Products sampled from this guide:
My fascination with end of world (EOW), plague, nuclear strike, and oppressive societal constraints is a sick fascination of mine. How do humans behave in our worst circumstances? Unfortunately history seems to indicate that pluralities of humans are at our animalistic worst reverting to our nastiest habits and most competitive manners. However, the best part about these books is the minority of rugged individualism that survives the apocalyptic catastrophes and fights for their freedom. The destruction of society and complete anarchism brings man outside his confining lifestyle of empty consumerism and he either fight for freedom or falls for fascism.
Contemporary Books
Most recently, Cormac McCarthy’s critically acclaimed, The Road , is a father and son coping with their existence in a post-apocalyptic world where it rains grey ash and humans cannibalize each other; in other words the world has effectively ended. It’s a depressing book but interesting social experiment. The Brief History of the Dead is a very thoughtful and well written book. The dead are in an alternate universe sustained by the living memory of the last person on earth, their afterlife depends on her survival. One of my favorite books and often overlooked is Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, a tale of social upheaval, bioengineering gone awry & bleaker than her other famous book, The Handmaid's Tale, which questions what sort of moral environment would evolve from devastating environmental pollution that renders most humans sterile (ironically the polluters and the anti-woman religious zealots currently belong to the same party.) P.D. James similarly wrote a dystopian novel of human sterility, The Children of Men as an aging British population deals with the end of times under the rule of a despotic warden. The movie version is equally haunting. Philip Roth is one America's finest writers and The Plot Against America does not disappoint. A chilling alternate history where Charles Lindbergh, the aviator & anti-semite, becomes President of the US and enacts frightening laws that create an atmosphere of religious intolerance and violent pogroms. The Portuguese Nobel prize winner, Jose Saramago infects the world with a Blindness (Harvest Book) plague that is highly contagious and society collapses under its might. David Brin's The Postman (Bantam Classics) envisions how society would function 16 years after a cataclysmic event. Steven King’s, The Stand: Expanded Edition: For the First Time Complete and Uncut (Signet) is the most well known apocalyptic book, but certainly the weakest of the group.
Classic Books
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 an all time classic where the firemen start the fires on inappropriate books and society is consumed by television. Aldous Huxley’s classic creates a utopian repressive world state in Brave New World. However, one of the most underrated repressive utilitarian books is Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day: A Novel. Don’t thank me, thank Uni! Animal Farm (Signet Classics) warns of worker revolution and the repressive nature of Communism. "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others," a haunting reminder of the hypocrisy of governments that a small elite cabal makes the decisions. Catch-22 points out the nonsense of war and arguably the collapse of individualism in a militaristic circumstances. Anthony Burgess foresees psychological conditioning to cure society’s ills in A Clockwork Orange.
Contemporary Science Fiction
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle destroy Earth and civilization with a devastating comet strike in Lucifer's Hammer. These two authors work together again in Footfall, an alien species attacks and hurls meteors at Earth unless we submit to their herd. Greg Bear similarly has planet-eating aliens dropping a piece of neutronium and a piece of antineutronium in the Earth's core, a desperate humanity tries to preserve Earth in The Forge of God. One of my favorite authors, Isaac Asimov the godfather of Science Fiction, foresaw the destruction of civilization in Nightfall (Bantam Spectra Book) with the natural eclipse of it’s 6 suns once every 2,049 years. Philip K. Dick has an excellent novel that must have inspired the Wachowski brothers and their Matrix trilogy The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. What is reality and what is the construct in the Perky Pat playland? Earth is wrapped in a time warped membrane and the Sun is about to engulf earth in Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin. Wilson strikes again with aliens that offer humanity immortality, for those left behind its the apocalypse in Harvest, The.
Nonfiction
Finally, and sadly, a nonfiction exists. Elie Wiesel tried to find meaning in the nightmarish death camps of World War II in Night. The same with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Signet Classics). After the Japanese were defeated in World War II they started from scratch; economically defeated and their countryside in ruins. John Dower investigates this in a very detailed and interesting look at occupied Japan in Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
Movies
Children of Men (Widescreen Edition), one of the finest dystopian movies I have seen. It is disturbing but powerful look at a society that has lost all hope. The book version by P.D. James is also fantastic. One of the better and more recent dystopia films is Steven Spielberg’s, War of the Worlds (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition). See it, it has great special effect. The Matrix trilogy is an all time classic and one of the finest trilogies I believe conceived.
Books are more successful in this genre, however there has been a glut of end of world scenarios due to the increased sophistication of special effects. I really enjoyed The Day After Tomorrow (Widescreen Edition) even if it oversimplified the environmental aspects. Deep Impact was a bore, but the last 30 minutes of special effects was entertaining. In The Core (Widescreen Edition) the ‘terranauts’ need to jumpstart our inner core’s rotation. Independence Day (Five Star Collection) was incredibly lame, consider reading Footfall instead. Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Special Edition) is an all-time classic and the senselessness of nuclear proliferation. Armageddon is a snoozer throughout, but the special effects our great during the mini-meteor strikes. Dragons destroy the modern world in Reign of Fire, a pretty terrible movie if you ask me but still end of world postulating. Another Christian Bale movie, Equilibrium, where emotions are eliminated including empathy. The Island should have been better; however the last half of the movie lacked execution. Clones are used as organ factories, only the clones don’t know it. Inspired by The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Writer/Director David Cronenberg brings us eXistenZ. What is reality and what is the game?
One of the few movies that gets a dystopian tone right is Gattaca (Superbit Collection), and the genetic discrimination that tries to stop one man's dream. The plagued zombies of London rule in 28 Days Later (Widescreen Edition). The Postman is very average, but it tried to get the dystopian tone.
For a current television show on SciFi, I would highly recommend Battlestar Galactica (2003 Miniseries), start with the miniseries. The 12 home planets have been destroyed by Cylon robots; one planet of civilization is left... Earth
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Contemporary Books
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Classic Books
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Contemporary Science Fiction
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17.
Footfall
by Larry Niven
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$7.99 Used & New from: $0.01
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Nonfiction
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Movies
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