The Rise of Apocalyptic and Survival Fiction

[WillAdams]

Elfwreck, Steven R. Boyett's _Ariel_ and _Elegy Beach_ books examine a post-apocalyptic world (but w/ no working technology, but w/ working magic) --- well worth reading.

Another story examining a post-apocalyptic world is Charles de Lint's _Svaha_ which I found to be a lot of fun.

William

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

You're right. The big difference is, in post-apoc stories everyone obsesses about the life that was lost.

I've always wondered how long it would take before that stopped. Until the first generation dies? Until their grandchildren stop telling stories? Until the last "old" high-tech gadgets are gone?

I know it's not a book, but the original two video games Fallout and Fallout 2 from the late 90's, early 2000's portray a very good post-apocalyptic world. The mix of modern technology and the lack of it in the small rural villages may not have been realistic, but it made sense. The difference between the city built around an underground vault that sheltered its citizens from the nuclear holocaust and gives them considerable resources, and the city of Reno, Nevada, who had to start over from nothing once the flames died down, is especially well done.

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

the only trick to survival would be finding working equipment that your cellphone told you that you needed...

Given how few of us actually save such information to our smart phone, I doubt that. Without internet access and a charger, my Droid is a paper weight. A small, light, and very poor paper weight.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

Given how few of us actually save such information to our smart phone, I doubt that. Without internet access and a charger, my Droid is a paper weight. A small, light, and very poor paper weight.

So, the survivalist that can sell a file of valuable "get the world running again" documents to the world (and convince you to get a solar or crank charger for your phone) may be the one who saves us all...

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

So, the survivalist that can sell a file of valuable "get the world running again" documents to the world (and convince you to get a solar or crank charger for your phone) may be the one who saves us all...

More likely he/she will be the one running the show... you are allowed to read the file, closely supervised, at a set rate per half hour. Note-taking not allowed.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

Elfwreck, Steven R. Boyett's _Ariel_ and _Elegy Beach_ books examine a post-apocalyptic world (but w/ no working technology, but w/ working magic) --- well worth reading.

Another story examining a post-apocalyptic world is Charles de Lint's _Svaha_ which I found to be a lot of fun.

I read and enjoyed Ariel long ago; Elegy Beach I'm still debating about. It's available in paper--right now, the hardcover is less than $4 at Amazon new (!) or the standard $.01+shipping for used hardcover or paperbacks. And, of course, it's available with DRM, which I don't do.

Ariel is at Fictionwise in multiformat, at a bit more than I'm willing to pay for fiction ebooks. ($8 for an almost thirty-year-old ebook? No way.)

I've liked everything of de Lint's I've read; I'll keep an eye out for Svaha, but again, I'm very iffy about reading anything on paper anymore, and it's not likely to show up as a non-DRM'd ebook.

If we get to do book recs, Caravan by Stephen Goldin was one of my favorites as a teenager, and probably greatly shaped how I think about post-apoc settings. It's a no-fantastic-elements story of the gradual collapse of US society and a small group trying to rebuild by moving through the broken cities and gathering a few people who'll be able to work within a new community.

[dadioflex]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

I've always wondered how long it would take before that stopped. Until the first generation dies? Until their grandchildren stop telling stories? Until the last "old" high-tech gadgets are gone?

In the awesome, classic "Earth Abides" it take two generations to go from societies doing their best to shepherd what's left of the old technology to the grand-kids who mock the old fogies that would rather use old unreliable technology instead of living off the land like natives. But that book was written long before we had consumer electronics.

Thing is, not one person in a hundred is likely equipped to keep themselves alive long enough to re-build anything, when surrounded by a bunch of people whose only recourse is to take what they have.

[Steven Lake]

Well said, dadioflex. Another big problem plaguing the rebuilding effort is a rather interesting mental condition (which is shockingly common even today) called "Normalacy". It's two fold really. The first kind, which is being experienced in today's world is sometimes wrongly referred to as "apathy". It's the mental state where a person believes that "since it's never happened before, it never will." Our ancestors suffered from that problem time and time and time again, sometimes resulting in disastrous consequences. (floods, collapses, etc) The second kind is sometimes viewed as stagnation. People are tired of the change, the upheaval, the constant fighting. They want to have a "normal" life again. Normal in this case being something where things follow a regular, predictable pattern. No having to deal with something different every day and every hour.

If you look at the dark ages, that was something which happened with incredible rapidity. First there was the fall of Rome, so you had people trying to pick up the pieces and assume, if only on a most basic level, some form of normalacy. They would stagnate there for a period and then advance, only to get kicked to the curb again. But instead of picking up the pieces and trying to salvage those advances, they'd just fall back on what they knew and stagnate all over again.

