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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 51
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Recently, I had the pleasure of reading Isaac Marion's debut novel, Warm Bodies. It took the whole "dead Earth" idea and pitched it from the perspective of someone who wasn't a lucky, unmutated, living human being, and that was refreshing, as it feels like the post-apocalyptic genre is becoming very stale and repetitive.
I love the genre, and for that reason I'm keen to see more original takes on it. For those out there who read or write a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction - what do you think the difficulties are of writing original post-apocalyptic narratives, and why does the genre draw you in?
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 412
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The issue is how far into the post apocalypse, I think. Just how long since everything went to hell makes a big deal to story. I notice that most stories are either the first few years after, just trying to scavenge and survive, or a hundred years after, when things have started to get rebuilt. It lets you have a built in framework. No one focuses on that 5-10year after range, when you are just getting started rebuilding society, because there's less background framework for the author to draw on.
As far as the cliche post apoc, the cliche is cliche for a reason, people like it..
As for drawing me in, I LIKE the idea of having nothing towork with and rebuilding from scratch.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 51
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That's an interesting point, Alexander, I didn't think about the time between the event and the novel's taking place. It does make a major difference, and I think you're able to incorporate as many realistic aspects of ancient human society if it's a lot later into the future. Wall-E's a great example of hoarding old technology, funnily enough, and I'd classify that as post-apocalyptic, in a sense.
Having nothing to work with is great, but I can't help but feel that a lot of it follows the same pattern. I'd love to see something in that 5-10 year after range, personally. It'd be a refreshing change from the "shock and awe", or "weary survivor" themes.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 412
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Cy, absolutely. Actually, my mother of all people has decided to start writing fiction (about time if you ask me). Shes been on a big emergency preparedness kick the past several years, and her basic plot is the memoirs of an old woman, after getting her family through an apocolyptic event and rebuilding from scratch society up in the mountains, being used by her descendants a hundred odd years down the road as a manual to rebuild after another doomsday event.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 51
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That sounds fantastic, I'd read that. I think unfortunately the genre's becoming uncomfortably relevant at the moment. It makes me wonder if this literature might actually become a manual to future generations.
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Joined: 3/11/2011
Posts: 4
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Have you read A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ? It's generally considered a classic, and it's set a few hundred years after a nuclear apocalypse.
I haven't read it in ages, and it was written in the 50s or 60s I believe, so I'm not sure how it's aged... but it certainly differs from the standard 'weary survivor' trope.
That said, THE ROAD is one of my all-time favorite books, tropes and all. What a fantastic piece of writing.
~JGS
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Joined: 3/11/2011
Posts: 4
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Alas Babylon is still my guiding light in this genre. I generally avoid it, but when I do sink my teeth into a good one, it will always have the human spirit overcoming the obstacles. Yes that is predictable, but any other outcome just doesn't ring true for me.
Yes, I am optimist. Someone refill my half full glass?.
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Joined: 3/17/2011
Posts: 18
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Alas Babylon by James Frank is the classic for nuclear apocalyptic novels. As a kid growing up in the 60's, with the Cuban crises very real, this book scared the dickings out of me. I kept suggesting to my dad that we needed to build a shelter...
I would add another, Lucifers Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In the 80's, this book made you think on how many would survive after a combination of events. I had never thought about transportation before and how it affects our every day lives. This book was a real eye opener on all the things that could happen and civilization can fall like a house of cards.
I didn't much care for, The Road. I felt it was too limiting in overall scope and really put the human condition in a very negative light. I didn't see much redemption or chances for rebuilding. I am also not a big fan of the authors style of no punctuation...
Interesting topic...
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Joined: 3/30/2011
Posts: 8
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Why does the genre draw me in? That's a tough one - there are many reasons. For post-apocalyptic works set on Earth we have a recognisable past (lots of history), a catastrophic event (at least one, possibly more) and then the restructuring. It allows for stories that explore modern issues (like over-dependance on technology, or green issues) from a different perspective.
Most of the post-apocalyptic works I've enjoyed have at their core an interest in humanity - how people behave in the midst of, or the aftermath of a global disaster.
