Post-apocalyptic Fiction Research Articles

Apocalypses d’entre-deux-guerres (Ramuz, Spitz, Messac)

Ever since the 1950s, the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction has substantially gained in popularity, especially in the realm of English literature and film. This phenomenon, however, tends to conceal two facts. On the one hand, the Interwar have been rich in terms of apocalyptic depiction (mainly as a response to the horrors during World War I). On the other hand, French literature has also given some of the finest pieces of works in apocalyptic fiction. This paper will analyze three of them: Présence de la mort (“Presence of Death”, 1922) by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, L’Agonie du globe (“The Agony of the Globe”, 1935) by Jacques Spitz, and Quinzinzinzili (1935) by Régis Messac. The pessimistic views expressed in the three novels are tinged with lyricism (Ramuz), fantasy (Spitz), and pungency (Messac).

Postapocalyptic Fiction and the Social Contract: “We'll Not Go Home Again.” By Claire P. Curtis. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 210p. $65.00.

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Postapocalyptic fiction and the social contract: "we'll not go home again"

Postapocalyptic fiction and the social contract: "we'll not go home again"

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Power in Post-Apocalyptic Hollywood Cinema

Ranald MacDougall's The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1959) is a complex and ambitious film that combines the post-apocalyptic science fiction film, and the social problem or message film, to su...

The Metropolitan Life in Ruins: Architectural and Fictional Speculations in New York, 1909-19

Turn-of-the-century New York was the scene not only of unprecedented urban construction but also of systematic destruction, as the first generation of skyscrapers was beginning to fall victim to the capitalist dictates of profit and turnover. While Henry James's The American Scene, with its notalgia for the "Old New York," has been taken to be emblematic of the response to usch upheavals in the built landscape, this article identifies an alternative and overlooked site of critique: the post-apocalyptic fiction published in pulp magazines. By bringing these popular narratives of a post-urban future into dialogue with Progressivist economic accounts of the "logic of the wrecking ball," the article demonstrates how the trope of the skyscraper as a "future ruin" emerged as a powerful expression of the transformed nature of spatio-temporal experience during an age of speculative urban construction.