Just Finished Reading: The End of the World and Other Catastrophes edited by Mike Ashley (FP: 2019) [328pp]
I don’t know if it says something deep (or disturbing!) about me, but I think one of the great pleasures of reading Science-Fiction is reading about the ‘End of the World’ in all its countless variants. Of course, people have been predicting the End for as long as there have been other people around to hear the ‘prophesy’ shouted from the rooftops or held high on placards. The great thing about fictional representations of the End is that we get to see and experience it for ourselves. Obviously, I’m not the only one fascinated in seeing things fall apart or there wouldn’t be a whole sub-industry catering to lovers of the zombie apocalypse or whatever else is the disaster of choice. Of course, WHY exactly so many hold this fascination is a whole other topic and, probably, points to some deeply troubling things in Western culture. But I digress... (as always).
This was my third outing with the British Library Science Fiction Classics short story collections (more to come!) and, I think, one of the best ones. The 13 stories run from 1889 to 1956 with the preponderance of tales being published before 1930. Being mostly British SF its interesting how many of them focused on the destruction – and sometimes the utter destruction – of London, rather than the usual target of such things: Paris. My favourite of those was ‘The Freezing of London’ (1909) by Herbert C Ridout where a scientist demonstrates his super-weapon for a disbelieving Ministry of War with disastrous consequences for the capital of the Empire he’s trying to defend. It was also interesting just how many stories revolved around scientists, either gone mad with power or simply unaware or unconcerned about the consequences of their breakthroughs such as ‘Within an Ace of the End of the World’ (1900) by Robert Barr, where the need for more Nitrogen fertilisers to feed the worlds growing population causes the gas level to drop in the atmosphere and being replaced by oxygen with the usual disasters to follow (plus an interesting look at the effects of oxygen narcosis!). The archetypal Mad Scientist was represented in spades by ‘The Madness of Professor Pye’ (1934) by Warwick Deeping, where the eponymous Professor uses a breakthrough in atomic science to make all of the annoying stupid little people go away and leave him alone. Interestingly the heroes of the hour where a scientist from Manchester and a pioneering lady pilot. Even more interesting was a cameo from Benito Mussolini himself in a very positive role! Finally, I must mention ‘The Great Crellin Comet’ (1897) by George Griffith where an approaching comets impact with the Earth is averted by a projectile containing 1.5 tons of explosive!!
Overall, I enjoyed this collection quite a lot. As always there were a few weak stories but despite their general age the quality was surprisingly high. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in classic SF or the End of Everything.
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11 comments:
This would be a fun one. Being an Amerikansi, most of the disaster movies/books I've read have always involved the destruction of New York or DC. (More NYC than DC, I think....telling as to where the power really lies.)
It was fun, yes. There is one story based in the US which was a bit long but quite good - based several hundred years after an unspecified collapse of the West.
I just finished _Light from Uncommon Stars_ by Ryka Aoki. It had a small element of the end of the world in the form of the end of multiple worlds, and the end of a galactic empire due to the End Plague, an awareness plague that causes worlds to die. I’m not describing it well, but I really enjoyed the book and the End Plague describes how and why worlds die.
@ V V: That's a new book/author to me. Sounds interesting though... I don't really read as much SF as I'd like these days - especially more modern novels - and am always looking for new stuff to try out.
I’m in a sci-if book club with college classmates. They’re total sci-if geeks and I just read what they select each month. I think this one was an award winner. My favorites so far are _The City we became_ series by N.K. Jemisin, and the _Between Earth and Sky_ series by Rebecca Roanhorse.
I'm largely out of touch with modern SF these days. I checked my reading recently and most of my SF reads have been pretty old - the most 'modern' being around 10-15 years old. I do have a few more recent publications but, these days, tend not to pick up many. I'll see if I can expand on that a little more....
I’m enjoying the modern books more than the older ones. Other than Ursula Le Guin, most of the older books were written by men and the newer ones were written by women. So I don’t know if that’s why I found them more interesting or just that the writing styles seem to be different. I’ve found the modern ones to be more approachable for the reader, and the characters seem more three dimensional.
Up till the 1960's most SF was directed at teenage boys (or at least young men). Only with the New Wave did it become generally more adult and more serious, so you'd have much more reference to drugs, sex and violence plus (of course) more radical politics. I think from the 60's onwards you got many more women authors in the genre - a trend that has been growing ever since.
Modern SF is FAR more gritty and realistic than the earlier stuff. I think Cyberpunk is probably largely responsible for that trend. Characterisation has also changed over the decades. In the older SF the characters tended to be tiny figures on a BIG SF landscape who were there mostly to gawp at the 'special effects' and provide someone for the reader to focus on and identify with - hence the larger than life male heroes of the time. As SF (and its readership) matured and diversified the landscape got progressively smaller and the characters grew in size, stature and complexity. The Sf of 2020 is *light years* away from the SF of 1920 - which is part of the charm of earlier stuff to be honest.
You should be in our book club. They talk about all this too. They discuss authors, early works, compare authors, worlds, and I jot notes on books to read they they’ve all read years ago so maybe I’ll get more of an understanding when they discuss other books.
[grin] I wonder if I could out geek the geeks? I've been reading SF for 50 years now, so a LOT of the classics got read in my youth and early 20's. There's still *huge* wholes in my reading though - certainly authors I've never read never mind individual books. These days my fiction is mostly historical and crime as you can see from my reviews. Our conversation actually prompted me to check through one of my 'To Be Read' piles looking for more modern SF. I found *some* but not a huge number. I'll see if I can schedule at least some of them later as well as salting a few more into each year.
If you're looking for SF Foundational texts (pun intended) these lists should help:
https://cyberkittenspot.blogspot.com/2022/04/pre-blog-classic-sf-part-1-with-recent.html
https://cyberkittenspot.blogspot.com/2022/04/pre-blog-classic-sf-part-2-before.html
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