Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction (1816-1939)
Submitted by JohnnyW on Mon, 03/27/2006 - 09:11
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- Lord Byron/"Darkness" (1816): Arguably, Byron was always the uneasiest fit for the term “Romantic” and all that it connotes. Unlike Wordsworth or Coleridge, who saw nature as a comfort and refuge, Byron in “Darkness” depicts nature as cold and unsympathetic. Decades before Darwin and others called humanity’s traditional view of itself as central to the universe into question, Byron’s prescient poem imagined the effects on the world if the sun were suddenly extinguished. Anticipating scores of later works, Byron didn’t see the disaster as an event bringing out the best in humans, but instead one that showed us at our absolute worst. Cataclysm is first and foremost an equalizer, as money could not buy security, and everything—from huts to palaces—is dismantled and burned for light and heat. Society devolves into chaos, and “War,” personified, gluts itself in a final frenzy. Religion is useless as well, as holy relics and churches themselves become nothing more than kindling for the slowly dying bonfires, and even the loyalty between family members perishes in the panic. The only example given of a creature placing someone else first is that of a dog, who fights off both animals and other humans who would kill his master for food, but when he turns to lick his master’s hand, he is dead, and the dog dies soon after; the image is ambiguous—is it a final redeeming glimpse of nobility or a meaningless gesture in the face of utter annihilation? By the end of the poem, all life is dead, but nothing important is lost, as the final lines make chillingly clear: “Darkness had no need/Of aid from them—She was the Universe.”
- Mary Shelley/The Last Man (1826):
- Richard Jefferies/After London (1885): Richard Jefferies fits right in with writers like Wordsworth and William Morris in their distrust of, if not outright disdain for, civilization and how “progress” was steadily destroying and perverting everything England once represented. In After London, Jefferies depicts an England 100 years on from a great cataclysm (never specified) that utterly devastated London and rooted what society was left back into a Medieval way of life, foreshadowing Morris’ News from Nowhere, which also would see the post-apocalyptic future as a return to the pastoral. After London is divided into two sections, the first of which is a sort of taxonomy of the eventual plants, animals, tribes, and landscape that emerged over the first generation or two “after London.” Jefferies shows a gift for this type of cataloguing, especially when recounting how relentless nature was in sweeping away all the remains of “progress” left after the destruction—roads, bridges, cities—and when describing the new order of human society. Bushmen and Gipsies live nomadic and larcenous lives, while a new nobility based on literacy emerges to reestablish the feudal system. Jefferies’ hatred of all things progressive really comes out in his account of the fate of London; once the Thames clogged with debris and reduced the site to marsh, centuries of trash, waste, and the dead—“the rottenness of 1000 years”—combine to create what could be called a Victorian Superfund site—the ground becomes sludgy and a poisonous mist overhangs the area. No one can hazard a visit unless he has a death wish. The second section of the book is a more pedestrian fantasy of a young nobleman named Felix Aquila who makes a name for himself by exploring the wild lands of England and uniting shepherd tribes under his kingship; this section is quite readable however, and chapters 22-24 give an account of his journey into the area that once was London—these passages portray a land as strange and unfamiliar as anything out of William Hope Hodgson.
- William Morris/News from Nowhere (1890):
- H. G. Wells/The Time Machine (1895):
- H. G. Wells/"The Star" (1897): “The Star” is the first story I know of that treats the subject of a heavenly object wreaking destruction on the earth. A planet beyond Neptune (Pluto being unknown at this time) collides with that planet, jolting both out of orbit and on a course toward the sun. An astronomer labors over some calculations and comes to a devastating conclusion: the conjoined planets will come so close to the earth that life will be wiped out: “Man has lived in vain.” As the object gets closer, brighter, and hotter, people embrace religion, head for high ground, or scoff at the idea of the end of the world. More primitive peoples have had the right idea all along though—new bright “stars” in the heavens portend disaster. Wells, as he invariably does, predicts disater with uncanny accuracy: “Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature to I know not what limit”—sounds like the environmental holocausts predicted for us today, does it not? Wells spares humanity in the end, or at least a small remnant of it, and those left attempt to slowly rebuild civilization. In a foreshadowing of the next year’s War of the Worlds however, the last paragraph of the story informs us that Martian astronomers watched the event with the keenest interest but with no sympathy: “how small the vastest human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles.”
