Stating the feckin’ obvious here, but after reading a good few post-apocalypse novels and films (well, not reading films literally you understand) I’ve come to realise that they usually share the same key ingredient – only the exact quantity seems to vary. So here is my recipe for a good post-apocalypse…
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The pre-apocalypse: a time, possibly mythological or ancient, when civilization is it was known contemporary to when the post-apocalypse concept was envisaged. Modern pre-apocalypses are Western Europe and North America, i.e. stable, relatively secular, technological advanced and dependent. Often only hinted at, if at all, as a writer can assume a shared knowledge between himself and the reader, but its presence, if only apparent by its very absence, to evoke a sense of loss and decay. Often a moralizing tone is used by apocalypse writers, suggesting that in our decadence and arrogance that the apocalypse is deserved
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The nature of the catastrophe: or the trigger or event that causes the fall of civilization. Sometimes the nature is highly pertinent to how the post-apocalypse story plays out, sometimes it is largely irrelevant. The nature is often irrelevant because it is just a convenient devise to explore other elements of the post- world (Ballard and new wave) or just because of narrative inconsistencies within the text. The nature often dictates the particular apocalyptic landscape evoked. Sometimes the nature is vital to the story but stories which concentrate on the catastrophe with little or no attention to the aftermath which follows it are usually more closely associated with the more sensational ‘disaster’ genre, such as those written by Michael Crichton. Often unavoidable and cataclysmic in scale (asteroid or nuclear war), but sometimes minute (grass-liking virus): showing the precarious nature of our reliance upon modern infrastructure. The nature of the catastrophe seems to indicate the secret desires and overt fears of the society that invented it – and is often intentionally satirical or just plain biblical. The nature is often driven by the Zeitgeist of its age, but is often highly inventive, surreal and, sometimes, just a little bit weird.
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The aftermath: shows the psychology and sociology impacts upon the survivors and is usually the crux of the post-apocalypse genre. Perhaps more than anything else the post-apocalypse genre has become a means of putting the morality of bourgeois society under a microscope, and showing how potentially fragile we are. Ultimately, this is often the most telling part of the post-apocalypse: showing that in reality the threat to humanity comes from within us rather than from outside us. In every way the aftermath is the post-apocalypse and without this all you have is a disaster movie/novel or a load of shit. The aftermath doesn’t have to be explained for more than a couple of narrative days (The Death of Grass), but it should be the crux of the narrative and not just the last chapter.
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The landscape: the inevitable environmental change, usually depopulated ruins, decay and disease. Often depicted as nature, either organic or mineral, reclaiming the Earth, while evoking the modern mythology of post-war Europe, Western perception of the Third World and Myan ruins. The apocalyptic landscape is often biblical, dream-like and/or surreal.
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Rebuilding or entropy: the ultimate fate of the survivors and their descendent. The longterm aftermath sometimes crosses over into the dystopia/utopia genres or showing a pastoral rebirth and a new beginning, but one that often hints that the fate of man might be cyclical: eternal recurrence: a process of continues collapse and rebirth: of forgetting the lessons of history. Or, in the case of the new wave, there is a greater cosmological metaphor of ultimate entropy.
As stated, post-apocalypse stories can sometimes share elements with dystopia works as many ideological dystopias use a catastrophe and its aftermath as a means of establishing control. However true dystopian novels seem to only pay lip service to the catastrophe and the immediate aftermath and, much as post-apocalypse stories are more concerned with the aftermath than the catastrophe itself, they should only use the chaos of the aftermath as a means of getting to the dystopia rather than exploring how a particular apocalypse will shape a given dystopia, for example: V for Vendetta and Handmaid’s Tale. Whereas dystopias may exist in a minor form in post-apocalypse fiction, but they rarily dominate the post-apocalyptic landscape in the same way. Indeed they seem to fulfil two main functions: a) as a source of potential conflict for the more enlightened survivors (Day of the Triffids) and b) to further illustrate the retreat of bourgeois values: usually as just an expression of organized barbarism (Day of the Dead).
The post-apocalypse genre also seems to share much with the ‘dying earth’ or ‘far-future’ sub-genre of SF. Certainly it is hinted at that an ancient cataclysm of global proportions is responsible for the decay and stagnation found in the distant future (History of the Ruin Staff), although just as often it is the unrelenting grinding force of entropy that is responsible for the fragments of decadent civilization to be found at the end of Earth’s existence (Books of the New Sun), but as many of these stories have more in common with the ’sword & sorcery’ genre than the post-apocalypse genre I think they should remain a seperate enterty. The nature of the cataclysm is usually more mythological than historical (if it is mentioned at all), and certainly beyond the living memory of most of the protagonist. Also in atmosphere they tend to be more Arabesque and Romantic than the stark realism/surrealism of the post-apocalypse.
