Plagues, shattered planets, and moon-men
With exquisite timing -- for me, anyway, since I've just started Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," and have been idly pondering precedents in the post-apocalyptic genre -- Josh Glenn has begun a series over at io9.com, Gawker Media's sci-fi blog, exploring some of highlights of the past 100-odd years of science fiction, by period and genre.
Josh introduces the series here, explaining the eccentric periodization scheme he has settled on (why does he choose a starting date of 1904 instead of, say, 1901? Because H.G. Wells, the 19th-century trailblazer, was still producing books that were "actually fun to read" -- not novels throughout which the hot snort of the hobbyhorse overwhelmed all narrative-- through '04. A Wells novel-treatise, a different beast, does appear on the '04-'33 list …).
The first actual installment looks at the ten best apocalyptic sci-fi novels from 1904 to 1933. Are these books of merely antiquarian interest? Well, Hollywood doesn't think so: The director of Pixar's post-apocalyptic robot pas-de-deux, "Wall-E," Andrew Stanton, has signed on to do a film based on Edgar Rice Burroughs's 1917 novel "A Princess of Mars." And adaptations of "Brave New World" and "When Worlds Collide" are also in the works. ("The Road," fyi, is in the can and awaiting release.)
Surveying the list, it's striking how smoothly purveyors of speculative fiction have been able to segue from one world-destroying threat (plague; Jack London, countless others) to another (nuclear holocaust; Cormac McCarthy, countless others). Gratifyingly, we live in times in which we can appall ourselves with both plague and nuclear scenarios. Let us give thanks.
(Book-cover image via io9.com)
UPDATE: Per Josh's comment below, here's where to start if you want to revisit -- or explore for the first time -- Brainiac's earlier efforts to parse American generations in subtle ways, a project that has suggestive parallels to the sci-fi-oriented endeavor over at io9.com.
