“The shadow of the end”: the appeal of apocalypse in literary science fiction

Summary

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

(2 Peter 3:10–13 [NIV])

Our end-determined fictions … are placed at what Dante calls the point where all times are present, il punto a cui tutti li tempi son presenti; or within the shadow of it. It gives each moment its fullness. And although for us the End has perhaps lost its naïve imminence, its shadow still lies on the crises of our fictions; we may speak of it as immanent.

(Frank Kermode [1967: 6])

Introduction

Apocalypse has been an enduring and popular theme in science fiction literature, appearing in texts from the nineteenth century (for example, Mary Shelley's The Last Man [1826], H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds [1898]) to contemporary times (e.g., Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake [2003], Cormac McCarthy's The Road [2006]), and inspiring many films based on literary narratives of catastrophe (e.g., P. D. James' The Children of Men [1992], Richard Matheson's I Am Legend [1954]).