A culture trying to come out of a massive, or major disaster, would have to understand that, when recovering from a major disaster, normalacy is the biggest killer of recovery, because it causes people to stagnate rather than recover. I'm dealing with that topic right now in two of my upcoming books. The novel "One Second After" covers this topic quite well also. Sure, they have the initial period of "survival" they have to get through, but once on the other side they make the right choice to try and pick up the pieces and push forward, regardless how bad things were, or are. A recovering society would have to make sure they held to that, even if it took a hundred years.

[Steven Lake]

Wow, I just looked up Assiti Shards, and that looks like it'd be an AWESOME way to do a sci-fi related survival story. Sure, it's alt-history, but it's also sci-fi and survival fiction all at the same time.

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I think the "cycles" you've seen have more to do with media looking for something they haven't promoted lately, and dredging up old themes to rehash for the public's dime. Apocalyptic fiction and monsters have a nostalgia value that makes them popular with audiences, a known product and an easy sell.

This stuff has been around forever, look at the Bible. Does this mean that Westerns are coming back?

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I think the "cycles" you've seen have more to do with media looking for something they haven't promoted lately, and dredging up old themes to rehash for the public's dime. Apocalyptic fiction and monsters have a nostalgia value that makes them popular with audiences, a known product and an easy sell.

It's also more popular now because special effects are so much more realistic (and cheaper) that it makes it easier to present wrecked cities, zombies and aliens, supernatural creatures and ruined ecosystems. Even television documentaries can present future creatures and "Life After Mankind" programs that look very dramatic and realistic, while spicing things up with "Us vs Them" conflicts.

There's nothing relatively new about society feeling unsure of its future; some of us have felt that way since the 1960s, and feel like the rest of you are just beginning to notice how bad things are. We can also recite the apocalyptic movies since then, from Soylent Green and ZPG, through Silent Running, A Boy And His Dog, Logan's Run, Twilight's Last Gleaming, Damnation Alley, to the multiple iterations of I Am Legend, Jerico, The Book of Eli, The Matrix, Terminator, The Island, etc, etc, etc... and we say: "What rise? When did it fall?"

The closest I've dealt with fiction after the fall would be... oh, wait, I can't actually tell you, or link you to it. Oh, well... use your imagination. At any rate, I have no personal interest in writing apocalyptic fiction. I'd much prefer to write about the next rise than the imminent fall.

Some of my favorites that I didn't see mentioned were Max Max, Thunderdome, and one other (maybe a Return to) with Mel Gibson.

I have somewhere on an external drive the original "last man on earth" with Vincent Price. Of course Charlton Heston was in the same movie but it was called "Omega Man" and then came Will Smith's. Maybe another too.

I have never been that hot for Zombies because they always were so dumb that they could have been wiped out easy. However there was a French flick that had the zombies going through a second stage where they got smarter. I never saw the sequel to that one. Does anyone know what it was.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

This stuff has been around forever, look at the Bible. Does this mean that Westerns are coming back?

Westerns always come back. Interestingly, they usually take the form of an anarchic state being saved by the officially-ordained or vigilante fighter for justice... putting order to chaos. When times get particularly chaotic, this trope becomes popular and is revived. The True Grit remake may have been the first of the latest revival. We'll see.

Originally Posted by SeaKing

Some of my favorites that I didn't see mentioned were Max Max, Thunderdome, and one other (maybe a Return to) with Mel Gibson.

I know... I didn't mention a lot.

[QuantumIguana]

Then there are the stories where in the post-apocalyptic world, everyone is living off a canned food economy for years. In a post-apocalyptic world, if you aren't getting down to the business of food production, you're probably not going to be around for long.

[Penforhire]

Yeah, farming is what boosted population and allowed us to progress. Hunter gatherers spend too much time (and calories) catching dinner. Their thinkers are not as highly valued. Effective large-scale farming requires (or only encourages?) more social structure.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Then there are the stories where in the post-apocalyptic world, everyone is living off a canned food economy for years. In a post-apocalyptic world, if you aren't getting down to the business of food production, you're probably not going to be around for long.

Argh, this bothers me so much.

I have a Deathlands* novel lying around somewhere that has people -- 100 years after the apocalypse -- drinking old COCA COLA BOTTLES.

Coca Cola does not last that long. Save a can for a few years and it will go intensely bad.

* (The entire series revolves around canned food, but a lot of it is hand-waved as magic, high-tech military stuffs.)

/ pet peeve

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I have a Deathlands* novel lying around somewhere that has people -- 100 years after the apocalypse -- drinking old COCA COLA BOTTLES.

Coca Cola does not last that long. Save a can for a few years and it will go intensely bad.

That's one of the things that always made me smile about Fallout. The standard currency in the post-apocalyptic world is bottle caps. Not very realistic, but funny in so many ways.