The End of the World as We Know It / Features / Untitled Books

Nuclear war and economic collapse are all fine and well, but the kid in me still loves nothing more than a good old-fashioned zombie yarn.

The End of the World as We Know It

RON CURRIE, author of his own gripping, artful and often amusing apocalytpic vision God Is Dead, takes us on a journey to the end of time, from the sci-fi of Kurt Vonnegut to the good old zombie yarn of Max Brooks.

Like much of Vonnegut’s work, Galapagos is hilarious but in an acutely uncomfortable way; as one reviewer said famously, we laugh in self-defence.

Apocalypse has always held a special fascination for me. Even as a small child I can remember being simultaneously compelled and repulsed by the idea of annihilation: formerly bustling cities gone empty and silent; bands of survivors moving through scorched, barren landscapes towards a perilous future; nature, in the absence of man's relentless industry, reclaiming what is hers. I used to think this fascination made me unusual or worse, psychologically suspect. But even a cursory glance at contemporary literature shows that I am far from alone in my love affair with end times.

Of course there are hundreds of ways in which the world could go 'poof', and an equally large and diverse number of ways to approach the topic in fiction. One doesn't always have to play it straight, and though for some it may seem strange to try and mine humour from a post-apocalyptic setting, that approach has yielded some of my favourite books. First among them is Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut. Like most of Vonnegut's books, Galapagos defies the question 'What is this about' because it's about many things: human folly, evolutionary theory, the lingering damage from the Vietnam War, and yes, apocalypse. In this instance, though, the collapse of civilization is seen only obliquely, a narrative choice that serves to make the event all the more intriguing and frightening. In the midst of a burgeoning global financial crisis, a small group of people on a nature cruise are shipwrecked on the Galapagos Islands, and shortly thereafter a mysterious disease renders all of humankind − save them − infertile. Thus their offspring are the last line of human beings, and over the course of the next million years they adapt to suit the habitat of the Galapagos. They develop flipper-like hands, streamlined skulls, and snouts and teeth suited to catching fish. Perhaps most importantly, these future humans are not nearly as intelligent as their forebears, a point that the book's narrator considers a definite plus, as it's his contention that all the world's sorrows (including the end of civilization) can be blamed on 'the oversized human brain'. Like much of Vonnegut's work, Galapagos is hilarious but in an acutely uncomfortable way; as one reviewer said famously, we laugh in self-defence.

A direct line can be drawn from Vonnegut's hugely influential writing to George Saunders, whose first book, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, includes the novella 'Bounty'. Unlike Galapagos, which lingers on the action preceding and during the decline of civilization, 'Bounty' is a classic post-apocalyptic tale. America has become a country divided into two distinct groups: Flaweds and Pures. The Pures live in heavily guarded compounds, where they hoard most of what's left of the country's resources and food. The Flaweds, so-called because they have all mutated in some manner, are either enslaved within these compounds or left to wander a wild, frightening, and sometimes hilarious moonscape. The narrator is a Flawed named Cole, who is able to hide his mutation − clawed feet − well enough to pretend he is a Pure, although through the course of the story he is caught and exposed more than once. Cole is searching for his sister, a girl with a vestigial tail who was working as a prostitute but has seemingly been sold into slavery. The journey is essentially a picaresque, but the humour, as in much of Saunders' work, is leavened by genuine, piercing sadness, as when Cole remembers painfully the time in the not-too-distant past when his family was still together, and the sorrowful events that ripped them apart.

'A Boy and His Dog', by Harlan Ellison, is similar to 'Bounty' in that it features a young male protagonist wandering through a world ravaged by nuclear war. But there the similarities end. In one of the stories in Ellison's collection The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, the main character, Vic, spends most of his time engaged in one of two activities: finding food and raping women. His only companion, a dog named Blood, uses his telepathic powers primarily to find victims for his master. Meanwhile, civilization has continued, in a manner, underground. In one subterranean community called Topeka, the ruling committee forcibly extracts sperm from unwilling donors to keep the flow of new citizens going. Unfortunately they're running low on donors, so a beautiful young girl named Quilla June is sent to the surface to lure Vic underground. The gambit works; Vic abandons Blood and follows Quilla June to Topeka, where he is enslaved. Soon, though, Quilla June and several friends free Vic. They are pursued but manage to escape to the surface, where they find Blood near death from starvation; what follows is a shocking conclusion involving Vic's decision whether to save his oldest friend, and the manner in which he saves him. It's classic Ellison − furious and funny, beyond irreverent, full of androids and genetic experiments and biting criticism of the wide-eyed optimism of post-WWII America.

Nuclear war and economic collapse are all fine and well, but the kid in me still loves nothing more than a good old-fashioned zombie yarn. Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide − essentially a tongue-in-cheek 'how-to' on dealing with the undead that thrilled zombie nerds everywhere − returned more recently with World War Z. This was a series of 'oral histories' and interviews with survivors of a global war between humans and zombies. It sounds like a lark, but Brooks uses this platform to criticise government ineptitude, corporate corruption and general human short-sightedness. The narrative is inevitably episodic, but as the interviews go on a definite chronology forms. The first outbreak occurs in China, and owing to the Chinese government's secrecy and brutality, the zombie virus is able to spread beyond the borders, slowly and inexorably appearing in the rest of the world, which precipitates the titular war. Beyond being a glimmering specimen of apocalyptic fiction, WWZ perfectly illustrates the tacit agreement between writer and reader that is essential to the success of stories about the end of the world. Both Brooks and the reader agree to pretend that this is not fiction, that in fact the horrific tales of a war between humans and zombies are based in reality. This, of course, is the compact made between all purveyors and consumers of apocalypse. From the Bible onwards, the thrill of reading these stories is derived almost entirely from the wilful suspension of disbelief − the strange, implacable desire to be transported from our lives within the safety and order of society, and dropped into terrifying, barren landscapes populated by murderous androids, telepathic dogs, and hordes of shuffling, cannibalistic undead.

Friday, 5 September, 2008