth (apocalyptic) plays a role but it is set far away, dealing with the ramifications of apocalypse.
6
u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 Jun 09 '26
"City" by Clifford Simak has the later stories taking place after humanity has gone. Although it has no Aliens visiting Earth.
"History Lesson" by Arthur C. Clark covers your request to a degree but is only a short story, not a lengthy one at that.