Do people co-operate or do they become selfish? How does a new civilisation build itself? How do people communicate? How do we solve issues like power and water? What is used for currency? Starting off with any of these questions is an excercise in creativity, melding them all together into a new world is fun in and of itself. Doing all of that while telling a story at the same time is a challenge, but a rewarding one.
I think the part of the genre that is becoming overly well-trod (trampled?) is the immediate aftermath, stories that go from pre to post-apocalyptic within themselves. I'm generally more interested in the worlds that arise out of the apocalypse, the systems within them and the possibility of telling what could be seen as tale from another genre (crime/adventure/you name it) within that framework. It's a different kind of world-building than that which you find in fantasy or space-based sci-fi, given that the reader should be able to spot the evolution/devolution of things they know today.
Yikes, I didn't mean to write a wall of text there - essentially I think there's plenty of room for a different spin on post-apocalyptic writing. A recent post-apocalyptic book I enjoyed was Sarah Pinborough's DOG-FACED GODS - essentially a detective story, but set in a much-changed world.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 29
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I'm not so much interested in "dead Earth" stories, which I'm told is what a PA story really is. So I guess I prefer post-cataclysm stories. For me, Thundarr the Barbarian still pours gas on the fire of my imagination. Barbarism, super science, mutants, and hints of a world long forgotten. Woo! I want to write it right now.
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Joined: 4/28/2011
Posts: 34
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hmmm
I wish someone would review mine -- harshly, I might add. It got the requisite one review which catapulted it off the "waiting to be discovered" list and deep into the bowels of bookland, never to be seen again.
There is no tag for post-apocalyptic (or did I miss it?) so I set it as utopian/dystopian, which was not entirely accurate. I just figured P.A folks might be looking there.
I tried to be different by setting it centuries later -- basically not much remnant of cataclysm left, except one biggie.
Tried to think, tried to avoid tropes: how WOULD society really change? And right, some things would be gone while others remained. Incongruous mix of technology.
But BOY would I love advice on it!!!
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Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
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Hey there -
Actually, post-apocalyptic IS dystopian, so you put your book in the right place! However, i have added a post-apocalyptic tag at your suggestion.
Cheers!
Colleen
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Joined: 4/28/2011
Posts: 34
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Ah -- well, that's the thing. My society isn't exactly one YOU (I don't mean you-Colleen, I mean you-21st-C-person) might want to live in, but I tried hard not to make it terrible, either. That was exactly the trope I wanted to avoid.
It's neither a dystopia nor a utopia -- or so I hope. That's kinda what I was trying hard to convey. They have their problems, but for sure, so do we!
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Joined: 4/28/2011
Posts: 34
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and, but, thanks for the new tag! I'm moving it now!
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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Hi Colleen,
I have to quibble about your claim that post-apocalyptic is dystopian. I my story, the apocalypse wiped out 98% of humanity in a week, leaving the ape-chimera slaves untouched, and vastly improving the overall situation for everybody. That's not a dystopia,
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 29
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Yeah, I'll jump on the Venn diagram bandwagon of PA and dystopian not being an equal but overlapping story type. One type of PA to tell is dystopian but certainly not the only one. There's plenty of pulp sf out there that deals with PA in a non-dystopian fashion.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 29
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One recommendation I make to any PA author is to learn how gasoline is refined and maintained. It's the first question I always see is whether there would still be gasoline left to use. Some say no because none is being made. Some say yes because no one is using what's there. This ignores what is required to maintain gasoline. Being a refined substance, it will deteriorate over time on its own.
I will immediately fall out of a story if it's 100 years after the apocalypse and the MC is driving around on his Harley. Only if that thing has pedals and a chain, buddy.
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Joined: 4/28/2011
Posts: 34
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Ooh. It's something I'm trying to deal with. Mine is like 7 centuries post A. and although they know what fossil fuel is(they reminisce about the old days) they use mostly wind and solar (and get a tad chilly during long, cloudy, windless weeks!) BUt they also bioengineer hydrocarbons, which I understand is already possible.
I just make it (fuel, plastic) super precious in their world.(plastic=currency?) But I really don't know enough about what I am doing, which is frustrating.
I could use help!
