The Ashes series was written by someone named Johnston, I think. He also wrote Westerns. There was another series called "The Guardians". It was a about the crew of a Cadillac Gage armored fighting vehicle and their mission was to get the president out of Dodge. I think they were based in the basement of the White House. There was another about a guy with a crossbow who was trapped in California after the "Big One" split it off from the rest of the continent. Actually, there were so many of these types of novels. I remember taking milk crates full of them to the paperback exchange for credit. It would be cool to have all of these meet up someplace, kind of like the Avengers or the Justice League. I'd like to see a trailer of Mad Max tearing across the wasteland with Ryan Cawdor standing on the hood, beheading the mutant hordes with his parang, Christy Wroth reloading in the back seat, the Survivalist on his Harley, doing "double taps" with his Detonics, the Guardians rolling over bad guys, etc. etc. Those were the good old days.
The ". . .Ashes" series was written by William W. Johnstone. Pretty much a certified lunatic who actually bought into his own PR. In his books, the protagonist (interestingly, a survivalist-genre writer) was begged by people who read his books before the disaster to become the "benevolent dictator" of a country he called the "Tri-States."
Back when Y2K was all the rage, readers of Johnstone's ". . .Ashes" series formed into loose groups, mostly on Usenet, that they claimed followed the "Tri-States Philosophy." Johnstone then wrote a book where he (Johnstone the real person) interviewed the main character of his book (who was based on Johnstone). Soon thereafter, people from various Tri-State's groups started petitioning Johnstone to come lead them after Y2K. Insert image of your favorite nut here.
Jerry Ahern's Survivalist Series was one of the earlier ones I read, not long after (this is off the top of my head, so they may be wrong, I'm too damned tired today to do research) Jerry Pournelle & Larry Niven's "Lucifer's Hammer."
I got to become friends with Ahern for a few years before his death when he attempted to resurrect Detonics (and yes, I have two of them, but I couldn't talk the current owners of Milt Sparks into making me a Six Pack).
Now, here's a bit of trivia for you. . .you mentioned Ryan Cawdor and Christy(sp) Wroth from the Deathlands Series. First of all. . .sadly, Harlequin is closing down the Gold Eagle imprint later this year, so no more Deathlands or Outlands. BUT, a few years ago, the author of "The Guardians," Victor Milan, was asked to ghost-write a book in the Deathlands Series. What did he do? Basically, he tried to resurrect "The Guardians" in that Universe. One of the worst books in the Deathlands series.
One series I found when stationed at Bad Tolz in the late 80's was "The Zone." It was a bunch of soldiers caught in Europe after WWIII began. For 80's speculative fiction, it was honestly one of the best series I've ever read.
Sadly, however, I kept almost every paperback I've ever read up until about 2 months ago when I moved back to Indiana. I donated, literally (get it?),
thousands of paperbacks to the VA before we moved. I had complete collections of the "Ashes" and "Deathlands" and "Guardians" and several other series.
Ah, well. . .progress.
The Professor
