Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction



Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a genre which involves global catastrophic risk. The literature is mainly science fiction, science fantasy or horror fiction with the apocalypse event typically being climatic, such as runaway climate change; natural, such as an impact event; man-made, such as nuclear warfare; medical, such as a plague or virus, whether natural or man-made; or imaginative, such as zombie apocalypse or alien invasion. The story may involve attempts to prevent an apocalypse event, deal with the impact and consequences of the event itself, or it may be post-apocalyptic, set after the event. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, the way to maintain the human race alive and together as one, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten (or mythologized). Post-apocalyptic stories often take place in a non-technological future world, or a world where only scattered elements of society and technology remain.

Various ancient societies, including the Babylonian and Judaic, produced apocalyptic literature and mythology which dealt with the end of the world and of human society, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, written ca. 2000–1500 BC. And recognizable modern apocalyptic novels had existed since at least the first quarter of the 19th century, when Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) was published. However, this form of literature gained widespread popularity after World War II, when the possibility of global annihilation by nuclear weapons entered the public consciousness.

As shown above, the apocalypse is also depicted in visual art, for example in Albert Goodwin's painting Apocalypse (1903).