# Post Apocalyptic Genre



## lailahaillallah (Jul 9, 2007)

Hi folks,

There is a vast genre of apocalyptic tales, movies, games and to a lesser degree a genre of post apocalyptic stories.  From madmax, deep impact, the day after tomorrow, a canticle for leibowitz, wasteland, fallout.. there are some amazing settings and worlds by which various authors and writers have explored the idea of life after the "end of the world" (so to speak).

what do you think are the good things that have worked in the genre of post apocalyptica  and what do you think are the things that didnt work or "sucked" about it.  what would you like to see in a future post apocalyptic story?

any response would be valued.

Simon


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## lailahaillallah (Jul 10, 2007)

geez, no one at all?


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## TK-421 (Jul 10, 2007)

Anything but another Jake Gyllenhall and Dennis Quaid crappy movie.


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## Connavar (Jul 10, 2007)

I liked Planet of The Apes version cause of the humans being the animals and the apes the rulers.


In books i liked Jon Shannow series cause it was a neat version of apocalyptic story. It was post apocalyptic western + alittle magic.

A movie like that would be awesome.  But hollywood will never make one like that.


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## lailahaillallah (Jul 10, 2007)

oh yeah man, i forgot about that .i'm gonna go back and read the jon shannow novels once i finish a canticle for leibowitz


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## j d worthington (Jul 10, 2007)

Generically speaking:

Worked: A genuine feeling of apocalypse; the loneliness of the character(s); attempts (successful or otherwise) to recreate/rebuild or to start a new society; genuine human interaction with such a jolting experience, essentially.

Didn't work: facile solutions to the problem (rebuilding with that cheery, stiff-upper-lip syndrome); lack of tensions between various characters; lack of suicidal thoughts on a lone survivor; surface handling rather than delving into the actual impact of such an occurrence.

Lots of good stories in the genre, from *Earth Abides* to *I Am Legend* to *The Purple Cloud* (despite some letdown toward the end on that one). Even Moorcock's Breakfast in the Ruins has an element of that toward the end. Ballard's early work has several excellent examples. Mary Shelley's *The Last Man* is a bit slow for modern readers, but quite powerful at times.


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## lailahaillallah (Jul 10, 2007)

yeah i think you've got a good point there, especially abouit lonliness of the character... some of the great post apoc "stories" (and games and movies) featured this to great effect.  jon shannow, mad max, the fallout games, waterworld sucked but still had that lone-ranger kinda character. the list goes on..


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## TK-421 (Jul 10, 2007)

On TV movie that I can still remember as very shocking for its time and certainly had an impact on me was The Day After with Jason Robards and John Lithgow
The Day After (1983) (TV)

Then, the same year there was War Games with Matthew Broderick, which was pretty cool and dealt with a made-up nuclear holocaust.
WarGames (1983)

This new movie, I am Legend, has Will Smith taking on the role as the last man on Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Legend_%28film%29


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## Ian Whates (Jul 10, 2007)

TK-421 said:


> This new movie, I am Legend, has Will Smith taking on the role as the last man on Earth.
> I Am Legend (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


 
Hmm... Will Smith as Charlton Heston... should be interesting.


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## thecommabandit (Jul 10, 2007)

[shameless self-promotion]
I happen to have one of those allegedly uncommon post-apocalyptic stories here. Still in progress and I don't seem to have touched it for a while but I'm told it's rather good 
[/shameless self-promotion]

I haven't read much literature in that kind of setting, my experience pretty much includes watching Deep Impact twice (the scene where those two people are just holding each other when the gigantic wave is crashing towards them almost made me cry =( ), Armageddon less than once through and The Day After Tomorrow once and a half. It's a bit of an odd genre; kind-of sci-fi and yet kind-of fantasy. I think perhaps the reason it doesn't have such a following is that the cataclysmic backdrop is rather often caused by us (we don't like being our own downfall it seems - perhaps also the origin of the 'evil robots that we made as our servants but who got guns and are now conducting genocide' cliché and why the people fighting said evil robots are always rather righteous) and that a lot of these are set on Earth in the near future, so rather than playing on people's fear, the genre as a whole seems hindered by it.

Like I said before, I'm working on a vision of a post-apocalyptic Earth; we were hit by a large asteroid (one's coming in 2036 - repent now sinners!!) which wrought massive destruction, nuclear winter and the whole shebang. Humans eventually crawled out of the dust and are only recently (after a millennium or so of hiding) reclaiming the world. It's fun because it lets me play about with the creatures we have now - one of my characters won an egg in a poker game - turned out it wasn't a chicken like he though (it sounds silly I know, but think more chocobo than chicken - it was for riding) but a gigantic (well, when it's fully grown) lizard thing with feathers. I also get to screw about with my character's heads using things that are totally commonplace today, I'm not exactly sure how it's working since no-one else has read that part yet.


