Oh Dear, The World Just Exploded
Some of my favourite books were written after the world ended.
That is to say, I’m a huge fan Dystopic sci-fi, written about planets (often Earth) disfigured by some sort of calamity (usually the result of stupid, stupid humans) & struggling to regain some sort of balance.
This particular stream of Science Fiction has gained a whole pile of popularity with the recent phenomenal success of The Hunger Games, in which North America has been torn apart by a colossal and unidentified apocalyptic event. Similarly, Paolo Bacigalupi’s books Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities cast woefully young characters into an anarchic world created by massive global warming and resource depletion.
Canada’s Carrie Mac (who I’ve mentioned before) has her own fantastic postapocalyptic series called The Droughtlanders, in which the hyper-rich have invented technology that controls the climate and rain. They sit in massively fortified cities in pockets of excess while the vast majority of the world slowly starves to death (and ferments plots of retribution).
The Future Dystopic novel is not a new genre by any means however. Margaret Atwood has written a whole pile of excellent "oh no, the world's all messed up" books including Oryx and Crake, about genetic engineering gone haywire. To go a little further back, the Cold War and the fear of Nuclear destruction 
produced such gems as A Canticle For Leibowitz, in which Monks in the future try to piece together our past society from the remnants left over by colossal nuclear war.
All this to say that humanoid science fiction fans have long been able to read about their own demise. H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, about an alien attack on earth was written over a century ago, after all. As one of the first Science Fiction novels, it also serves as an important influence on the books about the world getting massively fracked to follow.
The Science Fiction genre is at its heart attuned to describing the potentials of intellectual and technological progress. As human’s scientific capacity has increased exponentially, so has our ability to destroy ourselves in new and novel ways. So I guess the twisted upside to our own self-destructive tendencies is that we get to read a whole pile of great books about the world ending!
Are you a fan of Postapocalyptic Science Fiction? Write a comment to share some of your favourites!
7 thoughts on “Oh Dear, The World Just Exploded”
Find more dystopian reads on this list made by your librarian friends at TPL. http://tinyurl.com/c8qxpcm
Thanks for the great tip! Any favourite titles on the list?
I just finished reading Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson. A really great story of an artificial intelligence that is created and kills its creator. The intelligence, known as “Archos” begins to learn more and more about our world, takes over all our computerized robots, cars, military hardware, cell phones, etc. and starts to exterminate the human race. Small pockets of human survivors find ways to defeat the robots and band together to find Archos’ hiding place and destroy him before he can destroy them. A great read.
Octavia Butler’s Patternist and Parable series have been my summer reading! She’s wonderful at complex human relations and while some of the scenes are really horrific and grueling you just can’t put them down!
Oryx and Crake made me feel kind of queasy during some parts – that’s how awesome (and terrifying) it is.
I LOVED Robopocalypse! Thanks for sharing!
I’ve meant to read Octavia Butler’s books for years. This might just be the inspiration for me to pick a few up! Thanks Siue!