The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
SF Themes: Discussions & Reads
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Self Destruction - Post & Apocalyptic Novels
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George Orwell's 1984 usually isn't thought of as a post-apocalyptic novel, but it was an atomic war in 1960 that led to Winston Smith's world of Big Brother.1984 is the most chilling novel I know.
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When Earth Abides was written, the public thought only the US had the atomic bomb & Stewart had an unknown disease wiping out most of the human race very quickly. There really wasn't much science behind it, just a what-if. The overall theme was the reversion to savagery through loss of knowledge.
By the time the other 3 were written, we were in a nuclear arms race with the USSR & an atomic war seemed inevitable. When I read these books in the early 70s, that war seemed imminent & overdue, but tensions had eased & it was a threat we were used to - a very strange state - resigned paranoia, I suppose. We really thought it would happen. 2 of these 3 had us wiping ourselves out, at least on this planet.
I don't know if this book would be part of this category, but The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is about the human race being destroyed by a plague.She writes well and raises some interesting ideas in an era when this topic was unusual and uncommon.
Buck wrote: "George Orwell's 1984 usually isn't thought of as a post-apocalyptic novel, but it was an atomic war in 1960 that led to Winston Smith's world of Big Brother.1984 is the most chilling novel I know."
That description is entirely accurate. Reading that book was a sombre experience.
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I've often thought about, but never got around to reading The Last Man. I don't care for her style of writing. Maybe someday. I should try it in audio. I'm sure Librivox has it.
I Am Legend is another where a plague 'kills' off humans, but in a particularly grizzly fashion since many aren't really dead, just so changed.
As always there is a whole lot of Dick that qualifies. With "Dr. Bloodmoney" and its reference to "Dr. Strangelove" being one of his most interesting.Technically, "Blade Runner"'s inspiration "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"'s setting is an ecologically devastated world with only the genetically failed still inhabiting the Earth - the rest have immigrated to the Offworld Colonies and formed a human-replicant based civilization.
Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents were post apocalyptic though the apocalypse is never really spelled out. It was climatic, economic, and social collapse, all interrelated. I read these two a couple of years apart and my impression was that Talents was the better of the two.
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The Road by Cormac McCarthy is post-apocalyptic, although the book avoids the details of how the world arrived in the shape it did and focuses more on how people react to anarchy.
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I've only read the last book in that series (because it was the shortest). I liked it enough that I want to read more from her.
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I predict that none of you will have read it, and most won't have heard of it, since it hasn't been translated to English and is mostly forgotten in France. Nonetheless, I love it.
My review is here.
In brief, this was written in 1935, predicts that WWII will involve Japanese and Germans united against USA and USSR and start with an attack on Hawaii. And that it will result in the death of everyone except one adult and a handful of children. (Ok, that prediction didn't come true.) The adult watches the children develop their own language and culture and start on a path to a bloody new future. Darkly funny.
Probably influenced by La Mort de la Terre (1910) (Included in collection The Navigators Of Space) and probably an influence on Malevil (1972) and Ashes, Ashes (1943).
Ed wrote: "One of my favorites post-apocalyptic novels is Quinzinzinzili.I predict that none of you will have read it, and most won't have heard of it, since it hasn't been translated to Engl..."
Looking it I discovered that it was translated to portuguese (the only other language besides french, in GR at least), and the edition it's from this year. I added it to my to read shelf. I added La Mort de la Terre and Malevil too.
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I also have Malevil on my to-read shelf. But that shelf keeps growing!
Most of the "classic" post-apocalyptic books I know of imagine the apocalypse to be some sort of global war. Conan-Doyle's The Poison Belt (1913) is an exception, that imagines death from a space poison. Recently we read Galápagos in this group, where it is a contagion. Plenty of recent ones seem to be about environmental collapse.
This thread needs to be revived, imo. I'm very interested in the Recovery. What books give us a bit more hope?Station Eleven is a beautiful book and I've loved it twice. And in it some recovery is starting to happen. I'd love to see a sequel in which some of those threats that seem to be looming are overcome!
I recently read After London: or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies, a relatively early post-apocalyptic novel. It was interesting but finished very abruptly.
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Adiamante is about an Earth that is recovering from us wasting it with pollutants. When cyborgs come back to Earth to take the place over, they don't find what they expect. One of the really neat threads is the personal ecological responsibility that all the inhabitants of Earth share. The guy in charge doesn't want to be & bears the brunt of the costs of dealing with the situation.
Modesitt has done a lot of things in his life, but he spent a lot of time in DC working with the EPA & as an environmental consultant. He also has a strong background in economics, so his books always have a very tight budget that the characters must adhere to. IOW, resources, money, time, & tech are always more limited than they'd like.
Rosemarie wrote: "I recently read After London: or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies, a relatively early post-apocalyptic novel. It was interesting but finished very abruptly."We should nominate that for Proto-pre-1920 BotM.
Modesitt sounds interesting... I always like stories that are thoughtful and smart, not just enthusiastic.
Jim wrote: "L.E. Modesitt Jr. has several books about recovering the Earth after it's been very screwed up. . . .Adiamante! My take: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
"An excellent novel, well worth rereading. This is my third read, and I think this is his best straight-SF novel. Moral philosophy *plus* exploding spaceships! "
I sure miss Gerald Jonas's peerless SF reviews for the NY Times!
