The Contemporary Post Apocalyptic Novel

Traditional apocalyptic texts concern the advent of a better world at the end of history that will make sense of everything that happened before. But what is at stake in the contemporary shift to apocalyptic narratives in which the utopian end of time is removed? The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel offers an innovative critical model for our cultural obsession with 'the end' by focussing on the significance of time in the 21st-century post-apocalyptic novel and challenging traditional apocalyptic logic. Once confined to the genre of science fiction, the increasing popularity of end-of-the-world narratives has caused apocalyptic writing to feature in the work of some of contemporary literature's most well-known fiction writers. Considering novels by Will Self, Cormac McCarthy, David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel, Jeanette Winterson and others, Diletta De Cristofaro frames the contemporary apocalyptic imagination as a critique of modernity's apocalyptic conception of time and history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the book historicises apocalyptic beliefs by exploring how relentlessly they have shaped the modern world.

Visions of the American city in post-apocalyptic ruin permeate literary and popular fiction, across print, visual, audio and digital media. American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction explores the prevalence of these representations in American culture, drawing from a wide range of primary and critical works from the early-twentieth century to today. Beginning with science fiction in literary magazines, before taking in radio dramas, film, video games and expansive transmedia franchises, Robert Yeates argues that post-apocalyptic representations of the American city are uniquely suited for explorations of contemporary urban issues. Examining how the post-apocalyptic American city has been repeatedly adapted and repurposed to new and developing media over the last century, this book reveals that the content and form of such texts work together to create vivid and immersive fictional spaces in ways that would otherwise not be possible. Chapters present media-specific analyses of these texts, situating them within their historical contexts and the broader history of representations of urban ruins in American fiction. Original in its scope and cross-media approach, American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction both illuminates little-studied texts and provides provocative new readings of familiar works such as Blade Runner and The Walking Dead, placing them within the larger historical context of imaginings of the American city in ruins.

Traditional apocalyptic texts concern the advent of a better world at the end of history that will make sense of everything that happened before. But what is at stake in the contemporary shift to apocalyptic narratives in which the utopian end of time is removed? The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel offers an innovative critical model for our cultural obsession with 'the end' by focussing on the significance of time in the 21st-century post-apocalyptic novel and challenging traditional apocalyptic logic. Once confined to the genre of science fiction, the increasing popularity of end-of-the-world narratives has caused apocalyptic writing to feature in the work of some of contemporary literature's most well-known fiction writers. Considering novels by Will Self, Cormac McCarthy, David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel, Jeanette Winterson and others, Diletta De Cristofaro frames the contemporary apocalyptic imagination as a critique of modernity's apocalyptic conception of time and history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the book historicises apocalyptic beliefs by exploring how relentlessly they have shaped the modern world.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, major Anglophone authors have flocked to a literary form once considered lowbrow 'genre fiction': the post-apocalyptic novel. Calling on her broad knowledge of the history of apocalyptic literature, Hicks examines the most influential post-apocalyptic novels written since the beginning of the new millennium, including works by Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Cormac McCarthy, Jeanette Winterson, Colson Whitehead, and Paolo Bacigalupi. Situating her careful readings in relationship to the scholarship of a wide range of historians, theorists, and literary critics, she argues that these texts use the post-apocalyptic form to reevaluate modernity in the context of the new century's political, economic, and ecological challenges. In the immediate wake of disaster, the characters in these novels desperately scavenge the scraps of the modern world. But what happens to modernity beyond these first moments of salvage? In a period when postmodernism no longer defines cultural production, Hicks convincingly demonstrates that these writers employ conventions of post-apocalyptic genre fiction to reengage with key features of modernity, from historical thinking and the institution of nationhood to rationality and the practices of literacy itself.

THE WORLD HAS ENDED, BUT A FATHER'S LOVE ENDURES. When the guns went silent and the last bombs were dropped, billions were lost and the world had become unrecognizable. Nine years later, Reid Flynn and his eight-year-old daughter, Hannah, live a protected life behind the walls and rules of their small hamlet, Deliverance. Life is hard there but safe... or so Reid thought until Hannah showed the first symptoms of the plague. Once someone was symptomatic with the plague, they’d die in a week’s time. With the clock ticking and only the rumor of a cure a thousand miles away, Reid must leave with Hannah in hopes that he’ll find the cure before the end of the seventh day.

Visions of post-apocalyptic worlds have proved to be irresistible for many 21st-century writers, from literary novelists to fantasy and young adult writers. Exploring a wide range of texts, from the works of Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Tom Perrotta and Emily St. John Mandel to young adult novels such as Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games series, this is the first critical introduction to contemporary apocalyptic fiction. Exploring the cultural and political contexts of these writings and their echoes in popular media, Apocalyptic Fiction also examines how contemporary apocalyptic texts looks back to earlier writings by the likes of Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells and J.G. Ballard. Apocalyptic Fiction includes an annotated guide to secondary readings, making this an essential guide for students of contemporary fiction at all levels.

#1 Amazon bestselling author with over 1 million reads to date!Orphaned as a child and hidden from the world, 23-year-old Willow's life is ordinary. Until a stranger comes into her life forcing her to recount past memories she thought she had suppressed and speaks of a destiny she cannot accept.Fueled with regret and a looming fear of the unknown, Willow must make a choice. Save the world or save herself. There's just one problem; she's been infected.2136 is the first book in Matthew Thrush's post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy. If you liked the Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, or The Divergent Series, then you'll love Matthew Thrush's new dystopian serial series. Pick up 2136 to unlock the mysteries of our fallen world today!

"For all of its current popularity, contemporary apocalyptic fiction-novels set during or after events that devastate the world as we know it-is part of a long tradition that includes the Biblical story of Noah, the epic of Gilgamesh, and the Works and Days of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod, as well as the vast array of modern examples. In this short, essayistic book, the author focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction in which new forms of life emerge from catastrophe, how the survivors adapt to the altered conditions of existence, and the various ways in which the past asserts its claims on them-both the immediate past of the world that was lost, and the deep past of prehistory and imagination that returns with this loss. In Payne's view, "post-apocalyptic fiction is political theory in fictional form. Instead of producing arguments in favor of a particular form of life, it shows what it would be like to live that life." In a world in which there is no more capitalism and no more nation state, characters have to relearn basic survival skills and return to earlier forms of social life. They acquire new capabilities, which bring new satisfactions they could not have anticipated in the world that is gone. In the post-apocalyptic world, they disentangle themselves from old ways of thinking and their misconceptions of human happiness. In this way, Payne argues, post-apocalyptic fiction is the pastoral of our time. The individualism and small-scale social relations of post-apocalyptic fiction are not naïve, but instead the necessary ground for choosing the freedoms and capabilities readers would want to see preserved in any future collective that might emerge from them"--