some awesome links about post-apocalyptic fiction

[intertribal]

This is why racism remains a "thing" in my novel, which is post-apocalyptic (and I don't even have the apocalypse coming from across borders - it's just part of social organization in Junction Rally, as it has been for all its years of existence).  The Yellow Plague: Asians and Asian Americans in Post-Apocalyptic and Zombie Fictions by Bao Phi:

But like many brands of American horror and action genres, popular post-apocalyptic and zombie fictions tend to veer towards straight American male fantasy - many of the fictions and films in the genre operate under the assumption that, if all hell breaks loose, all issues of race, class, and gender are (supposedly) irrelevant compared to basic human survival - and consciously or otherwise, most leaders that emerge in these imagined post-racial scenarios are straight, white alpha males. In the Western pop imagination, there seems to be a desire to wipe the difficult questions of co-existence off the table - and what better way to do that, then to imagine a situation where five to ten random (and mostly white) strangers must fight off mindless brain-hungry hoards while trying to divide the bullets, bacon, and fresh water into equal shares? Where the musings and philosophies of fancy pants artists and social commentators like myself are next to useless?

Let's say that North Korea or China suddenly launched an attack on present-day America, like in the video game Homefront or the upcoming remake of Red Dawn. The popular, traditional white male western narrative would then position a white hero leading a resistance of people against the invaders, and our race wouldn't matter - because we're all Americans right?

No. History has taught us is if that shit went down, and Asians in Asia attacked America, the first people who would be fucked would be Asian Americans. We'd be imprisoned without due process, called traitors, tortured and murdered in the street. And yet none of this is ever explored in post-apocalyptic scenarios where Asians bring about doom. I guarantee you, if a science-project-gone-wrong in North Korea causes zombie apocalypse tomorrow, you can bet it's the Asian Americans who won't be getting their share of beans at the survivalist pot luck.

I think this argument - on the emotional/psychological desire for an apocalypse to "wash away" people and structures you don't like - is perfectly applicable to post-apocalyptic fiction that isn't British and isn't even all that "cozy" (i.e., involves cannibals and zombies and killer flus).  Some of the comments imply it better fits the American model anyway.  Related: "AEnema" by Tool: "Some say we'll see Armageddon soon/ I certainly hope we will/ Learn to swim, see you down in Arizona Bay." Who reads cosy catastrophes? by Jo Walton:

I argued that the cosy catastrophe was overwhelmingly written by middle-class British people who had lived through the upheavals and new settlement during and after World War II, and who found the radical idea that the working classes were people hard to deal with, and wished they would all just go away.

In the classic cosy catastrophe, the catastrophe doesn’t take long and isn’t lingered over, the people who survive are always middle class, and have rarely lost anyone significant to them. The working classes are wiped out in a way that removes guilt.

And from the comments (man, this is so why Zombieland did not work for me):

On a bad day, it could even be secretly, guiltily desirable: all those people who fit so well in the modern world, but didn't know how to deal with *real* change, would be swept away. And the people who knew how to prepare would be vindicated. The reader is implicitly in the category of people who can deal with change, of course, by virtue of having read the book.

The desire to be freed of social constraints and to get fat off humanity's detritus crosses the economic divide.  

Pop Agitprop from Cheap Truth #13, published in the 1980s, a series of scathing reviews by sci-fi authors, of sci-fi authors - I think this gets to the heart of the problem with a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction very well (and is related to that terrible Dodge Ram commercial as well, re: the sheer amount of self-stroking misanthropy that goes into crafting a post-apocalypse):

The gem of this collection is Vernor Vinge's "The Ungoverned," a sequel to his commercially successful novel THE PEACE WAR. In this ideologically correct effort, radical Libertarians defend their realm from an authoritarian army. Thanks to their innate cultural superiority and a series of fraudulent plot Maguffins, they send the baddies packing with a minimum of personal suffering and a maximum of enemy dead.

First, and very characteristically, it is post-apocalyptic, conveniently destroying modern society so that a lunatic-fringe ideology can be installed as if by magic. Vinge avoids extrapolating their effects on society, because society is in shambles.

John Dalmas contributes a decent male-adventure Western. Unfortunately this story pretends to be SF. It is set on yet another colonial planet lapsed into barbarism, a fictional convention that allows SF writers to espouse reactionary social values without a blush of shame.

Dean Ing's recent novel for Tor, WILD COUNTRY, takes a similar tack. This book, the last in a post-apocalypse trilogy, is a meandering series of shoot-'em-ups. Its hero is an assassin. The villain is a gay heroin-smuggler, as if an America devestated by nukes did not have enough problems. Ing's hasty depiction of future society is grossly inconsistent; ravaged and desperate when the plot requires desperadoes, yet rigidly organized when Ing suddenly remembers the existence of computers.

