Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film

Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film
Author: Roslyn Weaver
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786484659

Australia has been a frequent choice of location for narratives about the end of the world in science fiction and speculative works, ranging from pre-colonial apocalyptic maps to key literary works from the last fifty years. This critical work explores the role of Australia in both apocalyptic literature and film. Works and genres covered include Nevil Shute's popular novel On the Beach, Mad Max, children's literature, Indigenous writing, and cyberpunk. The text examines ways in which apocalypse is used to undermine complacency, foretell environmental disasters, critique colonization, and to serve as a means of protest for minority groups. Australian apocalypse imagines Australia at the ends of the world, geographically and psychologically, but also proposes spaces of hope for the future.

On the Beach

On the Beach
Author: Nevil Shute
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2010-02-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307476987

"The most shocking fiction I have read in years. What is shocking about it is both the idea and the sheer imaginative brilliance with which Mr. Shute brings it off." THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE They are the last generation, the innocent victims of an accidental war, living out their last days, making do with what they have, hoping for a miracle. As the deadly rain moves ever closer, the world as we know it winds toward an inevitable end....

Town Under: A Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG

Town Under: A Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG
Author: Tao Wong
Publisher: Starlit Publishing
Total Pages: 486
Release: 2021-10-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781990491504

What's worse than Australian wildlife? Mutated Australian wildlife. The System Apocalypse has come to Australia, altering native organisms and importing even more menacing creatures to the most dangerous continent on Earth. For Kira Kent, plant biologist, the System arrives while she's pulling an all nighter at work with her pair of kids in tow. Now, instead of mundane parental concerns like childcare and paying the bills, she's got to figure out how to survive a world where already deadly flora and fauna have grown even more perilous - all while dealing with the minutiae of the System's pesky blue screens and Levels and somehow putting together a community of survivors to forge a safe zone to shelter her son and daughter. It almost makes her miss the PTA fundraising sales. Almost. Town Under is the first book in a new series, The System Apocalypse: Australia. It's set in the same universe as Tao Wong's The System Apocalypse and starts in the same time period as Life in the North but focuses on the changes in the deadliest of continents, Australia. Fans of the original series, LitRPG, fantasy, science-fiction and post-apocalyptic novels will want to take a look.

Riddley Walker

Riddley Walker
Author: Russell Hoban
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2012-05-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1408832240

‘Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.’ Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.

The Child in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema

The Child in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema
Author: Debbie Olson
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2015-03-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0739194291

The child in many post-apocalyptic films occupies a unique space within the narrative, a space that oscillates between death and destruction, faith and hope. The Child in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema interrogates notions of the child as a symbol of futurity and also loss. By exploring the ways children function discursively within a dystopian framework we may better understand how and why traditional notions of childhood are repeatedly tethered to sites of adult conflict and disaster, a connection that often functions to reaffirm the “rightness” of past systems of social order. This collection features critical articles that explore the role of the child character in post-apocalyptic cinema, including classic, recent, and international films, approached from a variety of theoretical, methodological, and cultural perspectives.

American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
Author: Robert Yeates
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1800080980

Visions of the American city in post-apocalyptic ruin permeate literary and popular fiction, across print, visual, audio and digital media. American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction explores the prevalence of these representations in American culture, drawing from a wide range of primary and critical works from the early-twentieth century to today. Beginning with science fiction in literary magazines, before taking in radio dramas, film, video games and expansive transmedia franchises, Robert Yeates argues that post-apocalyptic representations of the American city are uniquely suited for explorations of contemporary urban issues. Examining how the post-apocalyptic American city has been repeatedly adapted and repurposed to new and developing media over the last century, this book reveals that the content and form of such texts work together to create vivid and immersive fictional spaces in ways that would otherwise not be possible. Chapters present media-specific analyses of these texts, situating them within their historical contexts and the broader history of representations of urban ruins in American fiction. Original in its scope and cross-media approach, American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction both illuminates little-studied texts and provides provocative new readings of familiar works such as Blade Runner and The Walking Dead, placing them within the larger historical context of imaginings of the American city in ruins.

Z for Zachariah

Z for Zachariah
Author: Robert C. O'Brien
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1665911646

In this post-apocalyptic novel from Newbery Medal–winning author Robert C. O’Brien, a teen girl struggling to survive in the wake of unimaginable disaster comes across another survivor. Ann Burden is sixteen years old and completely alone. The world as she once knew it is gone, ravaged by a nuclear war that has taken everyone from her. For the past year, she has lived in a remote valley with no evidence of any other survivors. But the smoke from a distant campfire shatters Ann’s solitude. Someone else is still alive and making his way toward the valley. Who is this man? What does he want? Can he be trusted? Both excited and terrified, Ann soon realizes there may be worse things than being the last person on Earth.

Imagining Apocalyptic Politics in the Anthropocene

Imagining Apocalyptic Politics in the Anthropocene
Author: Earl T. Harper
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000453502

Bringing together scholars from English literature, geography, politics, the arts, environmental humanities and sociology, Imagining Apocalyptic Politics in the Anthropocene contributes to the emerging debate between bodies of thought first incepted by scholars such as Mouffe, Whyte, Kaplan, Hunt, Swyngedouw and Malm about how apocalyptic events, narratives and imaginaries interact with societal and individual agency historically and in the current political moment. Exploring their own empirical and philosophical contexts, the authors examine the forms of political acting found in apocalyptic imaginaries and reflect on what this means for contemporary society. By framing their arguments around either pre-apocalyptic, peri-apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic narratives and events, a timeline emerges throughout the volume which shows the different opportunities for political agency the anthropocenic subject can enact at the various stages of apocalyptic moments. Featuring a number of creative interventions exclusively produced for the work from artists and fiction writers who engage with the themes of apocalypse, decline, catastrophe and disaster, this innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the politics of climate change, the environmental humanities, literary criticism and eco-criticism.

Hiroshima and Here

Hiroshima and Here
Author: Monash University
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2020-09-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1498587607

This study provides a cultural history of Nuclear Age Australia. The author examines the country’s role as a weapons testing site, its ambition to join the postwar nuclear club of nations, the heated controversies surrounding uranium mining and nuclear power, and the rich complexity of Australian cultural response to the fact and possibility of atomic destruction.