io9 
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San Francisco, 10:37 PM
Thu Dec 3
28 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/30/09
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert Frost, 1920
I don't think the conceptual point of the missing apocalypse developed in the 90s. Note also Teasdale's "There Will Come Soft Rains" from the same year, where the only description is "war," not why this one was wholly destructive. What I think is more at hand is the "science" in science fiction. Especially for a purist, the lack of an explanation strikes as good as "a wizard did it." That's not going to cut it for a lot of people.
Likewise, there's the question of how much the event matters. Zombies aren't bombs. If you just want to hit a reset button on human society, it's not really worth dwelling in the details thereto. On the other hand, something like SF is going to frequently maximize on those details. So it's less of a dip and more of a peak before.
Which is dangerous to write, because I think it risks coming off as overly critical of not explaining. I actually prefer not explaining, for another reason, which may (to reverse positions) explain the 90s dip.
One of the more salient criticisms of the Watchmen movie (and by extension the comic) was that it managed to be both hopelessly naive and overly bleak. The Cold War taught an important lesson, namely that stuff just keeps going on. It's never as dramatic as all that. We didn't destroy ourselves, despite how close we may have actually been, which gives a sheen of the unrealistic to any situation where we do.
This is not quite that it's cliche. It's almost the opposite. It's a realization that the whole necessary system is just that more obnoxiously complex. #apocalypse
10/29/09
10/29/09
Because I wonder if the breakdown in the pattern could be attributable to a rise in the volume of post-apocalypse fiction muddying up the waters. #apocalypse
10/30/09
But yes, up till the 1950s there aren't nearly as many pa books being churned out - volume peaks in the 50s and in the 80s, if I remember correctly.
10/29/09
But I actually liked seeing how everything got destroyed and reading all the processes that caused the chain of events and actually seeing happen! :[
Besides, once you finish the disasters, it usually gets resorted to some kind of "new beginnings" morality that everyone must follow... #apocalypse
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10/29/09
I compromised by quoting him all over the place.
10/29/09
Another interesting thing on that map - there's NO apocalyptic fiction during most of WWI, and the WWII period's dominated by "unexplained apocalypse" stories. #apocalypse
10/29/09
10/29/09
Maybe in a world still run by the baby boomers the how is not just less relevant but irrelevant to the occurrence of the end of the world. #apocalypse
10/29/09
Terry Brooks' World of Shannara is a great example of that. He revealed that the series was set in a post-apocalyptic world, and further expanded on how this happened in his Word and the Void series.
Any excuse for me to preach the word of Terry. #apocalypse
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10/29/09
yes, we're now very scared of "random terrorist attack striking your area", or perhaps "crazy extremists launch a biological attack that spreads to the whole world"....but the day of Mutually Assured Destruction has passed #apocalypse
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Of course, that without taking away merit to real world events or developments. #apocalypse
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10/29/09
But the Hindu concept of Kali Yuga (the period we're currently living, which is as far from the golden age as you can get) is most definately older than the British or Muslim occupations. #apocalypse
10/29/09
The Hopi, Anishinabe, and Lakota eschatological prophecies are also interesting. Leslie Marmon Silko depicts one apocalyptic (nuclear) vision in a dream sequence in her amazing book Ceremony. #apocalypse