The book is a Western, set in a West Texas conveniently returned to the robust frontier values of Judge Roy Bean. Men hold their land, with lasers if possible, while women raise corn and keep the home fires burning.

The book is speckled with maps, diagrams, and lectures on the Second Amendment, which, one learns, "absolutely and positively, guarantees citizens their right to keep and bear arms."  Like his fellows, Ing treasures this amendment, the last remnant of the American policy that he is willing to respect. There isn't much mention of, say, voting, or separation of powers. Power resides in the barrel of a gun, preferably the largest and shiniest possible.

No We Can't by Hunter (this one is political, but I think it ties in nicely with the apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic, vision, and the desire for this vision to actually happen - thanks to realthog for linking it):

Past-America could provide at least some modest layer of security to prevent its citizens from descending into destitution in old age; we in this day cannot. Past-America could pursue scientific discoveries as a matter of national pride, even land mankind on an entirely other world; we cannot. Past-America was a haven of invention and technology that shook the world and changed the course of history countless times: whatever attributes made it such a place we cannot quite determine now, much less replicate. Public art is decadent. Public education is an infringement. Public works are for other times, never now.

America of the past could build highways and railroads and a robust electrical grid. We cannot even keep them running. Of course we cannot keep them running: that was past-America. That past America had a magic that we modern Americans cannot match. Perhaps it was beholden to Satan, or to socialism, or merely to some grandiose vision of a better future, one with flying cars or diseases that could actually be cured, with proper application of effort. Whatever the case, past-America was wrong and stupid, and we know better.

We are told all the things America cannot do. We have yet to be told any vision of what we might still be able to do, or what hopes we should still retain, or why our children will be better off than we were, or why we ourselves will be better off than we were a scant few decades ago. Perhaps the very climate of the world will have changed, and the sky will be hotter, or the storms will be bigger, but none of those are things we can do anything about. Perhaps there will be nuclear disasters, or oil spills, or epidemics, or perhaps a city here or a city there will be leveled by some unforeseen catastrophe; we can be assured of it, in fact, but none of those things are things we can expect to respond to better next time than this time. Those are not, we are told, the tasks of a nation.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Your first set of remarks, about getting rid of the inconvenient, difficult, OTHER people and valorizing the norm (whether it's upperclass British folks or straight white American men) combined with your second set of remarks, is why I dislike most zombie fiction. It tends to be survivalist; it tends to be about only-the-fit-survive, for values of "fit" that get rid of social undesirables. It makes it a **good** thing to only care about you 'n' yours, as opposed to random strangers. Man, I hate it so bad, actually.

I do recall one post-apocalyptic story from my childhood that was set in England, in which the heroine met up with a bunch of survivors who were Sikhs. At the time, I didn't even know what a Sikh was, but I gradually realized, over the course of reading the book, that this was a group of people from India, but who had settled in England (I was young at the time! Forgive me!) --Anyway, that book, whatever it was called, was interesting for precisely bucking the trend you identify here: there **were** diverse survivors of the apocalypse, and there was still racism, and part of the plot of the story had to do with overcoming that, as I recall. (But the story wasn't super-brilliant enough for me to recall how it ended... it may have trailed off)

The third link, I want to read. Part of the problem nowadays is that a huge section of the population believes that government and the notion of doing things together for the common good is a bad thing. And yes, it ties into the every-man-for-himself-ism of postapocalyptic literature: people who oppose government and working for a common social good believe they will be better off if they just go grab themselves a little something for themselves, and screw everyone else. They'll educate their own kids, grow their own food, engage in their own trade, provide their own defense, etc. What they don't think about is the way in which their current ability to even pretend to do those things is based on the infrastructure and amenities provided for them by the very governmental structures and society they deride.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Man, your comment summed up/tied together my links better than I did! Thanks! :P

It leads to the conclusion that post-apocalypse aficionados are not only totally uninterested in social science, but society in general. And of course I write in this genre a fair amount, but I feel like I care a little more about what would happen to society because I do have that soc. sci. background. But I have to really watch for the whole "stupid dead humans don't matter" thing, even though my survivors just produce a new stupid human society. When you're dealing with the post-apocalypse it can be tricky to maintain a balance between "paying respects" to the pre-apocalypse world and moving the plot forward.

