Post-apocalyptic science fiction

The time frame may be immediately after the catastophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastophe civilization has been forgotten or mythologized.

There is a considerable degree of blurring between this form of science fiction and that which deals with false utopias or dystopic societies.

Examples (listed by nature of the catastrophe):

World War III:

• Walter M. Miller, Jr's novel A Canticle for Leibowitz
• Pat Frank[?]'s novel Alas Babylon[?]
• The Mad Max, Road Warrior[?], Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome[?] trilogy of films
• Harlan Ellison's short story and 1975 film A Boy and His Dog.
• Mordecai Roshwald[?]'s novel Level 7
• Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• The Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker[?] (based on the short-story Roadside Picnic[?])
• The Polish movie Sexmisja[?]
• Marc Caro's black comedy Delicatessen[?]
• The computer role-playing game Fallout series

Pandemic:

• The novel I Am Legend[?] by Richard Matheson, filmed as The Last Man On Earth[?] and The Omega Man.
• The films La Jetée, Twelve Monkeys and 28 Days Later
• The novel and miniseries The Stand[?] by Stephen King

Alien invasion:

• John Christopher[?]'s The Tripods

Ecological catastrophe[?]:

• The novel In the Drift[?] by Michael Swanwick (also an Alternate history story; the premise is that the 1979 Three Mile Island reactor incident resulted in a large release of radioactivity.)
• The film Silent Running[?]
• The film and novel Quintet[?]
• The Kevin Costner film Water World

The Computers take over[?]

• The novel and movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project[?] (not exactly an apocalypse, however)
• The future depicted in the Terminator film series
• The film Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution by Jean-Luc Godard
• The film The Matrix

Various:

• Much of the work of J. G. Ballard, in which the current era is sometimes described as the pre-Third, referring to World War III.
• Much of John Wyndham's work, e.g. The Day of the Triffids, The Trouble With Lichen[?]

To be categorized:

• The 1970s movie Zardoz
• First Spaceship on Venus[?]
• Planet of the Apes
• Testament
• The novel In The Country of Last Thing[?] by Paul Auster