This is an electronic reprint of the original article. This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail. The end of the world as we know it. Theoretical perspectives on apocalyptic science fiction Skult, Petter Publicerad: 01/01/2019 Document Version Förlagets PDF, även kallad Registrerad version Document License Publisher rights policy Link to publication Please cite the original version: Skult, P. (2019). The end of the world as we know it. Theoretical perspectives on apocalyptic science fiction. Åbo Akademi University Press. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2020100882610 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. This document is downloaded from the Research Information Portal of ÅAU: 28. Sep. 2021 Petter Skult Petter Skult | The End of the World as We Know ItWe | 2019 as World End of the The Skult | Petter The End of the World as We Know It Theoretical Perspectives on Apocalyptic Science Fiction 9 789517 659215 ISBN 978-951-765-921-5 THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT The End of the World as We Know It Theoretical Perspectives on Apocalyptic Science Fiction Petter Skult Åbo Akademis förlag | Åbo Akademi University Press Åbo, Finland, 2019 CIP Cataloguing in Publication Skult, Petter. The end of the world as we know it : theoretical perspectives on apocalyptic science fiction / Petter Skult. - Åbo : Åbo Akademi University Press, 2019. Diss.: Åbo Akademi University. ISBN 978-951-765-921-5 ISBN 978-951-765-921-5 ISBN 978-951-765-922-2 (digital) Painosalama Oy Åbo 2019 Foreword The topic of this thesis – post-apocalyptic fiction – is the result of a strange kind of life-long, albeit unconscious, fascination with the aesthetics, ethics and epistemics of the end of civilization. One point of origin for this fascination is, no doubt, my father’s shelf, which among other works of fact and fiction contained a mint-condition copy of Barry Popkess’s The Nuclear Survival Handbook: Living Through and After a Nuclear Attack (1980). From the moment I could read (in English), I perused this rather frightening artefact from the 1980s, and its earnest and oddly compelling depiction of the destructive power of an atomic bomb. It was, of course, hypothetical – although based on both data from nuclear weapon tests and from the only actual historical use of the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the description of shockwaves, fireballs, firestorms and radioactive fallout falling on not some distant country but on your own home was telling a story that had not happened and that would, hopefully, not happen. The book’s presence in my father’s bookshelf was, of course, a literal artefact of the decades in which my parents’ generation grew up, but by the time I read Popkess’s book, the spectre of nuclear warfare had already receded. For a while, the only apparent apocalypticism came from other forms of fiction, especially television. But after the turn of the millennium, there seemed to be a change of mood from the heady optimism of the 90s. New apocalyptic winds were blowing, bringing with them a renaissance of the zombie movie and of post-apocalyptic stories of all kinds. During the first decade of the new millennium, we were once again steeped in imageries of destruction. It did not need to be the bomb – it could be a virus, or aliens, or zombies – the important thing was that human civilization as we knew it was coming to an abrupt end. Except, of course, that it wasn’t: as Popkess’s book never needed to be quickly slipped into the pre-packed emergency bag before heading down to the shelter to hide from the bombs, our current apocalyptic mood is – one can hope – just another in a long line of endlessly deferred apocalypses. Even so, the subject continues to fascinate. Hence, this thesis. Of course, inspiration is not enough. This thesis could not have happened without the support and help of a multitude of people and institutions. First of all I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Anthony B. Johnson and Jason Finch, for their invaluable help and criticism during every step of the i process. Not only did they accept my crazy proposal, they embraced it, and without them not a single word of this could have been written. I am also grateful to everyone I have worked with at Arken, both for the intellectual stimulus and for the laughs. Although it has been some time now since I regularly spent time at the office, I already look back on it fondly. Over the years I’ve had the privilege of going to a number of conferences, from Beauvais in France, to Tarragona in Spain, to Umeå in Sweden, and many more. Thank you to all the organizers and attendees for making me feel like a part of something bigger, and for invariably being so welcoming. I would like to warmly thank my pre-examiners, professors Adam Roberts and Bo Petterson, for their insightful comments that helped me during the final parts of the writing process. I would also like to thank Adam Roberts for agreeing to act as my opponent. I have had the uncommon luck of being fully funded for the duration of the writing process, thanks to the generosity of the Professor H.W. Donner’s Fund, administered by the Åbo Akademi Foundation, as well as the Åbo Akademi Rector’s Fund for the very final stretch. Most importantly I want to thank my family for their constant support, as well as my friends. You know who you are, Arflings. I thank my parents, Agneta and Patrik, for always being encouraging, and for instilling in me from an early age a love of reading. My siblings, Anna and Ante, for being total nerds. My lovely furbabies for forcing me to go outside, where all my best ideas were had. And of course Natasha, who read through the entire manuscript (one of select few). Thank you, darling, for everything you’ve done over the years. Åbo, 27.3.2019 Petter Skult ii Table of Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Post-apocalyptic fiction vs. Disaster fiction ................................................ 4 2. A Brief History of the (Post-) Apocalypse ............................................................. 8 2.1. Defining Apocalypse ......................................................................................... 8 2.1.1. The Religious Apocalypse ............................................................... 11 2.1.2. The Apocalypse of Modernity ....................................................... 17 2.1.3. First Post-Apocalypses: ‘The Last Man’ and the Culture Cycle .................................................................................................... 21 2.1.4. The Post-Nuclear Apocalypse ....................................................... 27 2.1.5. The Culture Wars............................................................................ 30 2.1.6. Into the Post-modern ...................................................................... 32 2.2. The Postmodern Post-Apocalypse ............................................................. 33 2.2.1. Post-Modern = Post-Apocalyptic? ................................................ 37 2.3. Anti-Apocalypse: Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985) .............................. 41 2.3.1. Perpetual Apocalypse: Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things (1987)...................................................................................... 50 2.4. Into the Post-Postmodern ............................................................................ 54 3. Theorizing the Post-postmodern ........................................................................... 56 3.1. The Post-Postmodern Post-Apocalypse .................................................... 59 3.2. Making Possible Worlds ................................................................................ 67 3.3. Bakhtin’s Chronotope .................................................................................... 68 3.3.1. Chronos.............................................................................................. 71 3.3.2. Topos .................................................................................................. 78 3.3.3. Personhood ....................................................................................... 83 3.4. Possible Worlds Theory ............................................................................... 90 3.4.1. Accessibility and Recentering: Marie-Laure Ryan and Thomas G. Pavel ............................................................................... 91 iii 3.4.2. Narrative Modalities – Global Constraints ................................ 93 3.5. Choosing your own path – Ludonarrative experiments ..................... 103 3.5.1. Storytelling engines – the metanarrative of narrative ........... 109 4. The MaddAddam-trilogy .......................................................................................... 111 4.1. Nostalgia for an authentic past .................................................................. 114 4.1.1. Oryx and Crake as Post-Apocalyptic and Post-Traumatic ..... 116 4.1.2. Nostalgia masking Trauma ..........................................................