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Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, impact event, cybernetic revolt, Technological Singularity, Dysgenics, supernatural phenomena, Ecological disaster, resource depletion or some other general disaster.

Post-apocalyptic fiction is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, 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 an agrarian, non-technological future world, or a world where only scattered elements of technology remain. There is a considerable degree of blurring between this form of science fiction and that which deals with dystopias.

The genres gained in popularity after World War II, when the possibility of global annihilation by nuclear weapons entered the public consciousness. However, recognizable apocalyptic novels existed at least since the first quarter of the 19th century, when Mary Shelley's The Last Man was published.^[1] Additionally, the subgenres draw on a body of apocalyptic literature, tropes, and interpretations that are millennia old. Numerous societies, including the Babylonian and Judaic traditions, have produced apocalyptic literature and mythology, some of which dealt with the end of the world and of human society.^[2] The scriptural story of Noah and his Ark describes the end of a corrupt civilization and its replacement with a remade world. The first centuries AD saw the creation of various apocalyptic works; the best known (due to its inclusion in the New Testament) is the Book of Revelation (from which the word apocalypse originated, meaning "revelation of secrets"), which is replete with prophecies of destruction.^[2] In the study of religious works, apocalyptic texts or stories, are those that disclose hidden secrets either by taking an individual literally into the heavens or into the future. Most often these revelations about heaven and the future are used to explain why some currently occurring event is taking place.^[3]

Outside of the corpus of New Testament apocrypha also includes apocalypses of Peter, Paul, Stephen, and Thomas, as well as two of James and Gnostic Apocalypses of Peter and Paul. The beliefs and ideas of this time, including apocalyptic accounts excluded from the Bible, influenced the developing Christian eschatology.^{[citation needed]}

Further apocalyptic works appeared in the early Middle Ages. The 7th century Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius includes themes common in Christian eschatology; the Prophecy of the Popes has been ascribed to the 12th century Irish saint Malachy, but could possibly date from the late 16th century. Islamic eschatology, related to Christian and Jewish eschatological traditions, also emerged from the 7th century. Ibn al-Nafis's 13th century Theologus Autodidactus, an Arabic novel, used empirical science to explain Islamic eschatology.

Nuclear war

The period of the Cold War saw increased interest in this subgenre, as the threat of nuclear warfare became real. Paul Brians published Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, a study that examines atomic war in short stories, novels, and films between 1895 and 1984. Since this measure of destruction was no longer imaginary, some of these new works, such as Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7, Nevil Shute's On the Beach and Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, shun the imaginary science and technology that are the identifying traits of general science fiction. Others include more fantastic elements, such as mutants, alien invaders, or exotic future weapons such as James Axler's Deathlands. A seminal work in this subgenre was Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), in which a recrudescent Church (Catholic or other), pseudo-medieval society, and rediscovery of the knowledge of the pre-holocaust world are central themes. Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker (1980) also has religious or mystical themes.

According to some theorists, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in its modern past has influenced Japanese popular culture to include many apocalyptic themes. Much of Japan's manga and anime is filled with apocalyptic imagery.^[5] Andre Norton wrote one of the definitive, post apocalyptic novels, Star Man's Son (AKA, Daybreak 2250), published in 1952, where a young man, Fors, begins an Arthurian quest for lost knowledge, through a radiation ravaged landscape, with the aid of a telepathic, mutant cat. He encounters mutated creatures, "the beast things," which are possibly a degenerated form of humans.

In 2003, children's novelist Jeanne DuPrau released the first of four books in a post-apocalyptic series for young adults. The City of Ember has since been made into a film starring Bill Murray and Saoirse Ronan.

Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road (2006) is a recent work of post-apocalyptic fiction, which was made into a film by director John Hillcoat starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The cause of the event that partially destroys the world is never explained in the text.

William W. Johnstone wrote a long series of books over the course of twenty years (35 books all containing the word "Ashes" in the title) about the aftermath of worldwide nuclear and biological war.

CBS produced the TV series Jericho in 2006-2008, which focuses on the survival of the town after 23 American cities were destroyed by nuclear weapons.