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## lailahaillallah (Jul 11, 2007)

haha sounds like you've got a good grip on the genre actually, TCB.

one of my favourite parts of any book is when the monk stumbles upon the "fallout shelter" in "A Canticle for Leibowitz":  now, he's heard of the dreaded Fallout Demons before. according to the knowledge collected by his religious order, the "Fallout Demons", imbued with the fires of hell, spread through the land killing everything and turning people into monsters. So when he reads the sign on the door of the shelter that says "Fallout Shelter: maximum capacity 15" he freaks out and thinks that theres 15 fallout demons inside! LOL 

once i get some further posts up i'll do some shameless promoting of my own, which you might find interesting. stay tuned


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## j d worthington (Jul 11, 2007)

thecommabandit said:


> It's a bit of an odd genre; kind-of sci-fi and yet kind-of fantasy. I think perhaps the reason it doesn't have such a following is that the cataclysmic backdrop is rather often caused by us (we don't like being our own downfall it seems - perhaps also the origin of the 'evil robots that we made as our servants but who got guns and are now conducting genocide' cliché and why the people fighting said evil robots are always rather righteous) and that a lot of these are set on Earth in the near future, so rather than playing on people's fear, the genre as a whole seems hindered by it.


 
Actually, it's been a very popular genre (or sub-genre) -- so much so that there are even subdivisions within this subdivision:

Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And many of the classics in the field of sf are of this nature: *Greybeard*, *Earth Abides*, *Alas, Babylon!*, *On the Beach*, *Stand on Zanzibar* (along with *The Jagged Orbit* and *The Sheep Look Up*), *Shadow on the Hearth*, nearly all of Ballard's early work, several of John Wyndham's novels, etc. It even became known as the "cozy catastrophe" (though you could hardly call Ballard's novels that)! It's not been quite so popular of recent years, but there are still a fair number of them out there. It was a very wide-spreading genre during the Second World War and the Cold War, narrowed a bit once the Cold War seemed to go away, picked back up again when we were approaching the millennium, and has tapered off a bit since then... but still fairly popular.


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## Ragnar (Jul 11, 2007)

TK-421 said:


> On TV movie that I can still remember as very shocking for its time and certainly had an impact on me was The Day After with Jason Robards and John Lithgow
> The Day After (1983) (TV)


 
If you thought that was shocking, try to track down a copy of this;

Threads (1984) (TV)

Scared the bejesus out of me at the time. I watched it again recently & it is still _very_ disturbing.


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## The Ace (Jul 17, 2007)

One that got me was David Brin's "The Postman," (the book, I never saw the film.)  A con-artist actually conning people that they weren't alone and giving them hope.


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## Bikewer (Jul 18, 2007)

Being a child in the 50s, it seemed that half the stuff I read was "post-apocalyptic".  Must have been the Cold War and those "duck and cover" drills....

One of the earliest novels I recall reading was of this genre, Star Man's Son by Andre Norton.  The central character is the son of a "star man", a trained scavenger and explorer who braves the devastated cities that were once America.
Filled with radioactive hazards and mutant rats, they are rather dangerous...

I must have read dozens of short stories and paperback novels back then that I scarcely remember....


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## femdynamite (Jul 18, 2007)

I love the post apocalyptic genre. I've read (or listened to) and watched most films about this theme and really like it.

There are a few things I don't like.

1. Sometimes it can be excessively gross. I don't mind bloodhsed and a little gore, but I don't need too much graphicness. Axler writes some interesting stories... But each book seems to have some really graphic stomach churning scenes which really gross me out. A little is ok. Too much and I find myself gagging.

2. Meanderingness. (is that a word) I want a tight story and sometimes Post Apocalyptic fiction kind of wanders... You know.... And nothing ever gets resolved. Just because its after a terrible world-shattering even doesn't mean I don't want tight plot and scripting.

3. Depressiveness. Sometimes it can be just so depressing there is nothing to lighten the mood. Some authors need to lighten up and realize that people who survive a terribel event are still people. There needs to be somthing to lighten the mood.


Good things

1. Less government (generally) more leaway with laws. Lawlessness.
2. Mutants!
3. Less technology and or tech that doesn't work.
4. Opportunity for man vs. environment storylines which are some of my favorites.

F


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## matt-browne-sfw (Jul 29, 2007)

The Ace said:


> One that got me was David Brin's "The Postman," (the book, I never saw the film.)  A con-artist actually conning people that they weren't alone and giving them hope.



The film is interesting too. Great performance by Kevin Costner.


