Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
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Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization either through nuclear war, plague, or some other general disaster. Post-apocalyptic fiction is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten (or mythologized). Post-apocalyptic stories often take place in an agrarian, non-technological future world, or a world where only scattered elements of technology remain. There is a considerable degree of blurring between this form of science fiction and that which deals with false utopias or dystopic societies.
The genres gained in popularity after World War II, when the possibility of global annihilation by nuclear weapons entered the public consciousness. However, recognizable apocalyptic novels existed at least since the first quarter of the 19th century, when Mary Shelley's The Last Man was published. Additionally, the subgenres draw on a body of apocalyptic literature, tropes, and interpretations that are millennia old.
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[edit] Ancient predecessors
Numerous societies, including the Babylonian and Judaic traditions, have produced apocalyptic literature and mythology dealing with the end of the world and of human society.[1] The scriptural story of Noah and his Ark describes the apocalyptic end of a corrupt civilization and its replacement with a remade world. The first centuries AD saw the creation of various apocalyptic works; the best known (due to its inclusion in the New Testament) is the Book of Revelation, which is replete with prophecies of destruction.[1] The corpus of New Testament apocrypha also includes apocalypses of Peter, Paul, Stephen, and Thomas, as well as two of James and Gnostic Apocalypses of Peter and Paul. The beliefs and ideas of this time, including apocalyptic accounts excluded from the Bible, influenced the developing Christian eschatology.[citation needed]
Further apocalyptic works appeared in the early Middle Ages. The 7th century Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius includes themes common in Christian eschatology; the Prophecy of the Popes has been ascribed to the 12th century Irish saint Malachy, but may in fact date from the late 16th century. Islamic eschatology, related to Christian and Jewish eschatological traditions, also emerged from the 7th century. Ibn al-Nafis's 13th century Theologus Autodidactus, an Arabic proto-science fiction novel, used empirical science to explain Islamic eschatology.[2]
[edit] Modern works
[edit] Pre-1900 works
The first work of modern apocalyptic fiction may be Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man. The last portion becoming the story of a man living in a future world emptied of humanity by plague, it contains the recognizable elements of the subgenre. It is sometimes considered the first science fiction novel, though that distinction is more often given to Shelley's more famous earlier novel, Frankenstein.
The 1885 novel After London by Richard Jefferies is of the type that could be best described as "post-apocalyptic fiction"; after some sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature, and the few survivors to a quasi-medieval way of life. The first chapters consist solely of a loving description of nature reclaiming England: fields becoming overrun by forest, domesticated animals running wild, roads and towns becoming overgrown, the hated London reverting to lake and poisonous swampland. The rest of the story is a straightforward adventure/quest set many years later in the wild landscape and society; but the opening chapters set an example for many later science fiction stories. Similarly, Stephen Vincent Benét's short story "By the Waters of Babylon" (1937) describes a young man's coming-of-age quest to a ruined New York City after an unspecified disaster.
Ignatius Donnelly's 1890 novel Caesar's Column is another noteworthy entry in the genre.[citation needed]
[edit] Post-1900 works
[edit] Nuclear war
The period of the Cold War saw increased interest in these subgenres, as the threat of nuclear war became real. Paul Brians published Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, a study that examines atomic war in short stories, novels, and films between 1895 and 1984. Since this measure of destruction was no longer imaginary, some of these new works, such as Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7, Nevil Shute's On the Beach and Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, shun the imaginary science and technology that are the identifying traits of general science fiction.[citation needed] Others include more fantastic elements, such as mutants, alien invaders, or exotic future weapons such as James Axler's Deathlands.[citation needed]
According to some theorists, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in its modern past has influenced Japanese popular culture to include many apocalyptic themes. Much of Japan's manga and anime is filled with apocalyptic imagery.[3] It has, however, also been claimed[who?] that disaster and post-disaster scenarios have a longer tradition in Japanese culture, possibly related to the earthquakes that repeatedly have devastated Japanese cities, and possibly connected to Japanese political history, which includes strict adherence to authority until a sudden and dramatic change. See Meiji Restoration and the earlier ee ja nai ka phenomenon.[citation needed]
Andre Norton wrote one of the definitive, post apocalyptic novels, Star Man's Son (AKA, Daybreak 2250), published in 1952, where a young man, Fors, begins an Arthurian quest for lost knowledge, through a radiation ravaged landscape, with the aid of a telepathic, mutant cat. He encounters mutated creatures, "the beast things," which are possibly a degenerated form of humans.
A seminal work in this subgenre was Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959). Many subsequent stories were clearly derivative of this novel.[citation needed] Ideas such as a recrudescent Church (Catholic or other), pseudo-medieval society, and the theme of the rediscovery of the knowledge of the pre-holocaust world were central to this book.
In 2003, children's novelist Jeanne DuPrau released the first of four books in a post-apocalypic series for young adults. The City of Ember has since been made into a film starring Bill Murray and Saorise Ronan.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006) is a recent work of post-nuclear fiction. It won the Pulitzer Prize, very rare for a science fiction book.
[edit] Pandemic
The Scarlet Plague by Jack London, published in 1912, is set in San Francisco in the year 2072, sixty years after a plague has largely depopulated the planet.