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 412
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YAY THUNDARR! I liked Dreamsnake, same principle.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 51
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@momgotshocked: I hear you, and I think it's perfectly logical to decimate supplies of any resource, should you think it will help to improve the world you're building. A lot of resources we assume could never be removed from our grasp have been in post apocalyptic narratives - sunlight, water, clean air, fertile soil - and it really helps to build challenges for your characters to overcome.
I say do a little bit of research, and if you think you could pull it off in a way that allows someone to nod and say "right, okay, I can accept that, let's do this reading thing," then I say go for it.
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Joined: 4/28/2011
Posts: 34
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Yeah, that's what I've tried to do. But I figure, whenever the revolution comes, it'll be sometime in OUR future, so despite (or perhaps BECAUSE of) depleted resources, there will be advanced technology in some ways, and retarded in others. So they have solar paint, but no computers.
I did tons of research on types of plants that could survive nuclear winter, and it turns out that it has to do with genetic variability, but it got so complicated I gave up. (Fun fact: besides cockroaches, trillium -- a purple three-lobed flower, would apparently likely be a survivor!) Whatever, now my world just has fewer species than we do, in all things, plants, animals, etc.
They have radio and movies, but no television, and I keep trying to explain to my husband -- it's not necessarily for lack of know-how but for lack of population and desire. If cities are tiny and few and far between (and travel is expensive and difficult) where are the studios and actors to keep the stations alive?
That's the kind of stuff that I agitate over.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 51
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It's important, and healthy, in my opinion, to agitate over that sort of thing. If you're not worried about whether some aspect of your dabbling in the world around us to suit it to your needs is "right" or not, you don't care enough. If something bugs you, keeps you up, keeps you thinking and checking and researching, then that something, when you get it right, is going to matter to the reader.
I think it's absolutely fascinating that there's a nuclear-winterproof (not a phrase you see everday, that one) flower. To me, that's a novel in itself. But the fact that you know that, that you managed to find that amongst hundreds of pages in google of people going "well, what survives?" and the response being "a cockroach, and maybe some really hardcore rocks", is impressive.
I have little fanboy moments when someone busts out something cool and scientific in their narrative. To me, that's a sign that they're intelligent, inquisitive, and passionate about science, and if none of those are the case, then perhaps it's worth rethinking a career in sci-fi authorship.
I am also now going to have to go and read your book, because at this point, I feel intrigued to the point where I can't not.
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Joined: 4/28/2011
Posts: 34
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Would love to get ideas from you after. See if you know why I've put certain things in there. My "roach" in the beginning -- not quite recognizable as such. Does that make any kind of reasonable sense to you?
Trillium flower much later!
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Joined: 4/29/2011
Posts: 7
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I'm actually in the midst of writing a paper on young adult post-apocalyptic fiction so stumbling across this topic and writing a post will make me feel like I've done something productive today and not just wasted time web-dreaming! Thought I'd start with some book recommendations as all I've spent the past year doing is reading post-apocalyptic fiction aimed at the young adult audience. Yes, my life is THAT exciting.
I've noticed an increase in post-apocalyptic tropes in young adult fiction (thus the aforementioned paper) and I wonder if the more prominent presence of this genre for this age group is reflective of the unstable world in which we live. A lot of young adult fiction tends to place the protagonist in a position where the world might "end" AGAIN and urging lessons be learnt from the mistakes made previously.
Philip Reeve's "Mortal Engines" series is superb - I was quite surprised when I was doing a search for popular young adult fiction that it did not appear, though the "Hunger Games" trilogy did (and I did enjoy these books, too). I found his representation of a post-apocalyptic world (far into the future) to be really exciting and unique, and I think everyone of any age would enjoy it.
Mary E. Pearson's "The Adoration of Jenna Fox" is technically a post-apocalyptic novel and I love its representation of 'coming of age'. I think it's definitely true that post-apocalyptic fiction doesn't have to be set in a dystopian world and its also significant today that "apocalypse" doesn't equate to nuclear holocaust anymore. There is the addition of biological warfare and genetic engineering that can simply alter the world as we know it - in "Jenna Fox" a quarter of the world's population has died because of an uber bacteria strain, so the world is still very much carrying on, but science and medicine are more regulated and controlled, with interesting consequences. It's Science Fiction in most descriptions and reviews, though I would classify it as post-apocalyptic.