And I think it's a control thing too - not wanting to cede that control to government, and feeling a lack of control over one's life and family (and community?) - so after the apocalypse, you take back that control over yourself and your surroundings, violently if necessary.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Now all the things I hated about The Walking Dead all come back to me. Thanks for the links, I am devouring.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Enjoy!

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Guess what, I found your childhood story. It's Devil's Children (http://www.amazon.com/DEVILS-CHILDREN-Changes-Trilogy-No/dp/0440200822/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303183957&sr=8-1) by Peter Dickinson. Was looking on list of recommended post-apocalyptic novels on Abe Books and it was mentioned.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You are a genius! Now that you mention the name Peter Dickinson, I remember reading a bunch by him. I'm going to have to reread it to find out why I don't remember how it ended.

[cafenowhere.livejournal.com]

I thought I loved post-apocalyptic stories. Last time I did an amazon search of the genre, I realized, much to my dismay, that most of the novels were just vehicles for evangelism of one form or another. Somehow, whether by youth or ignorance or self-protective reading protocols (or, likely, a mix), I managed to pick out certain elements that I thought were emblematic of the genre. So up until now, I've been looking at the crap and thinking, They're doing it wrong! When I do it, they'll likely point at me and say, "She's doing it wrong!"

I also hated Zombieland. Feel-good + zombies....Does Not Compute.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I don't know - I don't think any one type of story "owns" or "defines" the genre. If you still love those post-apocalyptic stories, then so be it, and that's what you call "good" in the genre. I think that "the post-apocalypse" as a theme is so grandiose - literally, almost everyone on Earth is dead! - that it invites absolute proclamations and evangelizing.

Wow, I thought I was the only person who hated Zombieland! And the thing is, I loved Shaun of the Dead - I wonder if that's because even though it was funny, it didn't really show any of the characters relishing being sole survivors, because they were still in the midst of trying to survive. That and everything sort of turned out okay, basically.

[cafenowhere.livejournal.com]

Thus far I've been dismissing the "counterfactuals" according to the dictum, 90% of everything is crap. But at some point I must accept the genre's status quo, if only so I understand why other folks give me the side-eye when I say "I love/write post-apocalypse stories." Then I can hasten to add, "But not *those* post-apocalypse stories."

IMO, Zombieland was all surface, a crass exploitation of the genre by Hollywood, deployed with no heart. Shaun of the Dead, although a comedy, had depth to it. Shaun didn't default to an alpha-male stereotype to cope with the disaster. Also, we had a sense of who folks were *before* the disaster, which is what made their struggle worth watching and the sad parts actually sad.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I actually had the opposite happen to me today, when my hairstylist started talking about how much she loved post-apocalyptic stories like The Walking Dead, and I was like, "oh no, but that's not really what I write."

It did seem like Hollywood trying to cash in. Shaun kind of lampshaded the alpha-male stereotype with the whole Rambo thing, and it actually worked - Zombieland tried to do that, I think, but if you're going to do a parody/"ironic" treatment of some trope you can't actually have your character fulfill the qualifications of the trope. I mean, Shaun ultimately has to give up and save only himself and Liz - and he doesn't save the day at all, despite his efforts.

[brendandetzner.livejournal.com]

If you ever go check out the books-on-CD section of hardcore middle-of-nowhere truck stops both post-apocalyptic and alternate-history "we're still fighting communism" books make up a huge percentage of the market. One recurring archetype in both (judging from my reading the packaging, I have yet to actually listen to any of these despite some morbid curiosity) is the beautiful woman who comes to value the rugged man who has practical skills who she wouldn't have looked twice at prior to the war/event. Many of them went as far as having her be a pre-apocalypse movie star or supermodel.

Also, I hope folks don't tar "The Walking Dead" comic book with the same brush as the TV show. I'm glad Robert Kirkman getting paid, but the adaptation isn't nearly as good as the source, which avoids or at least resists a lot of the problems that we're talking about.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Oh ho, I got done with that trope after Slaughterhouse Five.

I've never read the comic, but I did give up on the TV show. And it doesn't make me inclined to try the comic, which I've heard mixed things about.

[wendigomountain.livejournal.com]

The Alpha Male stuff can be annoying. "Alas, Babylon" is one of my favorite post-apoc books, but it still irritates the hell out of me. The strapping, square-jawed retired military guy leads people to build civilization, with the help of commandeering his black tenants Model A and well water (which they have been using to live for years.)

In this subgenre, there's a lot of meek inheriting the earth kind of stuff, which is why it's almost always the middle class. In British ideologies (as evident with what happened during WWI and earlier when the Upstairs/Downstairs culture was going strong) characters of the middle class might try to preserve their aristocracy. Much the same way as they were running headlong into battle and jumping on grenades for their masters.

