The end of the world is near... in these books

Several recent releases address the apocalypse and how to handle it.

The world ends. The latest science fiction literature says so. In our fantasy literature podcast “Laberinto de papel,” we discuss the genre’s repeated emphasis on it and present some recent and extraordinary examples.

To do so, we consult with a regular at this house, journalist and fantasy literature expert Meren, who discusses these two proposals: the two volumes of Dmitry Glukhovsky’s apocalyptic saga ‘Outpost’, author of the popular ‘Metro’ series. AJ Ryan’s lightning-fast ‘Red Mist’ was a pleasant surprise, and the less you know, the better.

In ‘Outpost’ and its sequel, a group of people live in a military post on the eastern border of Russia and watch a bridge over the poisoned Volga River. To impress a friend, a young man who barely remembers the world before the catastrophe crosses the bridge, something no one has done in decades. One of many stories in this duology, which changes the setting in its second volume but not the dark and depressing future vision.

‘Red Fog’ is frenetic and enigmatic, full of secrets and plot twists, about a man who wakes up on a ship at sea with no memory of who or where he is. He is with six amnesiac, gun-wielding people with unique abilities. They must follow radio orders, discover who they are, and survive a mysterious fog that appears to have destroyed civilization.

Sometimes I look around at my childhood world and wonder, “What are we supposed to do with this?” I live in anticipation of the next crisis. History seems to be accelerating.

I watched a commercial plane descend from the classroom window on my third day of high school, five blocks from the World Trade Center. Orderly evacuation was lacking. A gym teacher told us to “walk north,” so we walked in scattered, scared groups without adults, picking up news from car radios as dust clouds settled.

Blackouts, superstorms, recessions, and pandemics followed. I get angry with previous generations who were either unaware or knew better and gave us Earth.

While waiting for the National Guard to distribute water and meals to residents in powerless Lower Manhattan after Sandy in 2012, I wondered how quickly the world had changed, like we had unknowingly stumbled onto a path of great change—and not the good kind.

I’m thinking about how the current climate has shaped my generation’s science fiction readers and writers. I liked dystopia because it shows a broken world but offers hope: Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze Runner were popular books when I was young. All aim to destroy the current system to create a better one. Even as they insist, often wrongly, Well, This is How Things Just Are, they implicitly question whether older generations did right by the next.

During the worst of the pandemic, I wrote my debut novel, The Deep Sky, and many of my deepest emotions surfaced. It takes place in the near future, when everything is worse. Unaddressed climate change has worsened domestic and global conflict.

Asuka, the protagonist, fights her mother over her future. Against her mother’s wishes, she joins a crew of twentysomethings naively determined to start over for humanity as the world collapses. To prove her mother wrong (and maybe prove her right), she joined the mission. Although misguided, her mother is trying to fix her generation’s mistakes.

The end of the world is near… in these books

Several recent releases address the apocalypse and how to handle it.

By ki0nk

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