I love apocalypse stories. Books, movies, anything where some cataclysmic event blasts mankind back to the dark ages and forces him to struggle back up again. I'm not sure why this type of story appeals to me so much. I'm sure part of it is the misanthrope in me. I love to imagine a world where there are no people around to bother me, where I don't have to pay taxes or go to work or attend functions where I'm always ten minutes away from a panic attack.
There are lots of ways for the world to end. Nuclear war is the most common scenario in most apocalypse stories. That's how the world ended in A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. The story takes place centuries after the "Flame Deluge" as they call it, when an odd form of Christianity has developed. The adherents worship St. Leibowitz, who was an electrician in the last days before the Flame Deluge. It's a quirky book, with a dark humour about it that's really enjoyable to read.
On the Beach by Stanley Cramer is another death by nukes story. I haven't read the book, but I saw the movie a few weeks ago. It's a forebodingly quiet movie, and after a while that quiet starts to get to you and you begin to feel like the characters in the story must feel. Doomed. The story follows a group of people in Australia, which is just about the only place in the world left with any kind of civilization after a nuclear war. But the prevailing winds are bringing death to Australia too. It's only a matter of time.
We could also be hit by a comet, as happens in Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The fun thing about this book is that it was first published in 1977 and reading it feels just like watching one of those hokey disaster movies we all loved so much back then... Earthquake, Poseidon Adventure etc. The world has changed so much in the past 30 years and reading something like this makes it very tangible. In this book, women's lib is a very new thing. Radical black men call white people "honkeys." Home computers are virtually unheard of, the scientists at NASA and JPL had only just switched from slide rulers to pocket calculators (which cost a few hundred dollars)....and there were leisure suits people. Leisure suits! Written into scenes with perfect seriousness. I think a civilization-ending comet was a good thing with regards to leisure suits. As books go, it's not one of the better ones I've read. Too many characters, too much detail, not enough move-it-along action (at least so far...I'm only 3/4 of the way through) to let me find out who things turn out a few years down the road when all the manufactured goods are gone or broken down. It reads way too much like a book written by a guy who was hoping it would be made into a blockbuster disaster flick like Towering Inferno.
My favourite kind of end-of-the-world scenario is the death-by-disease story. Killer bug wipes out most of the earth's population, leaving everything else standing, slowly crumbling back into nature. The best book in this vein has to be Stephen King's The Stand. A true modern classic and the best book King ever wrote...probably the best he ever will write. A deadly, man-made disease nicknamed Captain Trips wipes out almost everyone, and the survivors band together in two opposing groups. This is not just a great apocalypse story, but it's a classic tale of the battle between good and evil, with all the literary archetypes and symbolism you could ask for.
While The Stand is my favourite King book, and probably my second-favourite apocalypse book, my very favourite is called The Last Canadian by William C. Heine (why do so many authors use their middle initials in their byline?). Another death-by-disease story...also a man-made disease, if I remember correctly. One of the things I like about this book is that it was written by a Canadian...the editor of a newspaper in London, Ontario. Like Lucifer's Hammer, it was published in 1977, and you can feel the culture difference when you read it. Misogyny is rampant in this book. But something about it always appealed to me...the survivor thing, I guess. I've read this book at least five times.
The aliens invading Earth scenario is another big one in the apocalypse genre, but not an angle I'm particularly interested in. Probably because it's so unlikely. The idea that a nuke or a comet or a killer disease could wipe us all out is much more real, and therefore much more compelling (and scary!), than the idea of someone just showing up out of the blue (literally) to take over and eat us all or something.
No...give me a good Superbug story any day.
3 comments:
Have you read The Road by Cormac Mccarthy, an Oprah pick. Frustrating in it's lack of history - you never know what's really happened, how the world came to be in the desperate state that it's in, but it is a gripping, can't-put-it-down, page turner none the less.
Also if you love a superbug story, and a true one at that, which I certainly find completely fascinating, two books at the top of my list are The Hot Zone by Richard Preston and The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett
cheers from NS, Susan
You've been a long time between posts Miss Patti :)
Oh my goodness Susan, yes!! I read The Hot Zone several years ago and it terrified me! Worse than any Stephen King thriller, because of how close we actually came to a huge plague.
I certainly have heard about The Road, and intend to read it, but I think it's still only in hardcover...I have to check. I prefer paperbacks because I carry them in my purse to read at lunchtime! I found out about it through the blog of a fellow who's an on-air personality at one of our local tv stations here in Ottawa. He highly recommended it too.
I better get through my otherbooks first though! I have about four of them on the go right now, not to mention two or three that I started re-reading just because.
Almost forgot about another end-of-the-world book by Stephen King that was released in paperback...last year, I think. It was called "Cell". One day, some kind of signal is sent out through the world's cell-phone system, and anyone who answers their cell phone on that day goes mad...more than mad, their brains mutate/evolve into something that the "survivors" don't recognize as quite human. Quite a riveting tale, playing on modern fears of technology. A bit like "The Stand" in its battle between good and evil theme. Only, when all is said and done in this one, you're not completely sure who's good and who's evil.
Post a Comment