It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.
December 7, 2016 9:26 PM Subscribe
Seems a tad optimistic to me...
posted by jim in austin at 10:15 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 10:15 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
Except that it's not an embryo but a tumour.
posted by acb at 3:02 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by acb at 3:02 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
So, I've been going to a book club that focuses on post-apocalyptic fiction. It is oddly fascinating - partly because the genre has actually been going on longer than you think (I brought in a suggestion for a last-man-on-earth book I'd discovered that had been written in 1901), but also because you can sort of tell, by the exact nature of the apocalypse, when the book was written. For that book in 1901, it was a mysterious poison gas cloud. For much of the latter 20th century, it was nuclear holocaust. In this decade, it's either zombies or disease. It's kind of underscored for me that post-apocalyptic fiction is a society's way of wrestling with its own fears.
Our leader also wisely suggested a book that only SORT of was post-apocalyptic - The Wake, which was set in England in 1066. The story follows a Saxon guy who is displaced by the Normans and joins the Saxon resistance that existed briefly. Our leader stated that the world itself technically didn't end, but to the Saxons at the time, it would have felt that way, so this counted. It was a good reminder that the phrase "the end of the world" often should have "as we know it" appended to the end, and that it rarely means the entire world is over and done with itself. There is still life, there are still people, and society may have profoundly altered but still exists. Which is, in a weird way, kind of...hopeful.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:53 AM on December 8, 2016 [9 favorites]
Our leader also wisely suggested a book that only SORT of was post-apocalyptic - The Wake, which was set in England in 1066. The story follows a Saxon guy who is displaced by the Normans and joins the Saxon resistance that existed briefly. Our leader stated that the world itself technically didn't end, but to the Saxons at the time, it would have felt that way, so this counted. It was a good reminder that the phrase "the end of the world" often should have "as we know it" appended to the end, and that it rarely means the entire world is over and done with itself. There is still life, there are still people, and society may have profoundly altered but still exists. Which is, in a weird way, kind of...hopeful.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:53 AM on December 8, 2016 [9 favorites]
Nice idea but there are some really terrible movies in there and only one from before this century.
posted by octothorpe at 6:22 AM on December 8, 2016
posted by octothorpe at 6:22 AM on December 8, 2016
That's it? Just a 4 minute reminder of what a downer all futuristic movies are? What's the point?
That's the problem- most movies settle for the same old dystopian future narrative these days. And we loose an important collective vision for progress and getting beyond the obvious problems. Showing a little speculative optimism can affect us too.
posted by Liquidwolf at 6:40 AM on December 8, 2016
That's the problem- most movies settle for the same old dystopian future narrative these days. And we loose an important collective vision for progress and getting beyond the obvious problems. Showing a little speculative optimism can affect us too.
posted by Liquidwolf at 6:40 AM on December 8, 2016
Nice idea but there are some really terrible movies in there and only one from before this century.
Any review of post-apocalyptic cinema that doesn't include Things to Come isn't serious, imho.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:41 AM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
Any review of post-apocalyptic cinema that doesn't include Things to Come isn't serious, imho.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:41 AM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
> the genre has actually been going on longer than you think (I brought in a suggestion for a last-man-on-earth book I'd discovered that had been written in 1901)
Oh, it goes back way before that. The Russian writer Vladimir Odoevsky published a story in 1828 that ends with a comet striking Earth; in 1833 Osip Senkovsky (writing as “Baron Brambeus”) published one about a comet ending a prehistoric civilization, and later in the 1830s he wrote a novel about a future in which Russia is the cultural center of a world about to be destroyed by Biela’s comet. (Comets were much in the news back then.)
posted by languagehat at 6:47 AM on December 8, 2016
Oh, it goes back way before that. The Russian writer Vladimir Odoevsky published a story in 1828 that ends with a comet striking Earth; in 1833 Osip Senkovsky (writing as “Baron Brambeus”) published one about a comet ending a prehistoric civilization, and later in the 1830s he wrote a novel about a future in which Russia is the cultural center of a world about to be destroyed by Biela’s comet. (Comets were much in the news back then.)
posted by languagehat at 6:47 AM on December 8, 2016
Mary Shelley's The Last Man was published in 1826.
posted by octothorpe at 6:50 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 6:50 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Do the Noah/Gilgamesh variety of tales count as post-apocalyptic, or is there some line in the sand between the ancient and what counts as "first"?
