Talk:Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Renamed section

Renamed the section on war to just war, since some of them do not feature nuclear war, but retained the link (akira is non nuclear: world war three being fought by powerful psychcs and blamed on nuclear weapons, and mad max is due to social decline: should be moved) also moved Tank Girl: in the movie it was a comet that boiled the earth seas off.

Wrong on Akira and Mad Max. The Akira's awakening starts WW3, which the two superpowers in 1988 believe is a nuclear strike and respond with nuclear weapons (there's even an storyboarded scene for the film that shows WW3 in detail, with leaders being waken in the middle of the night, to nuclear weapons being launched from submarines and bombers, and chemical and conventional warfare). Outside of Akira and the other 3 number children, there isn't another psychic until Tetsuo and Kei. The oil crisis in Mad Max descends into WW3. In fact, the "great fire" is mentioned in Beyond Thunderdome by the oasis children is a nuclear explosion.

Actually, in The Road Warrior(second film in the Mad Max trillogy) it specifically states that the major downfall was due to the roving gangs of thugs taking advantage of the situation, not due to either the nuclear or biological weaponry employed in the war.Gizzakk 18:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

However, I kinda accept the change. I would rather have World War III or other wars. The big problem is that there's a lot of material that uses "the final war" and some of it doesn't cover WW3 in the traditional sense.--YoungFreud 18:21, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the change is appropriate, but I too think something longer than just 'War' would be better - but I cannot think of a better solution that holds up under scrutiny i.e. WW3, Final Wars, Apocalyptic War...Robovski 01:15, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Zardoz

as far as a category for Zardoz, how about 'societal bifurcation', in which the society splits, a bit like the HGWells Time Machine, Eloi and Morlocks etc I'm sure there must be other examples of this in SF. fojxl 01:25 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

As I understand it, the categories relate to the type of apocalypse that the story is post-. So "societal bifurcation" isn't really helpful unless it was somehow the societal bifurcation that brought about the collapse of civilisation. Paul A 02:16 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

The Day After

Does The Day After fit here?-- Error

Roadside Picnic

Removed this:

• The Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker (based on the short-story Roadside Picnic)

IIRC correctly, the basic premise is the aftermath of an alien visitation of some sort, that left behind a region filled with incredibly dangerous, utterly incopmprehensible phenomena, which treasure seekers explore hoping to get back alive with something valuable: not exactly a post-apocalypse -- Malcolm Farmer 11:43, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Apocalyptic manga

I'm wondering: after looking at the Vampire Hunter D entry, I recall there's a lot of Japanese pop culture, especially anime and manga, that deals with apocalyptic fiction, almost too many to count. The ones I can name of the top of my head are Akira, Fist of the North Star, Evangelion, Grey, Appleseed, Ghost In The Shell, Battle Angel Alita/Gunnm, and that's already getting to be a long list.

I've avoided putting them since there's more than this and plenty that make references to total devastation (For example, Macross' second half, where Misa and Hikaru tour a battle-scarred Earth that looks very similar to Hiroshima after the bomb). I only included Dragon Head and Last Days of Planet Earth as they're live action films. I'm wondering how to continue, just add more anime titles until it chokes the page, keep it to famous and direct (i.e. definite mentions of WW3, etc. in the story) examples, or leave them out. I'd rather not excise them completely, as apocalyptic literature and imagery is such a common occurance in Japanese manga, anime and cinema.

Also, I think DADES's example should be limited to WW3, and not Pandemic. The plague that kills the owls (amongst other creatures) mentioned in the book is part of WW3, perhaps as a biological weapons hazarded by both sides, in addition to the Synthetic Freedom Fighters and nuclear weapons. Also, the war is not mentioned in Blade Runner, just the source material, it seems. --YoungFreud 04:15, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Cyberpunk?

Since GitS and Gunnm were mentioned, would anyone consider the (post-)apocalyptic genre a subgenre of cyberpunk? These two seem cyberpunk to me, and I didn't recognize GitS as post-apocalyptic. I also encountered someone referring to Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World as cyberpunk, which I think is too far reaching. -- Claw 21:34, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fiction a subgenre of cyberpunk. I think they share some elements, but in and of itself, post-apocalyptic fiction is a seperate entity from cyberpunk. Many cyberpunk genre stories use post-apocalyptic settings, but many post-apocalyptic stories don't use cyberpunk genre elements.

I mentioned GITS, since, IIRC, the manga and the GITS:SAC both take place after World War III (I believe mentioned by name in the book, and just mentioned as "the war" in the SAC episode "Jungle Cruise"), although WWIII is not as final as everyone thought it would turn out (I think the only real evidence of major damage is balkanization of many countries, excluding Japan, Britian, and perhaps the US, and the formation of new ones like the Gavel Republic and Genova), so I wouldn't really include that as a post-apocalyptic title, now that you mention it. Appleseed, Shirow's other famous story, OTOH, concerns efforts by a biological androids' and their human masters/servants' attempt to bring order to the world following a series of devastating world wars, so it would probably should be included. Gunnm is very much both post-apocalyptic, in that it has the visual and thematic references, and cyberpunk. However, I would probably have to rewrite a section, "After the fall of space civilization", to include "or neglect from space civilization", to take in account the Last Order chapter, which has a thriving transhumanity from Earth orbit, all the way out to Jupiter but has all but forgotten the lives of the inhabitants on Earth's surface, save an elite few. --YoungFreud 01:34, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Science Fiction?

