Tag: Science Fiction

Apocalypse 1957: On The Beach

There will be no survivors

Exactly what nuclear world war would look like was a matter of diverse opinion in the nuclear apocalypse novels of the 1950‘s. Many post-apocalyptic novels of this decade portrayed World War III as an essentially known if more extreme extension of the destructive experience of World War II, much the way that World War II was like World War I jacked up a notch. At worst, large swaths of land would be rendered permanently uninhabitable for decades (The Long Tomorrow), centuries (The Chrysalids), or even millennia (Pebble in the Sky); nevertheless, the destruction of nuclear bombs was fundamentally the same as what came before. Death occurrs on a massive but not extinctive scale, and while there is some danger from fallout, the worst damage is primarily in those areas of direct hits. This was a logical view at the time – after all, the results of the bombing of Hiroshima, at first glance, weren’t much different from the firebombing of Tokyo.

Along comes Nevil Shute in 1957 with a shocking book that thoroughly rejects the conventional picture of nuclear destruction. Continue reading “Apocalypse 1957: On The Beach”

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Dr. Seuss was not quite surreal enough for offspring 1.1. . .

Photo by Josh Witten

Ending the World for 60 Years: 1956

Survivalism, British Style

John Christopher’s 1956 No Blade of Grass is an extremely compelling page turner that portrays our moral traditions and social glue as being so fragile that they can be swept away in a day. Compassion, mercy, and even friendliness are not as hard-wired as we would hope, and they quickly dissolve when the urgency of survival forces us to view all other people as competitors.

Continue reading “Ending the World for 60 Years: 1956”

Ending the World for 60 Years: 1955

Post-apocalyptic Fundamentalism

Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow is one of many post-apocalyptic novels that envision society returned to a 19th century agrarian state. The rural settings of these novels are commonly used to explore life in a society driven by fear, fear or technology, or change, or those who are different. A society based on fear of technology is what Leigh Brackett explores here.

The Long Tomorrow tells the story of a North American society that, in the wake of nuclear devastation, became essentially Mennonite, since it was the Amish and the Mennonites who were able to adapt most effectively to a world without modern, 20th century technology. And thus Mennonite beliefs about technology, in some form or another, spread widely. Technology, curiosity about technology, and scientific knowledge (and the benefits of that knowledge) are frowned upon, and in some cases even punished severely.

This clamp-down on scientific exploration is enforced by the United States government – after the holocaust, the Thirtieth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forces a rural, agriculturalist society on the nation by limiting the size of all settlements to less than 1,000 people. Without industry and the pooled resources of cities, there is no manufacturing, no science, and no technological progress. As a result, people are provincial, superstitious, and suspicious of change, and a ripe harvest for fundamentalist preachers.

Continue reading “Ending the World for 60 Years: 1955”

Ending the World for 60 Years: 1954

Nature is never inexplicable

For 1954, we’re discussing the first vampire/zombie apocalypse in this series: Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. This is a significant subgenre in End of the World fiction, and it reflects the nebulous boundary between horror and science fiction that has been fruitfully occupied by Wells, Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, and many others. If you’ve seen the Will Smith movie version, you know that I Am Legend combines zombie horror with a hard-headed, scientific protagonist like those we encountered in Genus Homo. I Am Legend is significant in our survey of pos-apocalyptic fiction because a key aspect of the book is the idea that nature, even at its most catastrophic and bizarre, is never inexplicable – scientific reasoning always gets to the bottom of the mystery.

Continue reading “Ending the World for 60 Years: 1954”