Speaking of the relatively contemporary work, there's an Edgar Allan Poe story with two souls discussing how the world was ended by a comet.
posted by mr. digits at 7:09 AM on December 8, 2016
Speaking of the relatively contemporary work, there's an Edgar Allan Poe story with two souls discussing how the world was ended by a comet.
posted by mr. digits at 7:09 AM on December 8, 2016
Speaking of relatively contemporary work, here's MeFi's Own.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:22 AM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:22 AM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
Kind of a sucker for post-apocalyptic imaginings, in all their various forms, and so very disappointed by this lazy, weak and poorly-edited selection. There's so much more to draw on, so much richness and subtlety even in recent filmic history that was there for the taking, and which the guy seems to have overlooked completely.
Which is really too bad, 'cause I would've enjoyed the hell out of a decent PA highlights reel. Ah well.
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:39 AM on December 8, 2016
Which is really too bad, 'cause I would've enjoyed the hell out of a decent PA highlights reel. Ah well.
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:39 AM on December 8, 2016
Our leader stated that the world itself technically didn't end, but to the Saxons at the time, it would have felt that way, so this counted.
There was a really fascinating discussion in Jo Walton's Livejournal years and years ago. The original has been lost to time or userlock, but I commented on it here:
something Jo Walton once said while ranting about Gildas: we write science fiction about post-apocalyptic worlds, but sub-Roman Britain *was* one (thus her irritation at Gildas for only giving us the tiniest fragments of information.) And it's true; people whose grandparents and great-grandparents were part of a world-spanning empire, and now they live among the abandoned ruins of cities and the wreckage of technology they no longer can create or understand, technology that in some cases will not be recreated for a thousand years.
It's just really fascinating when you read the few scraps that survive from sub-Roman Britain. Things like The Ruin may be obvious, or the travelogues where they tour the ruins of once-great cities, but the part that really stuck with me was someone's account of a visit to someone who lived in a Roman villa, and who had a great historical wonder: a hypocaust. Of course, they could only afford to fuel it on special occasions. And that absolutely felt like a snippet from some apocalyptic novel: this wondrous convenience of the old world, that they no longer had the skills to build, but would use to amaze special visitors.
posted by tavella at 10:05 AM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
There was a really fascinating discussion in Jo Walton's Livejournal years and years ago. The original has been lost to time or userlock, but I commented on it here:
something Jo Walton once said while ranting about Gildas: we write science fiction about post-apocalyptic worlds, but sub-Roman Britain *was* one (thus her irritation at Gildas for only giving us the tiniest fragments of information.) And it's true; people whose grandparents and great-grandparents were part of a world-spanning empire, and now they live among the abandoned ruins of cities and the wreckage of technology they no longer can create or understand, technology that in some cases will not be recreated for a thousand years.
It's just really fascinating when you read the few scraps that survive from sub-Roman Britain. Things like The Ruin may be obvious, or the travelogues where they tour the ruins of once-great cities, but the part that really stuck with me was someone's account of a visit to someone who lived in a Roman villa, and who had a great historical wonder: a hypocaust. Of course, they could only afford to fuel it on special occasions. And that absolutely felt like a snippet from some apocalyptic novel: this wondrous convenience of the old world, that they no longer had the skills to build, but would use to amaze special visitors.
posted by tavella at 10:05 AM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
Good point, tavella. I wonder if the residents of Giza feel something similar, with the pyramids looming as a symbol of past glory.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:26 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:26 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is why I love H.G. Wells. Here he is, turn of the century, and he writes a series of books that all contain apocalyptic overtones - either we face apocalypse and are trying to survive it (War of the Worlds, The Time Machine), we are isolated in a world that itself is apocalyptic and set aside from the rest of the world (Island of Doctor Moreau), or we see the birth of the apocalypse (The Food of the Gods). Here is a guy trapped in his time, but comes up ways to end the world (or someone's world, at least) ranging from interplanetary war, disease, progression of human evolution post-self inflicted war, insane biological experiments with evolution (intended and unintended). He was really open minded regarding how we can and would destroy ourselves, right up until his death.
And that's just a small sampling of his fiction. He was pretty vocal about how we were messing things up in real life. Great fodder for these sorts of discussions.
posted by Muddler at 11:02 AM on December 8, 2016
And that's just a small sampling of his fiction. He was pretty vocal about how we were messing things up in real life. Great fodder for these sorts of discussions.
posted by Muddler at 11:02 AM on December 8, 2016
Well, that's the only reason to keep living innit.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:55 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:55 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Does Revelations fit in here? So far, at least, it remains fictional. At the least it shows that humans have been thinking of the end of life as we know it for pretty much ever.
posted by billsaysthis at 3:23 PM on December 9, 2016
posted by billsaysthis at 3:23 PM on December 9, 2016
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posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:38 PM on December 7, 2016