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949), deals with one man who finds most of civilization has been destroyed by a plague. Slowly a small community forms around him as he struggles to start a new civilization and preserve knowledge and learning.
In 1978, Stephen King published The Stand, which follows the odyssey of a small number of survivors of a world-ending influenza pandemic. Although reportedly influenced by the 1949 novel Earth Abides, King's book includes many supernatural elements and is generally regarded as part of the horror fiction genre.
The award winning novel Emergence by David R. Palmer (1984) is set in a world where a man-made plague destroys the vast majority of the world's population.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is an example of dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction.[4] The framing story is set after a genetically modified virus wipes out the entire population except for the protagonist and a small group of humans that were also genetically modified. A series of flashbacks depicting a world dominated by biocorporations explains the events leading up to the apocalypse. Her short story "Freeforall" deals with a totalitarian society attempting to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Richard Matheson's I Am Legend deals with the life of Robert Neville, the only unaffected survivor of a global pandemic that has turned the world's population into vampire-like creatures. The book influenced the modern zombie and vampire genres.
[edit] Failure of modern techology
In René Barjavel's 1943 novel "Ravage", written and published during the German Occupation of France, a future France is devastated by the sudden failure of electricity, causing chaos, disease, and famine with a small band of survivors desperately struggling for survival.
Half a century later, S. M. Stirling took up a similar theme in the 2004 "Dies the Fire", where a sudden mysterious worldwide "Change" alters physical laws so that electricity, gunpowder and most forms of high-energy-density technology no longer work. Civilization devastatingly collapses, and two competing groups struggle to re-create Medieval technologies and skills, as well as master magic.
[edit] Extraterrestrial threats
Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" has two souls in the afterlife discussing the apocalyptic end-of-the-world by a comet that removed nitrogen from earth's atmosphere leaving only oxygen, resulting in a world-wide inferno.
In the 1933 novel When Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, the earth is destroyed by a rogue planet Bronson Alpha. A selected few escape on a spaceship. In the sequel After Worlds Collide the survivors start a new life on the planet's companion Bronson Beta, which has taken the orbit formerly occupied by earth.
Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (1977) is about a cataclysmic comet hitting the Earth, and various groups of people struggling to survive the aftermath in southern California.
[edit] Cosy Catastrophe
The "cosy catastrophe" is a name given to a style of post-apocalyptic science fiction that was particularly prevalent after World War II among British science fiction writers. A "cosy catastrophe" is typically one in which civilization (as we know it) comes to an end and everyone is killed except for a handful of survivors, who then set about rebuilding their version of civilization. The term was coined by Brian Aldiss in Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction. The concept, however, can be dated back as far as 1890's Caesar's Column by Ignatius L. Donnelly (under the pseudonym Edmund Boisgilbert), where the violent uprising of the lower class against a plutocratic oligarchy leads to the destruction of civilization, while the protagonist survives back home in a now-fortified European colony in the Ugandan highlands.
English author John Wyndham was the figure at whom Aldiss was primarily directing his remarks, especially his novel The Day of the Triffids. The critic L. J. Hurst dismissed Aldiss's accusations, pointing out that in the book the main character witnesses several murders, suicides, and misadventures, and is frequently in mortal danger himself.[5]
David Graham's "Down to a Sunless Sea" (1979) starts off with a seeming "cosy catastrophe" - i.e., the rest of the world is completely destroyed in an all-out nuclear war spreading deadly radioactivity over the world, but the small band of survivors lead by a heroic jetliner pilot manage to set up a colony in Antarctica and apparently start a new life for humanity. But in the devastating ending, the radioactivity catches up with them and they all die, humanity and all life on earth become extinct.
[edit] Post Peak Oil
James Howard Kunstler has written a novel "World Made By Hand" that imagines life in New England after a declining oil supply has wreaked havoc on the US economy and people and society are forced to adjust to daily life without cheap oil.
[edit] See also
- List of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
- Apocalypticism
- Doomsday event
- Doomsday film
- Mad Max
- Survivalism
- Dying Earth subgenre
- Zombie Apocalypse
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Zimbaro, Valerie P. (1996). Encyclopedia of Apocalyptic Literature. US: ABC-CLIO. p. 9. ISBN 0874368235.
- ^ Dr. Abu Shadi Al-Roubi (1982), "Ibn al-Nafis as a philosopher", Symposium on Ibn al-Nafis, Second International Conference on Islamic Medicine: Islamic Medical Organization, Kuwait (cf. Ibnul-Nafees As a Philosopher, Encyclopedia of Islamic World).
- ^ Murakami, T.: Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-300-10285-2
- ^ Guardian book club: Oryx and Crake, The Guardian, April 11, 2007.
- ^ Essay by L. J. Hurst
[edit] References
- Wagar, W. Warren (1982). Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253358477.[1]
[edit] External links
- Empty World - A website dedicated to apocalyptic fiction
- Post Apocalyptic Media - A website detailing post-apocalyptic fiction
- Sub-Genre Spotlight: Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction - an overview of the sub-genre
- Quiet Earth - A website dedicated to post apocalyptic media
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