With titles like The Road nabbing the Pulitzer, World War Z being a popular title, and remake of The Omega Man, myself and others have been noticing that interest in post-apoc seems to be growing, at least from a creative standpoint.
Why has there been a recent surge?
According to Wil Wheaton over on Suicide Girls:
“…a lot of the same fears and geopolitical conflicts that dominated the post-WWII era when apocalyptic fiction really got started are alive and well today. We don’t have the Cold War, but we have terrorism, global warming, and a government that does everything it can to keep us in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. When we feel like this, one way we cope is by creating worlds where the worst of our fear have been realized, worlds where we can walk away if it gets too scary, and maybe it prepares us to deal with that world, should we create it for real.”
Smart guy. I think he’s right. The themes of my post-apoc universe are synthesized out of many of my personal fears, and looking at issues of the day and thinking, “What’s the worst that could happen?” More importantly, “How would we deal with it?”
It’s the essential what-if of all good sci-fi, post-apoc, and dystopian stories.
Thanks to our buddies over at SF Signal for the heads up on that one.
Well, it could be argued that post-apoc, like disco, never really fell completely out of popularity :D but I’d agree that there seems a definite revival, for much the reasons Wheaton states.
I recently rewatched Children of Men, and aside from being a sumptuously realized vision of the near future, it is, like great science fiction tends to be, also a magnification of many of our current fears and issues. It’s more “real” than reality in certain ways.
Over at the Onion AV Club, there’s a running commentary about how popular culture, and particulary certain genres (science fiction and horror especially) will reflect the hangups, obsessions, neuroses and fears presented… to wit, there’s been a startling upturn in fairly stark presentations of torture.
That kind of thing has always been up gorehounds alley, but it’s spilling over–not just movies like Captivity or Hostel, but in shows like Lost, and of course 24.
As a nation and popular culture we seem traumatized by the war and the fallout of prisoner abuse and torture scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay–and like any trauma survivor, we are drawn to recreating the trauma, over and over again.
Anyhow, great to hear The Road managed a Pulitzer, coincidentally, it’s a great book from a great author.
I think those are important questions for every story – only the application of the question varies – what’s the worst that could happen to my character?
Thanks for the linkage! :)