From my personal experience, if Shit were to Go Down, my neighbors would probably only be concerned with a sudden scarcity of Sudafed and Natty Light. They could hardly care less about survival as long as they can cook meth and get their drink on. The middle class, who is in a constant flux of getting by and living in convenience, would probably be the most able to drag themselves out of the muck and carry on. The rich would probably soon realize once money wasn't worth much, and how little they mattered. That's the whole crux of the situation.

With "Alas, Babylon," on a realistic model, those neighbors with the Model A would have told soldier-boy to hit the road. What I hated about that book was a need to return America to what it was before the bombs dropped. Which back then, more than likely included Jim Crow, gas-guzzling cars, fighting the Soviets, and all the other bullshit subscribed to in a modern society.

Honestly, I think the whole appeal stems from the fall of the Roman Empire, where the conquering/colonizing Romans finally just had to get the hell out, leaving the natives of any given area to return to a semi-traditional way of life. The original Post-Colonial movement.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Good to know, I will now avoid Alas, Babylon.

Do you really think it's the meek inheriting the Earth? I'm not sure I'd describe the middle class characters that inherit the Earth as meek, because the meek can't save themselves without a Strong Leader to order them around. Or maybe it's the meek +1 Alpha.

As for what happens in natural disasters - I think it's true that many of the poor would die (though probably not all), but I think both the rich and middle class would be equally likely to get to higher ground. I mean, it never ceases to surprise me how few post-apocalypses involve the survival of people like the President or some King/Queen - no way those people are "dying on their feet," they're the first in the super-secure bunker. It's true that the loss of an economy might be a greater shock to a wealthy person, but the average wealthy person would still have Lots of Things, and I think it comes down to temperament as to whether a rich or middle class person would adjust to life afterward.

Did the natives return to a semi-traditional way of life? Weird. Former European colonies wanted to emulate colonist power, but I don't know much about Rome. Of course, the need to return America to what it was before the bombs dropped in Alas, Babylon could also be interpreted as a return to a semi-traditional way of life, where the strong rule over fiefdoms (not saying that's what happens since I haven't read it, just saying semi-traditional could mean a lot of things, and not everyone benefits from living an un-modern lifestyle). One man's nostalgia is another man's nightmare.

[wendigomountain.livejournal.com]

Good point about Alas, Babylon in returning to semi-traditional.

I think maybe the author hinted toward a world with more equality, since eventually, GI Joe does wind up being the closest with his black neighbors. But with it being 1953, and the racist atmosphere of the US at the time, it probably behooved him to reign in his equality with those characters. So, they played the whole "Yes, Boss. No, boss" card. Totally pissed me off.

I think Europe returned to their old ways as much as any colonized world can. That's the royal bitch of a post-colonial society: no matter how hard you try to shake the influences and imposed social structure of the colonizers, you can't get rid of all of it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sounds annoying. Honestly whenever you have a post-apocalyptic novel and the hero is a military veteran or reservist or what-have-you in a town full of civilians, it's a red flag. I learned that from Under the Dome. Why oh why couldn't the protagonist just be a short order cook? Even though Battlestar Galactica doesn't bother me at all, because there an entire ship with a standing hierarchy survives, you don't just get one guy who's like "well, I clearly have ALL the authority in this situation."

No, you certainly can't, and to some extent I think it would have been foolish for the former European colonies to try. But of course, they became independent in a globalized world with a globalized economy, not the world of the Roman empire.

[wendigomountain.livejournal.com]

As much as David Brin is "Mister Smarty Pants" in his physics and shit, "The Postman" is a travesty of Post-Apocalyptic literature. It's basically the Wizard of Oz with a guy delivering the mail.

Sorry to monopolize, Nadia. Also with Shaun of the Dead, it was created by some folks who KNOW their zombie movies and was deliberately infused with homages to literally dozens of pop-culture references. (Like Shaun, I enjoyed The Stone Roses "Second Coming" album). Zombieland was a hollow splatterfest that tried to be Shaun of the Dead with an "American" angle. Which is guns, rollercoasters, Bill Murray, and Twinkies, apparently.

It actually made me like "Carriers" better. Same movie without the forced comedy of Zombieland.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

That's funny, because after reading the description I actually want to read The Postman, solely because it apparently criticizes hypersurvivalists. Not enough of that in the world of PA.

Yeah, Zombieland doesn't exactly do American culture any service. We talked about this, but Carriers does a great job turning the alpha male/nurturing female thing on its head. I mean, I was positive that I knew who would die and who would survive according to PA tradition, but I was wrong!

