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Sable Aradia
Posted 2016-06-01 10:07 AM (#13687 - in reply to #13680)
Subject: Re: Apocalypse Now 2016 Reading Challenge		Quote Reply



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Weesam - 2016-06-01 12:37 AM

Actually, I'm a she not a he! Funny, everyone seems to make that mistake. Must be the 'sam' part of the name.

I might be willing to join again next year (or an expanded one this year), but only if it was able to include more post-apocalyptic stuff. The apocalypse 'now' bit of the challenge made it difficult for me to find books that fit that I actually wanted to read.


Oops! So hard to tell with internet handles! Yeah, you're right, it's the "sam" part that made me assume. Sorry!

You know, the name was intended to be a catchy reference to the classic movie; it was *not* intended to limit things to a current, happening-right-now apocalypse. I think post-apocalyptica is just fine, but I wanted to differentiate apocalyptica from dystopia. Often literature has a dystopia following an apocalypse, but I didn't want dystopian literature *without* the apocalypse, if you see what I mean.

That's why I used Margaret Atwood as my example. The Handmaid's Tale is about a dystopia that resulted from religious gender politics, but there was no apocalypse; the world sucked only because of the dystopian political situation (and it wasn't even the whole world; and it's a good lesson because that's basically what happened to Afghanistan; they were a modern progressive country not that long ago). Oryx and Crake, however, is a dystopia partially due to politics (or rather, political support of rampant corporatism; yet another good lesson for us) but mostly because the world was on the verge of ecological collapse and then there was a major genetically-engineered plague.

In one of the novels I read, Plague Day, the world has already experienced the apocalypse (although just recently) and the world is now dealing with the aftermath and attempting to cure a nanotech plague. In Wool, the one I'm currently reading, the apocalypse happened gods only know how many years ago, and the survivors are living in underground silos and trying to reconstruct the past that their leadership is keeping from them.

On a separate but related topic, I have to say, one thing I really enjoy about this site is how many women are here! I'm used to being the only girl at a mostly-boys club. It's downright refreshing!

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