Post-apocalyptic science fiction is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten or mythologized. The fall of civilization may also be the fall of a space based civilization. This plot device allows writers to write soft science fiction while accounting for the lack of technological advancement and thus remain relevant to the present day no matter how far in the future the events are set.
There is a considerable degree of blurring between this form of science fiction and that which deals with false utopias or dystopic societies.
The use of post-apocalyptic contexts in movies and the typical accompanying imagery, such as endless deserts or damaged cityscapes, clothing made of leather and animal skins, and marauding gangs of bandits, is now so common as to be trite and the subject of frequent parody.
The number of apocalyptic-themed B-movies in the 1980s and 1990s.has been attributed to film producers on post-apocalyptic films working around their low production budgets by renting scrapyards, unused factories, and abandoned buildings, saving them the cost of constructing sets. As a result, many films that would have been rejected by major studios on the basis of script or concept ended up being made, while others had their settings and stories converted to a post-apocalyptic setting following the success of the Mad Max series.
The novel Dust by Charles Pellegrino, in which all the insect species on Earth die out, and the ecology crashes as a result.
The film No Blade Of Grass, based on the book The Death Of Grass by John Christopher, in which a virus that destroys plants causes massive famine and societal breakdown.
After London by Richard Jefferies; the nature of the catastrophe is never stated, except that apparently most of the human race quickly dies out, leaving England to revert to nature.
The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel (A volcanic eruption floods the earth with cyanide gas, leaving only two survivors)
The manga and movie Dragon Head, by Mochizuki Minetaro
To be categorized
First Spaceship on Venus
The novel In The Country of Last Thing by Paul Auster
Apocalyptic science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization, through nuclear war, plague, or some other general disaster.
A work of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fiction might also be called a ruined Earth story, or dying Earth if the apocalypse is sufficiently dire.
While American and Western apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction tend to emphasize the fantastic, with the possibility of world-endingmeteor collisions, mutants, and jury-rigged vehicles roaming a desolate countryside, British fiction is more pessimistic in tone.
Though there is an apocalyptic battle, the result of the battle is that both the leaders of the rebellion and God and his lieutenant are destroyed.
In Babylon 5, the apocalyptic conflict comes at the onset of the "third age of man," and the series is set in the period leading up to the Shadow War in the year 2260 (one thousand years after the prophetic year of 1260).
Or conversely, one could argue that the vision of a mature humanity outgrowing the apocalypse is a redirection (and not a repression) of the millennial impulses and tensions existing prior to the years 2000 to 2001.
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