Science Fiction Post Apocalyptique
The post-apocalyptic (sometimes abbreviated as "post-apo" or "post-nuke ') is a subgenre of science fiction that depicts life after a disaster with shaved civilization: nuclear war, a meteor collision, epidemic, economic and energy crisis, etc..
Sometimes used simply for its ultra-violent aspects, post-apocalyptic rests on a delicate balance between a lost civilization and a rising chaos. It depicts a confrontation of social reality (negotiable on, corrupt, servitude and exceeding the scale of a single man) to the harsh physical reality (immediate, intractable, free, single). It is both the end of the world and a new beginning. A contradiction full of richness that develops an original speech in the real world.
The post-apocalyptic fiction is distinguished from a disaster ( disaster movie ), which depict the disaster itself.
Summary |
The post-apocalyptic works are divided fairly broad, but there is a common form (post-apocalyptic aesthetics) and themes often discussed (bottom).
Aesthetics
In the multitude of post-apocalyptic works, two essential criteria are found each time:
- The company has been destroyed
- The protagonists live in the ruins of ancient civilization.
These two criteria also allow a wide range of situations. Most works offer a vision of society is destroyed, forgotten or disregarded our values, and 90% of humanity is gone as is the case of classic movies such as Mad Max 2 or A boy and his dog. But other authors prefer a more ambiguous and closer to ours, where companies have been rebuilt, with laws and rules (the first Mad Max , or the comic Jeremiah ) or even situations similar to ours, where only the central authority of the state has disappeared ( Jericho ). The "remnants of ancient civilization" will of the city intact Jericho buried the details of Planet of the Apes. Both sets are best represented the desert and the city in ruins or abandoned. Sometimes the survivors live in the midst of ruins technology without understanding ( Niourk ), and often use the back door.
Themes
Beyond the classic themes of survival, violence, environment hostile to humans, most post-apocalyptic works use this setting to cause a reflection on the place of man in relation to beings and society. Off the yoke of laws, men reveal their true nature and range of characters and behaviors "true" (unbiased by the company) create a kind of social laboratory where the author is experimenting on human relationships. It is regularly the subject of solitaire against the group, coexistence behavior altruistic , selfish , aggressive, or telescoping of nostalgia for the old civilization, aficionados of lawlessness news and visionaries who want to create a new way of function.
The type of Apocalypse, finally a minor detail, is also interesting because it reflects the fears of society at the time or the work was conceived, as well as the disaster movies. The fear of nuclear power during the Cold War , the environmental disasters or industrial in the 1980s , the pandemic in the 1990s while the 2000s seem to be afraid of natural disasters or acts of terrorism on a large scale.
The "pre-apo" and other similar types
Some science fiction movies are about what prompted the Apocalypse ( The son of man , The Twelve Monkeys ), sometimes called movies "pre-apocalyptic" or the Apocalypse itself ( the day of after 2004), we can bring them closer to disaster movies.
With the generalization of the term, other movies are sometimes called "post-apocalyptic," because they have a vision of society basically edged with ours, or sometimes because they contain a nuclear war in their ancient history or take place in a ruined city. Yet there is a society perfectly valid and comprehensive, then it is simply science fiction. In previous cases, if the works are sometimes called "post-apocalyptic," it is a misnomer.
Some special cases like the television series Dark Angel or the anime Evangelion Apocalypse use a starting point but do not address all of the subject. The qualification of "post-apocalyptic" will depend on the consideration of background or subject.
The post-apocalyptic can also mingle with the kind of Robinson Crusoe by focusing primarily on the reconstruction of civilization in a hostile universe, such as in the novel Malevil.
