io9 
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 6:57 PM
Sun Nov 8
12 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors: tips@io9.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Annalee Newitz | Email
News Editor:
Charlie Jane Anders | Email
Associate Editor:
Meredith Woerner | Email
Assistant Editor:
Lauren Davis | Email
Weekend Editor:
Graeme McMillan | Email
Contributors:
Joshua Glenn
Stephen Goldmeier | Email
Ed Grabianowski | Email
Austin Grossman
Paul Hogan | Email
Lauren Davis | Email
Chris Hsiang | Email
Lynn Peril | Email
Ann VanderMeer
Alasdair Wilkins | Email
Graphic Designer:
Stephanie Fox | Email
Interns:
Tim Barribeau | Email
Julia Carusillo | Email
Alex Eichler | Email
Cyriaque Lamar | Email
Caitlin Petrakovitz | Email
Mary Ratliff | Email
Josh Snyder | Email
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
09/04/09
Much to do with having two nuclear warheads dropped on them? Ya think?
09/04/09
09/04/09
09/04/09
Every nation has a bloody history, I'm not sure America's is any more noteworthy to a non-American in this context. Britain has just grown more tired of that mindset given it's long infatuation with it in the historical past and the fact British military superiority is now a dim memory. Britain is an old man compared to the USA, and more war-weary. America seems to still find it a turn on.
@phnuggle: Of course the USA is famous for confining its wars to its own soil...
09/04/09
09/04/09
Well, for starters how about the one where we saved your ass in 1945? Or the one in which we left your empire in 1776? Or 1812?
09/04/09
09/04/09
The apocalypse comes in the form of a virus that preys on grasses of all kinds, including wheat and rye and the like. In a season Britain joins the rest of Europe and Asia in a brutal grab for what food remains on the shelves and in homes. To make sure the remaining food helps as many Brits as possible, the government nukes the largest cities.
09/04/09
09/03/09
ANY western European country (and any other country that had writing before 1500) will have a longer view of history than the US. For better or for worse. Probably the US has prospered so much for LACK of history as much as for anything else. Nobody cusses out Alabamans for some sadistic crap in 200AD....
09/03/09
The religion argument doesn't really hold water for me, because I LURVE post-apocalyptic stuff and don't care much about Christianity one way or the other. Apocalypticism isn't a reaction to Chrisitianity; Christianity is a reaction to apocalypticism. Violent apocalypses are much older than the bible.
The apocalypse isn't so much about an end than it is about a beginning; there is always *something* on the other side of the End (mostly better, but not always). The beginning after a violent End, like a nuclear holocaust, is particularly appealing to the American mind. Imagine what the average post-apocalyptic landscape looks like, and then compare it to the ideas of the Wild West. The West was and is in the American mind a place where you can get a fresh start, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, achieve the American dream; where what "really matters" is important again, the strong survive, and everything is black and white morally.
It's a lot more complicated and way cooler than how I just explained it, but I'm writing a flippin novel here and it's time to stop.
09/03/09
did a nice job of creating it as well, right down to the ubiquitous roaming packs of wild dogs. It's not an exclusively London or British thing though. Haneke's French-language film Time of the Wolf does an excellent job of evoking that same sparse sense of (implicitly) post-apocalyptic natural selection, but in a rural setting. Highly recommended.
Although I enjoyed 28 Days Later similarly employing a tone of brutal abandonment, I hadn't actually realised quite how intentional a take it was on Triffids in particular, if Wikipedia can be believed. One of my minor pet peeves is that genuine classics of popular commissioned/licensed science fiction such as the Who one mentioned above and ESPECIALLY the original Daleks story are effectively off-limits to re-examination and reinterpretation. That's also true of Wyndham's contemporarily published novels, but to a lesser extent. Thinking about it, I rather admire Boyle's appropriation of more-than-you-might-think of "...Triffids" for his zombie flick and wonder if it might be suggestive of a useful template for revisiting other legally and culturally captive works.
09/03/09
Do you think he read Wikipedia at all?
As to the imagery associated with a "British" apocalypse, it's more to do with our memories of recent history (by recent I mean the last hundred years or so) - the Blitz had an effect; as did the inexorable loss of the Empire and our loss of authority globally to (in particular) the USA.
However, as a more general rule, much of British sci-fi/fantasy deals with man's scientific arrogance gone wrong, leading to disaster (Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein, Quatermass, Triffids, etc...)
We know we're smart, but we also know we screw up.
And the yanks are coming!
09/03/09
I can't say I agree fully with his interpretation of an American apocalypse, however. If we were to look for the possible roots of such fiction in our culture, it might make more sense to consider the amount of violence in our history as the main prism through which to see it.
Consider the following: We started to formulate an identity during nine years of border setting while still colonists (1754-1763), and then came of age after an eight year war (1775-1783), which required further testing soon after (1812-1814). From there, we needed four years to examine our principles (1861-1865) during a century spent mostly suppressing the indigenous peoples within our claimed territories. Come the last 110 years, we came on to the world stage in blood (1898), had a say in rearranging the world order through blood (1917-1918), came to prominence in this order through blood (1941-1945) and spent a number of years maintaining our hold via, yes, spilling blood (1950-1953, 1959-1975, 1991, 2001-present). And these, sadly, are the busier periods we're more likely to recall when pressed, missing many minor wars in the process.
I would offer that American apocalypses are the way they are as befitting the cycles of our history: We were born and lived by the sword, and are damned likely to die by it too.
09/03/09
09/03/09
09/03/09
09/03/09
Besides, The Road is more about emptyness and solitude and that same mesmerizing beauty of abandoned landscapes and cities.
That Fallout/Mad Max/A Canticle for Leibowitz imagery was first born at the height of the cold war, when we humans first realized we could destroy the entire planet just by making a wrong desition. (besides, Mad Max was Australian!!)
09/03/09
09/03/09
Yay humans!
09/03/09
09/03/09
09/03/09
It is not just their imperialism that gives them their 'longer view', they have been a nation a hell of a lot longer that us upstart North Americans.
When studying Modern History in university I was advised to seek out the British Historians because they often had the least biased perspective.
They have some damn fine comedy and SF too.
09/03/09