In 1984 BBC made Threads, a television program showing the Before/During/After a nuclear bomb is detonated over the British town of Sheffield after the Soviets refused to dismantle a nuclear launch base in Iran.

Pandemic

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London, published in 1912, is set in San Francisco in the year 2072, sixty years after a plague has largely depopulated the planet.

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949), deals with one man who finds most of civilization has been destroyed by a plague. Slowly a small community forms around him as he struggles to start a new civilization and preserve knowledge and learning.

Survivors was a 1970s BBC television series, recently remade in 2008. The series focused on a group of British survivors in the aftermath of a genetically engineered virus that has killed 99.9% of the world's population. The first series examined the immediate after-effects of a pandemic, while the second and third series concentrated on the survivors' attempts to build communities and make contact with other groups.

Empty World a 1977 novel by Samuel Youd (as John Christopher) about an adolescent boy who survives a plague which has killed off most of the world's population.

In 1978, Stephen King published The Stand, which follows the odyssey of a small number of survivors of a world-ending influenza pandemic. Although reportedly influenced by the 1949 novel Earth Abides, King's book includes many supernatural elements and is generally regarded as part of the horror fiction genre.

The award winning novel Emergence by David R. Palmer (1984) is set in a world where a manmade plague destroys the vast majority of the world's population.

The Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago wrote Blindness in 1995. It tells the story of a city or country in which a mass epidemic of blindness destroys the social fabric. It was adapted into the film Blindness in 2008.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is an example of dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction.^[6] The framing story is set after a genetically modified virus wipes out the entire population except for the protagonist and a small group of humans that were also genetically modified. A series of flashbacks depicting a world dominated by biocorporations explains the events leading up to the apocalypse. This story was later followed up with The Year of the Flood.

Atwood's short story "Freeforall" deals with a totalitarian society attempting to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Richard Matheson's I Am Legend deals with the life of Robert Neville, the only unaffected survivor of a global pandemic that has turned the world's population into vampire-like creatures.

The White Plague (1982) a novel by Frank Herbert. When a bomb planted by the IRA goes off, the wife and children of molecular biologist John Roe O'Neill are killed on May 20, 1996. Driven insane by loss, he plans a genocidal revenge and creates a plague that kills women. O'Neill then releases it in Ireland (for supporting the terrorists), England (for oppressing the Irish and giving them a cause), and Libya (for training said terrorists); he demands that the governments of the world send all citizens of those countries back to their countries, and that they quarantine those countries and let the plague run its course, so they will lose what he has lost; if they do not, he has more plagues to release.

Author Jeff Carlson wrote a trilogy of novels beginning with his 2007 debut, Plague Year, a present-day thriller about a worldwide nanotech contagion that devours all warm-blooded life below 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in elevation. Plague War and Plague Zone are its two sequels and deal with a cure that allows return to an environment that suffered ecological collapse due to massive increases in insects and reptiles.

Extraterrestrial threats

Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" has two souls in the afterlife discussing the apocalyptic end-of-the-world by a comet that removed nitrogen from earth's atmosphere leaving only oxygen, resulting in a worldwide inferno.

In the 1933 novel When Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, Earth is destroyed by a rogue planet Bronson Alpha. A selected few escape on a spaceship. In the sequel After Worlds Collide the survivors start a new life on the planet's companion Bronson Beta, which has taken the orbit formerly occupied by Earth.

In the 1954 novel One in Three Hundred, by J. T. McIntosh, scientists have discovered how to pinpoint the exact minute, hour, and day the Sun will go "nova" - and when it does, it will boil away Earth's seas, beginning with the hemisphere that faces the sun, and as Earth continues to rotate, it will take only 24 hours before all life is eradicated. Super-hurricanes and tornadoes are predicted. Buildings will be blown away. A race is on to build thousands of spaceships for the sole purpose of transferring evacuees on a one-way trip to Mars. When the Sun begins to go nova, everything is on schedule, but most of the spaceships turn out to be defective, and fail en route to Mars.

Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (1977) is about a cataclysmic comet hitting Earth, and various groups of people struggling to survive the aftermath in southern California. (source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction )

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