Apocalyptic science fiction - Definition and Overview

Apocalyptic science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of the world or 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.

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 skins, and marauding gangs of bandits, is now so common as to be trite 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.

Examples (listed by nature of the catastrophe)

World War III

• Alas Babylon - Pat Frank's novel
• The Japanese manga and 1988 anime film Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo
• The Amtrak Wars epic novel series by Patrick Tilley
• Ape and Essence, a screenplay-novel by Aldous Huxley
• Apokalipsa wedlug Pana Jana - Robert J. Szmidt's novel
• Autobahn nach Poznan - Andrzej Ziemianski's short story
• A Boy and His Dog - Harlan Ellison's short story and 1975 film
• A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr's novel
• The novel Children of The Dust by Louise Lawerence
• Damnation Alley - Roger Zelazny's novel, and the film made of it
• Dark Universe - Daniel F. Galouye's novel from 1961
• The Day After, a 1983 film about the effects of nuclear war on a Kansas town
• Delicatessen - Marc Caro's black comedy
• Deathlands - by James Axler -A series of books set a hundred years after a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR in 2001 destroys most of the world
• Deus Irae - Philip K. Dick (in collaboration with Roger Zelazny).
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
• Down to a Sunless Sea - David Graham's novel of the last plane out of a fall-of-Saigon-like New York City
• Dr Bloodmoney - Philip K. Dick
• Fallout series - The computer role-playing game
• Gamma World- The Role-playing game from TSR, Inc., the makers of Dungeons & Dragons.
• The short film La Jetée (1962) by Chris Marker
• Level 7 - Mordecai Roshwald's novel
• Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, and the film based on it.
• The Mad Max trilogy
• The Morrow Project - The Role-playing game from Timeline Ltd.
• Neuroshima - The Polish Role-playing game from Portal Publishing
• On The Beach - Nevil Shute's novel, and the films based on it.
• Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov. (A later book, Robots and Empire, gave a different explanation.)
• The Penultimate Truth - Philip K. Dick
• The Planet Of The Apes film series
• The Postman - David Brin's novel
• Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban's novel
• Sexmisja - The Polish movie
• the Shanarra Series by Terry Brooks, a fantasy book set after WWIII destroys all technology and warps the human race into other species.
• The Survivalist series by Jerry Ahern (first novel Total War from 1981)
• The film Testament
• Twilight: 2000 - The Role-playing game from Game Designer's Workshop
• V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
• The Vampire Hunter D novels and anime films, set ten thousand years after a nuclear war occurs in 1999.
• Wasteland - The computer role-playing game
• The World Jones Made - Philip K. Dick
• Yellow Peril, a Chinese novel by activist Wang Lixiong under the pseudonym Bao Mi, about a nuclear civil war in the People's Republic of China.

Pandemic

• The novel Blood Music (1985) (and the 1983 novelette of the same name) by Greg Bear
• The novel The Children of Men, written by P.D. James
• The novel Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart.
• The novel Full Circle by Michael Boyle (http://www.geocities.com/jeanboyle2/Index.html)
• The novel A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren
• The novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, filmed as The Last Man On Earth and The Omega Man.
• The novel The Last Man by Mary Shelley
• The novel Some Will Not Die (1954) by Algis Budrys
• The novel and miniseries The Stand by Stephen King
• The novella The Scarlet Plague (1912) by Jack London.
• The 1980 Japanese film Fukkatsu no Hi a.k.a. Virus, directed by Kinji Fukasaku
• The films Twelve Monkeys and 28 Days Later
• 2004 film version of Dawn of the Dead
• The Showtime cable television series Jeremiah, based on the comic of the same name.
• The BBC television series Survivors, written by Terry Nation
• The manga Eden: It's an Endless World by Hiroki Endo
• The comic series Y: The Last Man features a lone man & his monkey in a world populated only by women
• The FX movie Smallpox

Astronomic impact (meteorites)

• The film Armageddon
• The film Deep Impact
• The Forge of God by Greg Bear
• Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
• The film Meteor
• The animated series Thundarr the Barbarian
• The film When Worlds Collide
• The anime Cowboy Bebop

Alien invasion

• The novel The Alien Years (1998) by Robert Silverberg
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.
• The anime Genesis Climber Mospeada
• The anime The Super Dimension Fortress Macross and its sequels
• The film Independence Day
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers
• John Wyndham's novel The Kraken Wakes
• The computer game Manhunter
• Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!
• Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters
• John Christopher's The Tripods
• The TV-series V
• H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (in several media)
• The Ophiuchi Hotline, Steel Beach, and the rest of the Eight Worlds series, by John Varley

Ecological catastrophe

• The novel Greybeard by Brian Aldiss, in which the human race becomes sterile.
• The novel The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, in which the United States is overwhelmed by environmental irresponsibility and authoritarianism.
• 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 novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
• The novel The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk
• The collection of stories Flight of the Horse by Larry Niven
• The film Silent Running
• The film Quintet
• The Kevin Costner film Waterworld
• The Thomas Vinterberg film It's All About Love
• The Roland Emmerich film The Day After Tomorrow
• The novel Dust by Charles Pellegrino, in which all the insect species on Earth die out, and the ecology crashes as a result.
• The film No Blade Of Grass, based on the book The Death Of Grass by John Christopher, in which a virus that destroys plants causes massive famine and societal breakdown.
• The novel Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, in which all the water on Earth freezes.
• The Harry Harrison novel Make Room! Make Room! and the 1973 film Soylent Green.

The computers take over

• The 1909 short story The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster (more machinery than computers)
• The novel and movie, Colossus: the Forbin Project (not exactly an apocalypse, however)
• The novel This Perfect Day by Ira Levin
• 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
• Harlan Ellison's short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
• Neuroshima, the Polish role-playing game from Portal Publishing.
• The film I, Robot starring Will Smith.

The decline and fall of the human race

• The novel At Winter's End (1988) by Robert Silverberg
• Planet of the Apes
• The latter part of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine
• The 1970s movie Zardoz
• The films Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead by George Romero

After the Fall of Space Based Civilization

• Isaac Asimov's Foundation series
• Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda (TV series)
• Dan Simmons's Endymion & The Rise of Endymion

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 Chrysalids, later reprinted in the US as Re-Birth
• 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.
• The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel (A volcanic eruption floods the earth with cyanide gas, leaving only two survivors)
• The manga and movie Dragon Head, by Mochizuki Minetaro

To be categorized

• First Spaceship on Venus
• The novel In The Country of Last Thing by Paul Auster
• Aftermath by Gregory Benford
• Nosutoradamusu no daiyogen a.k.a. The Last Days of Planet Earth, a 1974 Japanese film.
• The novels The Peace War (1984) and Marooned in Realtime (1986) (together also know as Across Realtime, 1991) by Vernor Vinge
• Reign of Fire, in which a race of terrifically powerful dragons awakes from sleep and decimates the world.
• The Final Programme, movie based on Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories
• The Role-playing Game Rifts, in which a massive release of psychic energy triggers several disasters, as well as various magic-based anomalies.

See also:

• Timeline of fictional future events

External link

• Empty World - a website dedicated to apocalyptic fiction (http://www.emptyworld.info/index.html)