- H. G. Wells/War of the Worlds (1898):
- H. G. Wells/In the Days of the Comet (1906):
- M. P. Shiel/The Purple Cloud (1911):
- William Hope Hodgson/The Nightland (1912):
- Jack London/The Scarlet Plague (1912):
- Arthur Conan Doyle/The Poison Belt (1913):
- Olaf Stapledon/Last and First Men (1930):
- Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer/When Worlds Collide (1932):
- Stephen Vincent Benet/"By the Waters of Babylon" (1937): Another story that utilizes the theme of the “return to the primitive” in the aftermath of apocalypse, “Babylon” is significant because Benet draws on Native American imagery for his post-apocalyptic society, rather than on the Medievalism of Jefferies and Morris. The “Dead Places” that are off limits for the narrator—the son of a tribal priest—and his people are the moldering, shattered remains of the American cities, demolished generations, if not centuries, before. In a test of his incipient manhood, the narrator decides to journey through the forests to find and explore the places of the gods, despite the fear that the gods, if displeased, will strike him down for his desecration of their sacred grounds. His exploration of the dead place of “newyork” is haunting but also laced with some dark humor—a statue partially in ruins can only be identified as “ASHING”—obviously Washington—and the narrator decides it would be wise to pray to this unknown god. Packs of feral dogs roam the deserted streets in another example of how nature has retaken what humanity so proudly thought was its own, and the narrator, running from one of these packs, eventually finds himself in the luxurious apartment of one of the gods, a god whose withered skeleton sits in a chair and looks out over his once proud city. The narrator returns with his new knowledge—these weren’t gods, but humans—and makes a vow to himself and to his father that some day he will lead his people back and they will rebuild the civilization lost so long before.
Author Comments:
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather a list of books I've either read or would like to read in the near future. I will try to start putting up short reviews of these soon.
I am also planning a companion list for the years 1939-2005, but I thought WWII would be a good dividing point for this one.
Suggestions for further reading encouraged!
By the Waters of Babylon is one of my favorite short stories. As for more post-apocalypse books, "Canticle for Leibowitz" is really the only one that stands out to me. I think it came out in the 50's, though.
"By the Waters of Babylon" is definitely a good one, and thanks for the suggestion: Leibowitz is from the 50s, and I will definitely be including it on my follow-up list.
Johnny Waco
You might be interested in this list too.
Great list--The Kraken Wakes and Earth Abides are two I'm particularly interested in. If I had to fit my degree into a time period, it would probably be Victorian, so I'm more familiar with the earlier stuff, like on this list, but I would like to start reading the later stuff as well. I'll be using your list as a reference...
Johnny Waco
And here are some sf short stories on the theme:
"Report on 'Grand Central Terminal'" Leo Szilard
"Not with a Bang" Damon Knight
"The Highway" Ray Bradbury
"Coming Attraction" Fritz Leiber
"Dumb Waiter" Walter M. Miller Jr
"The Year of the Jackpot" Robert Heinlein
"The Curse" Arthur C. Clarke
"The Luckiest Man in the World" Robert Sheckley
"Keepers of the House" Lester Del Rey
"Thunder and Roses" Theodore Sturgeon
"To the Chicago Abyss" Ray Bradbury
"Phoenix" Richard Cowper
"A Boy and his Dog" Harlan Ellison
"The Road to Nightfall" Robert Silverberg
"Go, Go, Go, said the Bird" Sonya Dorman
"The Snows are Melted, the Snows are Gone" James Tiptree Jr
"Inconstant Moon" Larry Niven
"A Better Mousetrap" John Brunner
"The Number You Have Reached" Thomas M. Disch
I took a course specificially dealing with Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction. It was very interesting... we began with Revelation, and then used it to compare to the major literary pieces.
Let me think of the reading list...
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Le Guin
This is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow
We also did a plethora of short stories, many of them found in the out-of-print Beyond Armageddon by Walter M Miller Jr.
It was such an interesting class!
I took a course in Apocalyptic Literature as well, though I don't really remember the reading list that well. I know I did my term paper on Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and I remember Canticle for Leibowitz was on there. Also, there was some novel by G.K. Chesterton and one by Bernard Malamud.
I thought the coolest thing about the course was that it was a once-only deal, only offered in the Winter semester which ended in December 1999.
More mentions of Leibowitz and Cat's Cradle! I'll definitely be onto these soon. Thanks.
Johnny Waco
Sounds like a great class--I'd love to teach one like that myself someday. Leibowitz is on my short list for books I want to read, and I've seen a lot of references to Cat's Cradle, so I will probably pick up a copy of that too. I haven't heard of the other two novels, so I'll have to look into them. Thanks for the suggestions!
Johnny Waco