Can we change the article focus from "science fiction" to just "fiction"? There are works here that are not "science fiction", and there are a lot of fictional works that deal with the end of Civilization. Currently a lot of articles link to End of the world and they need disambiguation, this article seems the appropriate place to link in to on any subject dealing with fictional ends of the world (civilization), could be covered in this article, not just science fiction. Thoughts? Stbalbach 03:37, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can't most works of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fiction be considered a form of science fiction? or at least soft science fiction?

Even many 'fantasy' novels that fall into the post-apocalyptic category, such as the Wheel of Time when relating to past events, mention science fiction veriety flying cars and weapons, as well as other technology.

One series I have read (Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun" progresses. The first book is a 'fantasy' novel. As the post-apocalyptic nature of the world is further revieled, the series becomes 'science fantasy' and finally 'science fiction'.

Those cases in which the world (or civilization) is harmed by magical, or other non-science fiction circumstances are rare, from what I've seen. The closest thing I can think of, are The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant but that is another world that is destroyed, not Earth or her people.

Also; apocalypse does occur in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." But (from what I recall) it is mentioned sparingly. And (notwithstanding the plot point in which it occurs) effects the plot little. Should it truly be considered a work of apocalyptic science fiction? Depherios 11:57, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is this link appropriate?

There is a link to an off-site page here, promoting the book "Full Circle" by an author named Boyle. The link goes to an URL also by a person whose last name is Boyle, apparently a relative (or perhaps the same as the author). This seems to go against the rules about promoting oneself. The book is published by controversial press PublishAmerica as well. I also understand from the website project that pages on geocities.com, etc. are being considered for removal. Would it be instead appropriate if there were a Wiki article, written by a third party, regarding the book and its plot? 67.10.131.229 5 July 2005 21:34 (UTC)

Yeah, it's bugged me for the longest time. I think that if the book or movie or story has no page, it should simply be left italicized. I also believe that there should be no outside links in an article, unless it's footnotes, source, or external links. I do think you're right in that it's a self-promotion, especially in light of the vanity press angle that I was unaware about. There was another link like that a few weeks ago, It's Inevitable or something like that, and it was removed recently. I would, in the best spirit of Wikipedia and as a compromise, turn the link into an italicized title or remove it. --YoungFreud 5 July 2005 23:09 (UTC)

Future directions for this page

I would like to discuss how this page can be improved on. One of the items I'm suggesting is an inclusion of general elements of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic science fiction. Basically, it's themes, the politics behind such themes, allegories, cliches, etc.. The inclusion of this list would also act as a criteria for the various lists, as there has been some discussion on whether or not some of the titles mentioned should be listed in this article. I would also like to expand the list titles in some way. The biggest of these would be the World War 3 title heading. I'd like to expand this to "World War 3 and other wars". I would really like to include titles like Appleseed, but also include 1939 MGM animated short Peace To Earth in which all humanity is extinguished in a then-future World War 2.

I was kinda glad somebody beat me to the Biblical Apocalypse, which has now been renamed Religious Apocalypse and may further be renamed to Religious and Paranormal Apocalypse, if necessary.--YoungFreud 17:58, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

28 Days Later

Should 28 Days Later be listed? I was under the impression, off the movie's end, that the Rage epidemic was contained. In fact, the article has a detailed analysis of this. Any suggestion? --YoungFreud 04:48, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I feel this page is getting a bit too long. The obvious way to go is to move all of the Examples section to a new article such as List of Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic science fiction works. This would then mean this article could be more focussed on analysis, history of the genre (notably lacking) and criticism. Any comments?--NHSavage 22:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with NHSavage. --nihon 23:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

merge in Ruined Earth and rename article proposal

I agree this should be merged in. At the same time the article should be renamed to somthing more inclusive besides just science fiction. End of the World (fiction) is one idea, since it follows the End of the World series of articles which allready exist. Comments? Stbalbach 14:24, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I've gone ahead an merged what new information the Ruined earth article had. Most of it simply duplicated, IMO.

I don't think End of the World typically applies, although end of human civilization usually does in many of these stories. I do think the redirect is better. --YoungFreud 21:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

The link to "The Visitors" novel by Simak actually links to an ABBA album...needs to be fixed.

Amerika

I guess that civilization is not destroyed enough in Amerika (TV miniseries) to warrant an inclusion. --Error 00:01, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Albert Pyun movies

Albert Pyun, director of Cyborg, has also made some other post-apocalyptic movies such as Omega Doom that may be worth mentioning in the article. Omega Doom is the only one of his movies I have seen so far, and it probably would fall either under the Cybernetic Revolt or World War III categories. --HunterZ 09:23, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed Dune (novel), since it's not an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic story. Arrakis has always been a crappy place, unless I misunderstand what I've read of the series...

Gregory Benford

In the To Be Catagorized section, there is this entry: Aftermath by Gregory Benford. I'm not familiar with such a work, and I can't seem to google anything up with his name on it that is titles "Aftermath". I am familaiar with an old RPG set called Aftermath - I still have the books from the core boxed set.