Three flavors of Apocalypse

Categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy , Fiction

I've had this eerie relationship with apocalyptic fiction ever since I found Nevil Shute's On the Beach as a 11 or 12 year old kid. I'm not entirely sure how to describe what this unbearably grim story did to my young mind. Needless to say I had trouble getting to sleep for a week or two and spent the next year or so worried that the Russians were going to drop the bomb on us before I even got my first kiss. Luckily, after that year the Berlin Wall fell, and soon after that the Soviet Union split up, and then I got my first kiss, so there were a few less worries to plague my young mind. However, my thirst for fiction that proposes the worst began at that point and has never quite left me.

If On the Beach is to be savored for the utter terror of it's "end of everything" scenario, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and its sequel Parable of the Talents explore more of the prospect of what life might be like after a different type of civilization-destroying event. The strong female character's determination to rebuild humanity after an apocalypse of global warming and social decay makes these two titles a wonderful read, and something to make you feel a bit more hopeful if you are indeed taking my blog's advice and just read On the Beach.

However, rebuilding after the apocalpyse in Butler's stories does seem like it would be a good deal of work. Lately I've been feeling a bit lazy and have found an apocalypse which appeals to me even more. Just a Couple of Days is a light novel of the end of the world as we know it. It's one of those books that races along toward an end that comes too soon, although every so often one has to do a double take and then pause for an occasion of laugh-out-loud wordplay. No, it's not high literature, but for those days when you want to believe that maybe the end of civilization wouldn't be so bad after all, this is a fine read.

Got an apocalypse of another flavor? Tell me about it!