Why I don't like Post-Apocalyptic dystopias - and one I do.

[keyan_bowes]

Let me clarify. As a reader, I don't care for post-apocalyptic fiction. (Disclaimer: This doesn't mean I'll never write any.) I've trying to figure out why not.

Firstly, of course, it tends to be depressing. It gets old reading about the world going to hell (or gone to hell) in the latest fashionable way. It used to be nuclear warfare; then world-gobbling plagues, natural or iatrogenic or of the nature of biological warfare; and of course the ecological disaster, including climate change impacts on the North Atlantic Current and knock-on effects from that.

Second, and this is often related to the genesis of the particular dystopia, many of them are strong on Message. They comment on matters of current relevance in ways that might be done better - and more carefully - in an essay or an article.

Third, they feel rather elitist. The underlying trope for the post-apocalytic world is usually how the western world has ceased to function and how dangerous/ scary/ deprived life has become. But this is real life for people in many parts of the world. Their apocalypse is now. Of course, they also are unlikely to read apocalypse fiction, which is addressed to people who are very comfortable and describes for their entertainment how it could be very uncomfortable.

So there it is. I've read some stories in this genre that I enjoyed. (Edited: An awesome one just showed up in Strange Horizons. It's by my Clarion classmate Ramsey Shehadeh: Jimmy's Roadside Cafe.)

But in the main, I'd rather read the non-fiction versions.

Comments

[julieandrews.livejournal.com]

I tend to like post-apocalyptic stories... or I like the idea of them, if not always the execution. I'm not generally into dystopias. Or utopias for that matter.

What I find most interesting about post-apocalyptic or post-disaster worlds is the building. The recreating, rebuilding, organizing. Getting people together to first survive, then remake society.

Unfortunately, most stories stop at the surviving and don't go far past that. Or they've skipped over all that and show us the world as it is now.

I've heard that British science fiction is better at rebuilding (owing to UK history after the world wars) than American science fiction. But I don't know if that's true, as I can't think of specific examples that back that up.

[keyan-bowes.livejournal.com]

I can see rebuilding would be interesting, but I always have a dark suspicion that it's going to be anti-feminist. Women needed to reproduce. The infrastructure that produced contraceptives gone. Physical strength at a premium. Etc.

[(Anonymous)]

I love post-apocalyptic stories, but not the dystopic kind. For instance, I want to read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, but I hesitate because it strikes me as a very long, yet articulate, life's-a-bitch-and-then-you-die kind of story. Two of the non-dystopic types that I have really enjoyed in the past are David Brin's "The Postman" (book, not the movie), and Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer". Both focus on the triumph of rebuilding. I don't recall any inherent anti-feminism unless you include the idea that when life gets brutal, women and children tend to be the first to get brutalized. But the points of both stories were to rise above the barbarism and restore our civilization.

[keyan-bowes.livejournal.com]

I'll look out for those books. Thanks.