[wendigomountain.livejournal.com]

See, I was the opposite with Carriers. I knew who was going to croak from about 20 minutes in. The end was surprising though because of the sheer nihilism of it all. Usually a helicopter shows up or Mila Jovovich starts cloning herself or something.

It reminded me of a Sandra Oh movie, Last Night, where people are all going to die and spend the last 24 hours of their lives doing crazy stuff. It's like a frantic, fatalistic New Years Eve party where no one survives after they count down to zero.

For me, post-apoc is something of an equalizer, and maybe the source material for this is every-day disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes and floods. Nature kills indescriminately, rich, poor, or middle class. Often the conflict is derived from those class structures being challenged. Rich people might discover that poor and middle class have a lot to offer that they didn't know about before. Poor people might not be oppressed the way they were before because the social hierarchy isn't against someone with practical experience in survival.

But yeah, there's still a lot of focus on class in most of it. A shining example of a total equalizer disater with Dawn of the Dead, where Sarah Polley turns out to be the total badass.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

It's something of an equalizer, but if you look at the stats of who died in Hurricane Katrina, it was overwhelmingly poor people simply because they had less ability to leave. Nature doesn't care who it kills, but the people with the resources and the information are the ones who are going to be able to get out of its way, provided they have advance warning (and sometimes they're more likely to survive just because they have better protection). On the other hand, if an F5 tornado suddenly demolishes a major city, yeah, everyone's fucked. Have you read The Unthinkable (http://www.amazon.com/Unthinkable-Survives-When-Disaster-Strikes/dp/0307352897) by Amanda Ripley? It's really good, and one of the cases she talks about is a fire at a country club. The patrons did not react to save themselves, but had to wait for the staff to lead them to exits, and even afterwards they just stood around on the lawn while the staff kept going inside to save more people - because people default to their organizational roles during a crisis.

So I don't buy that everybody's equal after a disaster, which is the point of the first link in my post. Especially not an entire town. For one, you'd still have the original social structure at the time of the apocalypse. For two, power and grouping isn't something that I think goes out of fashion, so to speak, and neither does fear of the other. And of course it's all situational. If 10 people survive and only 1 is a woman, it sure sucks to be her, and while I don't think it would be as extreme if the odd person out was of a different class or race, birds of a feather still flock together.

[wendigomountain.livejournal.com]

The Titanic is a classic example of rich beating out the poor. But with the tsunami in Japan, I don't think wealth has played much into survivability yet. I guess it all depends.

Was The Unthinkable about the Coconut Grove fire?

Maybe it's an influence of where I work, but I know plenty of tenured professors who wouldn't know how to change a tire if they had to. Maybe in that case, it's less of a case of wealth and more of independence. Growing up, sixty miles from anything, if you didn't know how to think on your feet, you were screwed. I think for me, this whole preparedness strikes a nerve by saying "See! I knew this shit would come in handy!"

But yeah, those folks hunkered down in their bomb shelters waiting for Y2K to happen scare the shit out of me. But again, Y2K was a fine example of the hubris of the wealthy. At a time when computers were affordable mostly by the affluent or folks with a disposable income, it would have been those without that had the last laugh. At least until the systems running the water treatment plants went offline and started pumping cholera into everyone's water supply.

Thank you for this thread, Nadia. I've been stalled with my own post-apoc work and you've given me lots of food for thought!

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, no, because the tsunami was so sudden, but on the other hand, I don't know how much wealth was in those prefectures to begin with. And of course, part of what you learn in sustainable development courses is that there's a reason poor countries are all along the equator - it's the most environmentally violent, turbulent, un-tamable latitude on Earth. Economies have a tough time developing with any consistency there. Even within an equatorial country, people aren't dumb - the most powerful cities don't get built where the likelihood of a natural disaster is high; let poor people live in the danger zones. And another important thing to consider is density and architecture. The average tornado would kill more people in Bangladesh than Kansas because the people in Bangladesh are living in slums with no basements. And related to that is the trend of nuclear waste dumping zones being wherever the poorest people are, because they have less power to wave around at the government to protect themselves than the rich.

I think that chapter was about the Coconut Grove fire, but she goes into a lot of disasters, natural and manmade. It's all about how people respond in crisis ("who survives and why").

Well, I don't know how to change a tire either, and neither do my friends who have less money than I do (although we'd be good at making do with less and rationing). I think that's more a factor of rurality. And yeah, vindication, as mentioned above. The problem is when vindication becomes justification for actively desiring a massive disaster, just so you (general you) can say "I told you so!" Which is what creeps me out about survivalists.

No problem!