Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction

Fiction about civilization’s destruction or transformation, the events that bring it about, and life in its aftermath. It often explores survival, social order, and humanity’s future under extreme conditions.

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Apocalypse: A catastrophic ending or revelation that brings a world or age to a decisive close. The genre’s central idea supplies both literal endings and stories of radical transformation.
The Last Man: Mary Shelley’s 1826 novel about a plague that devastates humanity and leaves a solitary survivor. An early pandemic apocalypse makes mass extinction and loneliness the story’s defining conditions.
Nuclear holocaust: Widespread destruction and mass death caused by nuclear war. Nuclear devastation supplies the ruined landscapes and radiation threats of many post-apocalyptic settings.
Utopian fiction: Fiction depicting an imagined society organized as an ideal or greatly improved community. Its ideal societies contrast with stories focused on collapse, oppression, and damaged futures.
Social collapse: The breakdown of institutions, social structures, and shared systems that sustain a society. It turns catastrophe into the loss of laws, services, and reliable collective coordination.
Dystopian fiction: Fiction depicting an oppressive or profoundly undesirable society, often under authoritarian rule. Dystopian stories can depict societies sliding toward catastrophe or surviving its aftermath.
The War of the Worlds: H. G. Wells’s 1898 novel about a Martian invasion of Earth. Its invasion narrative helped establish catastrophe as a test of civilization and human power.
Pandemic: An epidemic that spreads across multiple countries or continents and affects many people. Fictional pandemics can empty cities, overwhelm institutions, and make contagion a lasting threat.
Post-apocalyptic science fiction: Science fiction set after a catastrophe has destroyed or transformed civilization. This narrower form emphasizes life after the event rather than its causes or approach.
State of nature: A philosophical idea of human life without political authority or an established civil society. Survivors’ struggles raise questions about whether order can persist without the state.