If you only read one book, make it "Feed" by M. T. Anderson. It changed my perspective of the modern world. Truly stunning and terrifying to the point that I burst into tears at the end of it and wouldn't leave bed for a week. It took a lot of coaxing to get me back to using the computer and internet, too!
A lot of books don't go into great scientific explanations and sometimes the plot is better for it. "The Last Book in the Universe" by Rodman Philbrick depicts advanced technologies with such simplicity that it's easy to accept the world he constructs. It also helps that the POV is first person and told as though things need explaining, but a simple explanation. It's quite "neat". Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies" quartet also doesn't go into great explanations of the science behind the technology and surgical augments available in the world.
I can go on about this for a very long time!
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Joined: 5/25/2011
Posts: 121
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Hello All. For a bit of insight as to survival. Carl Sagan came up with Nuclear Winter a few years after scientists started modelling the possible results of a massive comet or asteroid strike. Turns out that the results would be pretty much the same except, of course, NW would have the added problem of radiation. I think The Road was modelled after an impact (although never stated) because there was a major ecological collapse, near total block-out of sunlight due to heavy pollution in atmosphere, but no mention of any type of radiation sickness. Not sure about radiation effects, but most plants would survive an impact winter because plants have one great advantage over animals - seeds which can lay dormant for years until the right conditions come along, and then sprout. Unfortunately (I think) for us, we can't reproduce once we're dead, unless you get into someone cloning people from little scraps which contain DNA like in Jurassic Park. (BTW if you want to get a sense of what an impact would be like, watch the impact scene from Deep Impact, it's actually fairly accurate but very understated - yes I said understated. An even better, and scarier, very brief scene is at the end of the final BBC Walking With Dinosaurs episode "Death of a Dynasty". No great special effects showing an impact, but instead shows what you would have experienced about 2000 miles to the north around Montana.) Another thing to consider is how infrastructure deteriorates - that a look at an old country road that was cut of and abandoned about 20 years ago (common where some roads have been straightened). Plants and soil encroach pretty heavily and the asphalt cracks up quick. So ever time I read a story where someone is following a road 100 years in the future and it has deteriorated to the size of a game path I get pretty annoyed. And what would buildings look like?
As far as the PA topic is concerned, very often what it boils down to is, in a sense, a classic good versus evil theme. There are those who retain their humanity while struggling to survive versus those who don't - the now more common theme of cannibalism in PA. Been there, done that a thousand times. What I find more interesting is the post-, post-, post-, apocolypyic story. How did their past change the world that the people of the story live in? I find this more interesting because it represents broader, historic themes. Consider - we live in a democracy. If you go back 400 years how many people living at the time even knew what the term democracy meant? So I guess what I'm saying is that knife fights in the rublle over the world's last can of SPAM can be fun to read about, but an entire new world if a real trip!
BTW, I'm also looking for feedback. My story isn't PA, it's more post-great social and scientific change where one person's utopia is another's dystopia.
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Joined: 2/9/2012
Posts: 427
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Bumping this up!
I'm curious to know what everybody thinks in view of the recent popularization of post-apocalyptic/post-collapse/dystopian YA narratives.
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Out of all the currently popular trends for YA novels, the dystopia is the one I like best. It's got the most potential for interesting material; in-depth worldbuilding, an examination of the human spirit, a chance to say something about society, etc. Which is why it's really annoying that a lot of them seem to fall back on romance plots. But that's what young adults are most interested in, I guess.
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Joined: 4/28/2011
Posts: 34
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As far as I am aware, post apocalyptic/dystopian YA is out out out, for now anyway. Just came back from a SCBWI conference, and from what I heard, the only thing agents and editors really want is contemporary, the more multicultural the better. There were a few mutters about magical realism, and maybe a peep about a historical or two, but even at that they prefer a multicultural angle. And everyone wants LGBT.
If you are a new author, don't DARE to add a vampire, and worse: don't think about making it post apocalyptic. That's what I came away with.
Obviously, if you write the best story ever told (and they can tell this from your query!) you can do what you want. But I think (at least, from the agents/editors I heard) you are narrowing your odds.
Of course, tomorrow the trend will be something else. So still, you have to write what you love, and hope the merry-go-round comes back to your genre. Sigh.
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