Tag: Books

Apocalypse 1901: Adam and Eve in the Empty World Asylum

M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud (1901)

NorthPoleNOAAThe Book of Revelation isn’t the only part of the Bible that inspires post-apocalyptic fiction — Genesis plays a big part too. The Bible’s story about the beginning of the world has become a popular way to think about the world’s end. Adam and Eve, a paradisiacal Eden, and humanity’s fall get transformed into a last couple, a post-apocalyptic haven, and the forbidden fruit of some unexplored territory or lethal knowledge. What could be called the very first post-apocalyptic novel was explicitly written as a bookend to Genesis. Nathaniel Hawthorne later wrote a replay of Genesis that takes place within the empty remnants of civilization. M.P Shiel’s The Purple Cloud, an overwritten but under-read classic, is also a post-apocalyptic Adam and Eve story: the fall of civilization is brought about by a reach for the unexplored North Pole, and a last couple must consider the moral dilemma of repopulating an empty world.

The Purple Cloud is the first post-apocalyptic novel of the 20th century, but it starts with a throwback, by putting the whole thing within a mystic frame story of the sort employed much earlier by de Grainville and Mary Shelley. Most of the novel consists of the first-person record of the last man as he wrote it down in his notebooks; to get those notebooks in the hands of 20th century readers, Shiel has them dictated by a medium to her physician, who then passes the manuscript on to M.P. Shiel. Finding a plausible explanation for how a future story comes into the hands of present-day readers was a particular concern of 19th century SF writers, but would soon be largely abandoned. Continue reading “Apocalypse 1901: Adam and Eve in the Empty World Asylum”

End of the World 1843: The Disease of Civilization

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The New Adam and Eve” (1843)

Before we move on to the 20th century works of what Josh has aptly named the “post-apocalyptome,” let’s recap what happened in the 19th. Basically, early writers of post-apocalyptic fiction came up with just about all of the major themes, plots, characters, and settings of the genre that we know and love today (the zombie apocalypse excepted). Plagues, comets, environmental catastrophes, or a dying sun lead to ruined cities, collapsed civilizations, and roving bands of marauders; there is the next evolutionary step, a reversion to barbarism and superstition, and the lonely Last Man.

It all pretty much started in 1805 with de Grainville’s The Last Man, a Miltonian, futuristic religious fantasy authored by a French priest. At first this book seems to have little to do with science fiction — it’s an inversion of Genesis, featuring a Last Couple that has to choose whether to obey God and fulfill his plan or pursue their own desires. But despite the heavy Gothic atmosphere, The Last Man is one of very first futuristic romances of the century: there are airships, great engineering projects, and scientific discoveries of unlimited sources of power. It’s as much a vision of scientific progress as it is one of religion, and is the first solid entry in the Dying Earth sub-genre. Humans, through their technology, control nature until God decides to wrap it all up. Continue reading “End of the World 1843: The Disease of Civilization”

Apocalypse 1898: The Victorian Alien Invasion

H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898)

250px-War-of-the-worlds-tripodDuring the new wave of future fiction of the last decades of the 19th century, stories of catastrophic future wars were especially popular. The trend began in 1871 with George Chesney’s “The Battle of Dorking”, a story about a surprise invasion of England by something that sounds like the Prussian military. Writers continued to present increasingly elaborate visions of ever more destructive weaponry right up through the outbreak of World War I. And then there was H.G. Wells, who in 1898 took this popular and overworked late-Victorian genre and completely transformed it into modern science fiction with the classic story of alien invasion.

Swapping Martians with Germans isn’t the only feature that makes The War of the Worlds so different from what came before. Most writers were largely interested with the military and geopolitical aspects of future war, but Wells was interested in the civilians. In fact, War of the Worlds isn’t really about the Martians or their advanced technology; it’s about our cosmic insignificance, and how we react when the security of civilization is demolished. Continue reading “Apocalypse 1898: The Victorian Alien Invasion”

Better science fiction, better science?

Neal Stephenson and Arizona State University want scientists and engineers to think bigger – with science fiction. Therefore, they’ve created Project Hieroglyph: “If we want to create a better future, we need to start with better dreams.”

Some of those dreams are laid out in a new anthology of stories and essays, many of which you can now read online. The book features a skeptical foreword by Lawrence Krauss, and a bullish preface by Neal Stephenson. Some comments should be made about Stephenson’s claims regarding the relationship between science and science fiction, but those are for another day. In the mean time, check out the project, it’s well worth your time.

Apocalypse 1896: Gabriel Tarde and the Fortunate Catastrophe

Gabriel Tarde’s The Underground Man (1896)

Cave1In the decades before the First World War, End of the World visions were influenced by major scientific discoveries of the 19th century. People became aware that the sun, the earth, and the human species itself were moving on a historical trajectory, one that would come to an end naturally, without any need for some divine entity to drop the curtain. The astronomer Camille Flammarion explored different natural scenarios for the End of the World in his 1893 novel La fin du monde, while H.G. Wells’ pathbreaking The Time Machine (1895) described the evolutionary deterioration of humanity and the gradual extinction of all life on earth under a dying sun.

But French sociologist Gabriel Tarde would have none of this cosmic fatalism. In his brief, bizarre 1896 novel, Fragment d’histoire future (published in 1905 in English under the title The Underground Man, with an introduction by none other than H.G. Wells), the extinction of the sun is the best thing that ever happens to us. Living deep underground, cut off entirely from nature, surviving humans have a perfect society where they go about nearly naked in the geothermal warmth, eat synthetic food, and devote all their efforts to happiness and aesthetic achievement. Continue reading “Apocalypse 1896: Gabriel Tarde and the Fortunate Catastrophe”