The types of disasters
The end of the world has been imagined in many ways, but major themes recur often. The most common are:
The Nuclear Apocalypse
Humanity has self-destructed in a war involving weapons of mass destruction. Apocalypse is the most traditional: the post-apocalyptic genre is born during the Cold War , where fear of total war that would destroy the earth has created many works. Note that time of Planet of the Apes The Apocalypse "natural" In this type of Apocalypse, are the natural elements that are responsible for the disappearance of humanity eruption of the volcano (the saga Dragon Head ), predominance of the oceans (the film Waterworld ), tsunami giant (role-playing Ashes ) collision of an asteroid with the Earth (Manga 7 Seeds ), etc. ... These disasters reflect actual disasters and fears of our time. Some works consider climate change as a direct result of human action on nature. Glaciation was often used in the 80 (comic strip The Transperceneige , the novels The Ice Company , comics Snow ), while today the authors also rely on fear of desertification (the video game The Fall: Last Days of Gaia ) or that of a global storm and uncontrolled (the film The Day After Tomorrow (2004)). Some natural disasters and possible unfamiliar (passage of the solar system in a cloud of dust that dims the sunlight reaching us, solar flare a bit stronger than the others who "burn out" all the electronics on the planet) can give Places to effects comparable to those of the Apocalypse conventional nuclear (respectively non-nuclear winter and EMI here). One of the possible endings of humanity would be the emergence of a pandemic that would decimate the human species in a very short time. Treated more disaster movie in post-apocalyptic, however, found the book by Richard Matheson published in 1954 , I Am Legend , a bacterium which infects all of humanity and transforms it into nearby creatures vampires ( probably one of the first novels of the genre). Note also The Tempest (novel) by Stephen King , or more recently the movie 28 Days Later where men are infected with an unknown disease and are transformed into rabid creatures that violently attack on individuals "healthy". Some works consider a man-made catastrophe other than nuclear. This can be a major industrial disaster ( Chernobyl , the explosion of the moon in The Company of ice ), a massive ecological disaster ( The Blind Herd of John Brunner ), or globally pollution as man can not live on the surface of the Earth ( WALL-E Pixar), more rare, but massive conventional war ( Appleseed by Masamune Shirow). The fall of the company may simply be due to the collapse of social bonds, a massive economic collapse, exhaustion of natural resources leads to a stifling society, or ethnic or religious clashes ( Jeremiah , Simon River or hombre ). Without doubt one of the Apocalypse less violent conflict are everywhere, but across the city: the people against the authority, the resurgence of selfish behavior, etc.. In these cases, society as we know it gradually disappears in a few years without necessarily war or major conflict. Slower and less dramatic, the end of humanity can also be due to the inability of man to reproduce ( The Son of Man ). It may be due to a phenomenon that sterilizes men and / or women ( men frantic ) or simply the death of all the representatives of one or the other sex ( the Last Battle ). The population, which continues to age, allows himself to slowly win by despair, and may sink into violence for a last stand, or otherwise become wise and spend his last years in the happiness she has acquired failed to reach its peak time, which suggests Alan Weisman in Homo disparitus. The invasion of zombies is sometimes a cause of the end of the world, whether caused by a virus, mutations radioactive, or simply unexplained. Few films zombies are also post-apocalyptic. The subject is debated, because of the proximity of movies survival horror films and post-Apocalypse, but it will be in the works concerned: Indeed, loss of society and therefore the state is a prerequisite to the situation of post-Apocalypse. For example, the first two films Resident Evil are not post-apocalyptic, zombie infection because the city does, and that the government and police are still in place (outside the city). In Resident Evil: Extinction , on the contrary, humanity and society have completely disappeared, giving the film a work of post-apocalyptic. Works where the action is very local and does not provide information on the overall situation (game Left 4 Dead or Hordes ) does not resolve the post-apocalyptic nature. The classification remains at the discretion of each. Among the works of zombies post apocalyptic, it is noted 28 days later , part of the film Romero , the comic The Walking Dead , or the novel World War Z. Much more anecdotal, some works describe post-apocalyptic worlds ravaged by aliens, machines or occult powers (such as tripods series of John Christopher ), and even dragons ( Reign of Fire ). In Ravage of Barjavel , technology simply ceases to function, in an instant, without reason. There is no Apocalypse itself, but the man knows that being seen to live and cities have become inhospitable, causing the exact configuration of a post-apocalyptic novel. The Biological Apocalypse
The Apocalypse industrial or military
The Apocalypse social
The Zombie Apocalypse
Other types of Apocalypse
The post-apocalyptic works
See also
Notes and References
Dystopia Cyberpunk Hard science fiction Space opera Planet opera Postcyberpunk biopunk Posted -apocalyptic fantasy Realism Steampunk Uchronie
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