I just finished reading Parable of The Sower, and while it’s probably one of the greatest books I’ve ever read, most of the book is focused on survival in a world where every random homeless person and drug user wants to kill the protagonist (you can tell it was written shortly after the crack epidemic and when there was a lot of panic about crime). It was strange that most of the book was just about survival. The protagonist knew they must build something new, but they never quite got to that point in the book.

There doesn’t seem to be much aspirational speculative fiction where people start building something better after a collapse of society and speculates how that may be done or how the new society may function.

The only fiction I can think of off the top of my head that covers a little bit about rebuilding society is the movie The Postman that I watched when I was a kid (I don’t remember if it was good or not). Perhaps Parable of the Talents actually does start covering the building of a better society? (But I read an excerpt, and it looks like it’s going to be, very presciently, about a murderous christian nationalist movement that wants to “make America great again”). I know there’s stuff like Star Trek, but that’s mostly set long after the rebuild; it doesn’t cover in-depth how they got to that point (AFAIK).

  • pturn1@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Just finished the Three Body Problem trilogy. That may be something that fits your ask

    • spizzat2@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      Does it get better?

      I’m about 20% into book two, and I’m finding it exhausting. The first book was a little slow, but I made it through. I’m not sure I would say I enjoyed it, but I appreciated it. The second book feels very unfocused, so far, and still just as slow. The general feeling of hopelessness that many characters express isn’t exactly great for my current mood, either.

      I’m a slower , sporadic reader, so eyeing the rest of the trilogy is making me want to abandon it and it just watch the Netflix series.

      • pturn1@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        It does get better. The last book was the one I enjoyed most. Without spoiling it, it has some interesting sci-fi aspects that I haven’t really seen/read elsewhere.

        The Netflix series covers book one and start of book two (if memory serves). If they do much more, it’ll probably be another few seasons to cover everything… Season two is apparently this year