It is the last week of January, the final stretch of us covering apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction. We seem to love a depressing topic in January – maybe next year we’ll try something more upbeat.
Today, we’re wrapping up our analysis of this genre by examining the various subcategories within post-apocalyptic tales. Looking at what catastrophes cause the apocalyptic downfall of society in these grim stories. Some examples include cyber attacks, viruses or infections, nuclear disasters, human conflicts that dramatically alter civilization as we know it, alien invasions from space, environmental cataclysms, failures of technology leading to regression into primitive ways of life, religious extremists taking over, and more.
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What Are The Categories of Apocalyptic Fiction?
We discuss why viruses and pandemics currently seem to be the most prevalent apocalyptic scenario depicted in contemporary fiction. This is most likely due to the real-life COVID-19 crisis making such storylines resonate strongly with audiences who can now actually imagine living through a global viral outbreak.
It feels as though predominant threats in apocalyptic fiction evolve over time based on societal contexts – for instance, George Orwell penned 1984 featuring totalitarian Big Brother taking over in the shadow of World War 2 still looming large in the public psyche.
Getting back to our main genre analysis, we survey different kinds of common setups for the apocalypse. We have an interesting discussion on how zombie fiction has blurred the lines over time between science fiction and supernatural explanations.
The modern zombie archetype with dead bodies reanimated by viruses can be traced back specifically to George Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, which kicked off this version rather than old voodoo magic reasons for zombies shuffling around.
We feel that the recent TV adaptation of The Last of Us will spur a resurgence of virus-induced apocalypse scenarios in upcoming fictional works. We also chat about the remarkable longevity of The Walking Dead franchise spanning comics, multiple TV series, spinoffs, and more.
We agree that after a brief lull, recent pandemic experiences globally will likely inspire a revival of viral infection storylines in the near future. However, we speculate fiction will eventually shift to more technology-oriented threats like AI taking over human civilization. We reference classic examples like The Terminator and 2001: A Space Odyssey of malevolent AI wiping us out.
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Apocalyptic Fiction In All Genres
An interesting distinction in apocalyptic fiction we analyze is how it often overlaps with sci-fi, supernatural, dystopian, and other speculative genres while retaining its own thematic niche. Many stories effectively blend multiple fantastic elements seamlessly. However, we notice a distinctive core trait of apocalyptic fiction tends to be emphasizing raw human relationships and survival in the face of catastrophic breakdowns rather than overly elaborate worldbuilding or sci-fi technobabble.
This gripping emotional character-driven element centered on people banding together makes these brutal stories compelling drama for some readers compared to harder science fiction about technology trends or alien civilizations.
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The Future of Apocalyptic Fiction
In conclusion, we speculate about why apocalyptic scenarios continue to endure as such massively popular fodder feeding the creative engine of fictional works through the decades. We suppose they allow audiences to appreciate how societal conditions could be far grimmer.
These nightmarish tales also sometimes carry poignant hopeful messages about the resilience of the human spirit and the importance of working together to prevent such catastrophic disasters, though we as a species do not have the greatest track record of heeding warnings from visionary artists and thinkers ringing alarm bells.
Ultimately, we are very curious to see what new apocalyptic sub-genres and creative approaches to this timeless theme develop in the next five years or so.
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