Fall in! I said fall in, you slimy worms! Put your toes on that chalk line! You call yourselves soldiers? You’re not even fit to call yourselves recruits! I expect to lose half of you before this is over, but the price at the other end is a post-apocalyptic science fiction education worth six chickens, a sack of grain, and a working bicycle.

Welcome to Basic Training.

Want to get up to speed in the post-apocalyptic subgenre? Start here:

Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale

Brooks, Max - World War Z

Collins, Suzanne – The Hunger Games

Frank, Pat - Alas, Babylon

King, Stephen - The Stand

McCarthy, Cormack - The Road

Miller Jr., Walter M. - A Canticle For Leibowitz

Niven, Larry and Pournelle, Jerry - Lucifer's Hammer

Stirling, S.M. - Dies the Fire

Wells, H.G. - The War of the Worlds

The above 10 books are amongst the best known, most talked-about, and most popular at the moment. If you want to join the conversation, they're the ones you need to know about first.

You may be thinking "[Other Book] is better and/or more important than [Book on the List]." You're absolutely right. It is. Whichever excellent and important book you're thinking of will probably be found in the forthcoming Advanced Training list.