Growing up, I was a big fan of science fiction pretty much from the moment I discovered the genre.
I know, this is a surprise to exactly nobody.
About my favorite subgenre of SF was, and still is to some extent, post-apocalyptic stories. Lucifer’s Hammer, Alas, Babylon, Damnation Alley, Parable of the Sower, The Postman, The Road, and more than I can remember.
Fallout is one of my favorite video game franchises, and I’m currently partway through a The Last of Us playthrough on my Twitch channel.
So, why do I so enjoy a genre that’s all about doom and gloom?
I’ve thought about that in the past and realized it’s because I don’t and it isn’t.
That is, it isn’t gloomy and depressing. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, these are stories about hope. They’re not Apocalypse stories, they’re *post*-apocalypse, and that makes a lot of difference.
The Apocalypse – the end of the world – is generally either the background or the start of these stories. The rest – the focus of the story itself – is about humanity recovering, rebuilding, pulling itself together. Making something new. We have faced the worst thing that could happen – a literal apocalypse – and decided to keep going.
Sure, there are obstacles. And there are always small-minded people who will try to impede any progress so that they can rule over some portion of ruins, but in general, our heroes face those obstacles and overcome them and keep going.
I love Star Trek, and other shiny utopian space operas, and they’re a great goal of something we may one day be, but there’s something special about finding hope where it’s hard to see, after it seems that everything is lost.
When it seems all hope is lost, that’s the time to seek it out, stand back up, and loudly sing out a new canticle for Saint Liebowitz.