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Originally Posted by CalvinHobbesLocke
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Great post! I enjoyed a lot of the comments every bit as much as the recommendations, especially:
"If you liked 2012, Transformers 2, Knowing, and/or Wolverine, you'll enjoy taking a bath with a toaster oven"
If you like giant robots trying to kill off mankind, it's hard not to recommend Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series. Saberhagen was a prolific writer, so there's no lack of material if you like his writing. He's probably better known (at least nowadays) for his fantasy, particularly his Book of Swords and Lost Swords series.
To recommend novels for someone who enjoys a disaster flick like 2012, it helps to know what they like about such movies. If it's the action, they might enjoy survivalist-type novel series with loving descriptions of machine gun fire like The Survivalist or (with a taste of SF/Fantasy) Deathlands. If they enjoy the "threat" to the world and the human race, a novel like Koontz's "The Taking" or just about any collaboration between Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle should do it. If they like aftermaths, The Long Afternoon of Earth by Brian Aldiss is a doozy, showing us a world of mutated life on the brink of extinction. Humanity has mostly been displaced by mutant plant and animal hybrids (think monsters). A very disturbing novel. (Ok, the general public probably wouldn't like it, but you gotta try, right?)
EDIT: Oops can't leave out S.M. Stirling's Dies The Fire, the beginning of a good series about Earth after "the Change" where gunpowder, electricity, and such all stop working, bringing down technological society. He shouldn't have to tell us what happens when the cities lose power and the policemen's guns don't fire, but he does. He does. Mostly though we see a band of wiccans (I kid you not) attempting to rebuild civilization in a world that's back to bows & arrows and oil lanterns.
If you like space exploration movies and shows like Star Trek, Babylon 5, etc. you will love Frederick Pohl's Gateway series which is only like a billion times better than any of those shows. Seriously, the original Gateway is my favorite science fiction novel, and won a Hugo award. The follow-up novels and stories aren't usually as strong as the original, but they're good, and they expand on the storyline. I also highly recommend David Brin's Startide Rising, which won the Hugo and Nebula for best novel. It's the second book in the Uplift Universe, so you may want to start with Sundiver, though I had no problem starting off with Startide Rising. It's a great series about man trying to make himself a place among the established intergalactic civilization of the Five Galaxies. The second trilogy is a tougher read, in my opinion, as Brin grows as a writer and pushes his craft. The first trilogy, including Startide Rising, makes for a much easier read, even though the style was new when the series was written.
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