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story identification - Post apocalyptic journey in search of knowledge from fallen society (ours)


I'm racking my memory for a post-apocalyptic novel that I borrowed from a library maybe 15 years ago, but I'm sure it was published a few years before that though (maybe early 90s?).


I remember a party of people travelling across the flooded USA after some kind of apocalypse (climate change/flooding?). Towards the end of the book the group makes their way to New York(?) and finds a partially flooded library, discovering a set of books that gives hope for the return/rebuilding of society.



Answer



This makes me think of Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road. It was published in 1998, so it's definitely old enough.


It's set after an apocalypse (though I forget the cause), with society being well on the road to rebuilding itself. There are legends of a place called Haven, where the knowledge of the previous civilization was saved before it fell.


The story is about an expedition to find Haven, and details their adventures along the way. They cross a good portion of America before finding Haven. They encounter numerous ruins and relics from before the fall as they travel.




Haven turns out to be a submarine base; the survivors of the apocalypse used the submarine to collect what knowledge the could and store it. However, when the adventurers come in through the front door, the water level in the base rises, flooding large amounts of the library before it can be salvaged.



cover


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