The Fascination of Apocalypse
Recently, I had the opportunity to look over photos of the damage done by an earthquake that struck Long Beach in 1933. Toppled church spires, debris spilling over the roads, schools and businesses demolished. There’s something compelling about other people’s horrendous events; the greater the destruction the greater the fascination, just as long as we’re safe. This has been the case at least since the unknown Israelite scribe set down the story of Noah’s Ark in the Old Testament, and we became morbidly hooked on tales of our – sometimes deserved – destruction as a race. But since Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, we’ve had some semblance of scientific underpinning to our nightmare visions. Some of the science fiction field’s best writers – Leigh Brackett , The Long Tomorrow, and Richard Matthieson , I am Legend, come to mind – have given this subject thoughtful if somber consideration.
Sometimes the cause of our projected demise is that fiend of the twentieth century, nuclear destruction, for instance, David Brin’s The Postman. Sometimes it’s a plague: George R. Stewart, Earth Abides, natural or man-made – preferably the latter for dramatic purposes, so the author can play on our sense of guilt. Sometimes, the author chooses not to name the cause but to concentrate on the after-effects of destruction. In any case, we can point to dozens of examples of final-catastrophe novels and short stories.
So if descriptions of apocalypse are so numerous in the field, how are we to make critical distinctions between them? Bigger weapons of mass destruction? Better methods of annihilating humanity? More gruesome descriptions of after-effects? All of those have had their day, and like all novel ideas, at first they are fresh and startling (Nevil Shute , On the Beach), then they become cliche. For me, as for many science fiction readers, there has to be something more.
I have to admit I’ve never been a fan of the recent apocalyptic novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, which received much acclaim. One explanation of this critical enthusiasm, of course, is that mainstream critics, being unfamiliar with the vast body of work already existing in the genre, found McCarthy’s description of humanity’s degradation after some unnamed but horrific apocalyptic event to be fresh meat. I don’t mean to belittle his achievement here in depicting the relationship between the man and his son who travel this particular “Road,” but I believe a science fiction author would have gone on from there to – as Theodore Sturgeon once advised – ask the next question. “And then what?” we want to know. Even the story of Noah’s Ark tells of Noah’s family’s struggles to re-establish human settlements in a post-Flood world.
It’s a legitimate question to ask of an apocalyptic story. What did the survivors do? (There have to be some survivors or else there’s no story, just a gruesome but essentially static picture.) Science fiction readers want to see action on the part of those “left behind” – to co-opt a decidedly non-science fictional title of a book that nevertheless does answer the question about what happened next. The extreme response to this question can be seen in Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, where we follow the survivors of nuclear catastrophe for centuries – all the way to the moment when humans seem on the verge of repeating the disaster. Other novels explore the changes in society that evolve as a result, perhaps also, as Russell Hoban did in Riddley Walker, the extreme changes in language that might occur as a result of the disruption of communication.
Recently, I read one of the classics in this sub-genre that I had managed to miss, Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon, first published in 1959. Frank spends little time detailing the exact extent of the nuclear strikes around the globe that bring civilization to its knees. Instead, he’s concerned with the reaction of one of the isolated, remnant populations in attempting to deal with the unthinkable. There’s something reminiscent of “Father Knows Best” here in tone, the characters being a trifle too resourceful at times, and too successful in restoring civility to a hard-scrabble life after the bomb. The tone reflects the prevailing split of the fifties in America: Fear of nuclear holocaust, and a strong belief that the family can conquer anything life throws at it. This philosophy may be a little hard for us in our jaded times to swallow, but as a story it satisfies because it shows the characters doing rather than simply reacting.
It’s not just that science fiction readers tend to like robots and spaceships and aliens – lots of mainstream-minded viewers like Hollywood’s versions of these icons. And I would certainly argue that it has nothing to do with appreciation of literary quality. The difference is that SF readers like what Einstein called “gedanken experimenten.” Genre readers want to take part in the story. We enjoy discussing the problems encountered by the characters as if they were real, and the pros and cons of the solutions proposed. We want to learn from the possible futures we’re introduced to, not just be appalled or chilled. We approach a science fiction story as if it was a thought-experiment. If this goes on, and we ask, Do we really want that? This question is a vital part of our response to science fiction, especially apocalyptic and dystopic literature.
That’s what makes a satisfying piece of science fiction, in my opinion.
Maybe I should check on my earthquake supplies!
The author of eight novels, more than thirty short stories, dozens of poems and articles about science fiction, SHEILA FINCH has received several awards, including the Nebula Award, the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel in the Field, and the San Diego Book Award for Young Adult fiction. She has given workshops at writers’ conferences all over Southern California and recently retired from twenty-eight years of teaching creative writing and science fiction at El Camino College, California. She lives in Long Beach, California, with a cat and two retired racing greyhounds. To learn more about Sheila, see her website or read her blog.
2 comments so far.
Can you clarify the difference between a screenplay premise and a screenplay fascination once the writer has his or her seed idea?
1. Online BookStore on 09th November 2009 at 1:43 am
Hello Sheila Finch, Really very nice and good info you share here on fiction book. I read entire post and really good explanation on best authors and his books. I have read so many books of David Brin and his fiction book too. I am great fan of this author books and i have read The Postman book. Superb and fantastic book. thanks for sharing nice info.