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Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction

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Apocalyptic science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization, through nuclear war, plague, or some other general disaster.

Post-apocalyptic science 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. The fall of civilization may also be the fall of a space-based civilization. This plot device allows writers to write soft science fiction while accounting for the lack of technological advancement and thus remain relevant to the present day no matter how far in the future the events are set.

There is a considerable degree of blurring between this form of science fiction and that which deals with false utopias or dystopic societies. A work of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fiction might also be called a ruined earth story.

Like a great deal of science fiction, the major themes of this genre often related to issue of the day contemporary with the author.

Cultural views on apocalyptic fiction

For the most part, most western literature and cinema on the apocalypse or in a post-apocalyptic setting tend to follow American mores, with the exception of British apocalyptic fiction. While American and Western apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction tend to emphasize the fantastic, with the possiblity of world-ending meteor collisions, mutants, and jury-rigged vehicles roaming a desolate countryside, British fiction is more pessimistic in tone.

Post-apocalyptic literature was not as widespread in Communist countries as the government prohibited depictions of the nations falling apart. However, some depictions of similar-themed science fiction did make it passed government censors, such as Andrei Tarkovsky Stalker, made during Russia's Soviet era, which features the bombed-out landscape and survival-based motives of it's characters and was inspired in part by the 1957 accident at the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Recently, Wang Lixiong's Yellow Peril was banned due in the People's Republic of China because of it's depiction of the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party, but has been widely pirated and distributed in the country.

Due to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in it's modern past, Japanese popular culture is rife with apocalyptic themes. Much of Japan's manga and anime is loaded with apocalyptic imagery.

Criticism

The use of post-apocalyptic contexts in movies and the typical accompanying imagery, such as endless deserts or damaged cityscapes, clothing made of leather and animal skin, and marauding gangs of bandits, is now common and the subject of frequent parody.

The number of apocalyptic-themed B-movies in the 1980s and 1990s has been attributed to film producers on post-apocalyptic films working around their low production budgets by renting scrapyards, unused factories, and abandoned buildings, saving them the cost of constructing sets. As a result, many films that would have been rejected by major studios on the basis of script or concept ended up being made, while others had their settings and stories converted to a post-apocalyptic setting following the success of the Mad Max series.

Some apocalyptic stories have been criticized as implausible or as scaremongering propaganda. Since they often play on a topical fear, they can be seen to date rather quickly, as seen in the work of John Christopher.

Examples (listed by nature of the catastrophe)

World War III (nuclear)

Pandemic

Astronomic impact (meteorites)

Alien invasion

Ecological catastrophe

Cybernetic revolt

See main article: Cybernetic revolt

The decline and fall of the human race

After the fall of space-based civilization

The Sun's expansion

Religious and supernatural apocalypse (Eschatological fiction)

Various

  • The Nintendo 64 Game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask where the Moon is about to crash into Termina.
  • The film Crack in the World
  • The Revenants by Sheri S. Tepper; the nature of the catastrophe is never stated but technology has been displaced and a bizarre religion is dividing society into ever-smaller, racially-divided units.
  • After London by Richard Jefferies; the nature of the catastrophe is never stated, except that apparently most of the human race quickly dies out, leaving England to revert to nature.
  • 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.
  • The 1961 film The Day The Earth Caught Fire, directed by Val Guest
  • The manga and movie Dragon Head, by Mochizuki Minetaro
  • The movie The Last Woman on Earth, directed by Roger Corman, in which all the Earth's oxygen temporarily vanishes - leaving only three survivors.
  • The novel The Lost Continent (1916) by Edgar Rice Burroughs, in which an isolated and feuding Europe has retreated into barbarism
  • The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel; A volcanic eruption floods the earth with cyanide gas, leaving only two survivors
  • Much of John Wyndham's work, e.g. The Day of the Triffids (majority of the population blinded), The Chrysalids, (later reprinted in the US as Re-Birth) which contain elements of ecological disaster (Web, The Crysalids and The Kraken Wakes (flooding caused by aliens)), nuclear war (The Crysalids), decline of man as a dominant species (Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos) and alien invasion (The Kraken Wakes and possibly The Midwich Cuckoos)
  • Jules Verne's The Eternal Adam, in one night all the emerged land submerges and some island emerge. The survivors start a new mankind.
  • "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov; A rare cosmological event causes a Earth-like society inhabiting a multistar system to collapse as they experience their first nightfall
  • The novel Taronga, by Victor Kelleher; after an unknown disaster simply described as "Last Days" a boy ventures throughout his surroundings, finding refuge in Tarronga Zoo and befriending a tiger.
  • Although not generally recognized as such, the Star Trek franchise falls into this category as it takes place in the decades and centuries following World War III on Earth, which nearly led to the collapse of human civilization. The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Encounter at Farpoint" depicts one aspect of the "post-atomic horror"; the film Star Trek: First Contact takes place about a decade after the war and depicts one pocket of civilization living in a camp in Montana, and the Star Trek: Enterprise episodes "Demons" and "Terra Prime" refer to the rise of military rule and an act of genocide perpetrated on radiation-scarred survivors of the war a century earlier.
  • The film Titan A.E., in which the Drej destroy Earth to stop our advancement.

To be categorized

See also

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