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## ironvelvet (Aug 13, 2007)

Why is it always the statue of Liberty semi-destroyed to convey the fall of civilisation? Given that most of these blockbusters if not all come from California and the Hollywood sign is probably as iconic as the Lady...is there some geographical needling going on?
Is this discussion only about post apocalypse earth? I think there's definitely a strong whiff of 'after the pinnacle of civilisation - the fall' to many fantasy books: Lord of the Rings, the Shannara stuff, Song for Arbonne, Tad Williams stuff etc. And there's all the Gate technology and the Ancients in Stargate. And when the apocalypse referred to isn't our own these many formats appear to encourage the pursuit of the knowledge and learning of the glory days as a good thing, even though said knowledge resulted in the destruction of advanced civilisation for millenia....
Now I think of it the entire Pern series is post apocalyptic.


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## Connavar (Aug 13, 2007)

The Ace said:


> One that got me was David Brin's "The Postman," (the book, I never saw the film.)  A con-artist actually conning people that they weren't alone and giving them hope.



How good is the book?


I thought the movie was rubbish what esle do you expect from Kevin Costner...


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## kcs_hiker (Aug 13, 2007)

wikipedia fails to include *The Terminator* movies as post-apocalyptic 

also, Tom Clancy took a shot at it in *Rainbow Six* (although the apocalypse was narrowly avoided)

another (bad) movie (but it was an interesting idea) was *Waterworld* starring Kevin Costner yet again

another favorite of mine that hasn't been mentioned is *Lucifer's Hammer* by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle


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## TK-421 (Aug 13, 2007)

I seem to recall seeing some movie in a post-apocalypse world that was desert and there were these huge bugs à la Starship Troopers but bigger and they were trying to outrun them. I just have this single image and for the life of me cannot remember anything else except it was sometime in the early 90's or so.

Anybody know what movie this may have been? Or was it on TV?


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## Brigitte (Aug 28, 2007)

Are you thinking of either Tremors or Eight-Legged-Freaks?

Tremors was good.  The other, not so much.


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## Theleb K (Aug 28, 2007)

The first one that springs to my mind is the Night Land by William Hope Hodgson (you can find stuff about it on Amazon or wikipedia).  I read it quite a few years ago and it made a really strong impression.  

It is set far in the distant future.  The "Night Land" of the title is the Earth after the Sun has died, where the descendants of humanity linger on within a vast, sealed pyramid. 

It was written early in the 20th century so the language is a bit archaic and "Poe-esque".  It's not what you might call an easy read, but I found it quite haunting and bits of it stayed with me for a long time - particularly the allusions to the giant and terrible _watchers.._.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 22, 2007)

Z for Zachariah is a good book

no mutants or anything daft like that , no real action to speak of
Just a story about a girl living alone in a valley untouched by the nuclear devastation , when a male survivor in a biological suit discovers her safe haven


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## vervain_ashe (Oct 14, 2007)

TK-421 thanks for mentioning War Games.  That movie and Red Dawn were very, shall we say, influential.  To me, at least.  They pose the simple question, "What would you do if..."?


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## WizardofOwls (Oct 15, 2007)

I also love this genre. I particular like tales that deal with exploration and mutants.

My collection of books includes:

Hiero's Journey and The Unsung Hiero by Sterling E. Lanier
One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes by Stuart Gordon
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Redbeard by Michael Resnick
Star Man's Son (or Daybreak 2250 AD) by Andre Norton
Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny
A Secret History of Time To Come by Robie Macauley


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## Wiglaf (Oct 15, 2007)

I like some post-apocolytic stuff.  But sometimes the particualar mix of suviving hitech and low tech makes no sense.  Perhaps a better storyline would help me to overlook it?  Personally, I perfer fantasy with the apocolyse based on the fall of the old kingdom (based on the fall of Rome?) than post-nuke stories.  Of course some mutant Americans would survive to restore civilization and thwart any surviving Commies.  Still depressing, and changing the Russians to terrorists with bioweapons doesn't help.  But a fresh, well done story as opposed to Hollywood cliche might interest me.


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## matt-browne-sfw (Oct 27, 2007)

In my book the post-apocalyptic scenario is based on an erupting supervolcano and the embryo space colonization concept. Can human embryos travel to the stars? Well, we'd need reliable androids who are able to raise children...


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## panopticon (Oct 30, 2007)

I must admit it's one of my favourite sub-genres, along with "nihilistic near future" if there is such a thing (like 1984 etc). Having recently re-read *A Canticle for Leibowitz *I was never before struck at just how downright scary the thought of this post-nuclear future is. It may be because I first read it when I was 11, and it went over my head 

On a related note, is anyone lookig forward to the upcoming Hollywood take (again) on *I Am Legend*? I'm trying so hard to give it a chance, but my inner SF snob won't let me.


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## Connavar (Oct 30, 2007)

Listen to your inner SF snob   All fans of that book should be scared considering hollywood record with classic SF.

Ever seen Starship Troopers for example yuck.....


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