Another 5-star Modesitt: "The Ecolitan Enigma ": https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
"A/A+": a hard-eyed look at an ancient human dilemma
Monsters as political leaders have been a recurrent nightmare in our history - from Lenin, Hitler, Stalin & Mao to such comparative small- timers as Idi Amin, Pol Pot & Saddam Hussein. The record of "good governments" in dealing with monsters is not encouraging. Millions of lives could have been saved with a few snipers' bullets... why weren't they?"
More on "The Ecolitan Enigma":"Shadowy organizations of dedicated, competent fighters-against-evil are a classic SF trope, and Modesitt knows the classics. "Enigma" is the latest and one of the best: thoughtful, well-written, an accurate and disturbing portrait of the dark side of humanity: "Greed and force - that's all most people listen to."
Moved to the "reread soon" pile. I'm pretty sure I kept my copy.
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It's great to meet another Modesitt fan. Have you read The Green Progression? It's not SF, but a mystery-thriller set around breaking the economy with too stringent ecological rules. I first read it about the time they closed the last lead mine in the US for that reason.
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That sounds exactly like SF to me! Social SF, but still SF. Of course, I haven't read it and you may be right.
Yeah, when I type SF I actually say "speculative fiction" in my head, to be more encompassing. I like speculation... the 'what if' aspect of SF.... So, *Green Progression* does sound interesting, too.
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That sounds exactly like SF to me! Social SF, but still SF. Of course,..."
Modesitt is actually just pointing out an existing issue in a fictionalized setting, so that removes it from 'speculative' or 'science' & puts it firmly in fiction to my mind.
Ah, gotcha.
This might be relevant to the discussion:While some reviewers regard the novel as a thriller, others see it as an example of post-millennial science fiction with stories set in the "technocultural future-present". Some reviewers note that the novel furthers the post-millennial trend in science fiction of illustrating society's inability to imagine a definitive future and the use of technologies once considered advanced or academic now commonplace within society and its vernacular. Gibson said that the only science fiction elements are "[t]he Footage and Cayce's special talents" but that he "never bought that conceit that science fiction is about the future". Dennis Danvers explained the use of science fiction as a narrative strategy:
[s]cience fiction, in effect, has become a narrative strategy, a way of approaching story, in which not only characters must be invented, but the world and its ways as well, without resorting to magic or the supernatural, where the fantasy folks work. A realist wrestling with the woes of the middle class can leave the world out of it by and large except for an occasional swipe at the shallowness of suburbia. A science fiction writer must invent the world where the story takes place, often from the ground up, a process usually called world-building. In other words, in a science fiction novel, the world itself is a distinctive and crucial character in the plot, without whom the story could not take place, whether it's the world of Dune or Neuromancer or 1984. The world is the story as much as the story is in the world. Part of Gibson's point ... is that we live in a time of such accelerated change and layered realities, that we're all in that boat, like it or not. A novel set in the "real world" now has to answer the question, "Which one?"
This is from a discussion of "Pattern Recognition" and the Blue Ant Trilogy in general. It has also be called "near future" SF.
Peter Hamilton has just written an article on his favourite 10 books about remaking the future. The list is quite varied and I hope some qualify as post-apocalyptic....https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Jo wrote: "Peter Hamilton has just written an article on his favourite 10 books about remaking the future. The list is quite varied and I hope some qualify as post-apocalyptic....https://w..."
Thanks so much. This is an interesting list.
Great list, we read a few here already. "... Simak, who writes pastoral SF" - nice put.
Jim wrote: "It's great to meet another Modesitt fan. Have you read The Green Progression? It's not SF, but a mystery-thriller set around breaking the economy with too stringent ecological rules. I first read it about the time they closed the last lead mine in the US for that reason."Re: GP. I've looked for it. Hard to find.
Re: LEM: I like most of his SF. Read one or two of the "Soprano Sorcerer" things, which were inspired by his wife, a singer. Not my sort of thing, but I think those are what pay his mortgage.
Re: Last lead mine in US. You read wrong. I used to work for St, Joe Lead. The big Pb-Zn mines in SE MO are going strong, & will be for the foreseeable future. World-class ore deposits. The one thing I would have liked to see there, and didn't: when the miners break into a new "crystal cavity", there's a rush for the best specimens, and for photos first! The bosses hate this, but screw 'em. Famous specimen locality.
Probably the only UG mines in the US where miners (& geologists, & bosses) drive to work UG in pickup trucks! Successor company: https://doerun.com/
"Missouri’s mining industry provides nearly 9,800 jobs across the state. Metal mining has been vital to Southeast Missouri for more than 300 years."
Photos:
https://www.mininghistoryassociation.... Whoa! Not OSHa approved....
Video will give you an idea of the scale. Not a small-scale operation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruVCy...
Mod
Oh, good. I don't remember where I read or heard that.
I didn't care much for the Soprano Sorceress series. The first book was good, but it went downhill for me quickly.
I don't recall if I even finished the first. Much prefer his SF -- & his best can be very, very good!
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
1984 (other topics)The Road (other topics)
Galápagos (other topics)
I Am Legend (other topics)
Alas, Babylon (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Cormac McCarthy (other topics)Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (other topics)
Richard Jefferies (other topics)
L.E. Modesitt Jr. (other topics)
Peter Hamilton (other topics)
What are some of your favorite apocalyptic novels & why?
How have they varied over the years: types of threats, ability to recover, & such. Are various periods more or less hopeful?
Spoilers will abound in this topic, so be warned.