End of the World as We Know It

I've always had a weakness for science fiction movies and books as well as old horror movies. But most of all, I've always been drawn to apocalyptic fiction and movies... end of the world stuff.

Tonight TNT has on Independence Day with Will Smith, Bill Pullman, and Jeff Goldblum. Classic alien invasion movie where the humans win in the end but only after almost getting wiped out altogether. Randy Quaid, abducted by the aliens, sacrifices himself in the end to destroy the ship that would destroy area 51 and Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum must fly the alien spaceship from Roswell to the mother ship to deliver the computer virus that will bring down the defensive shields that will allow the humans to defeat the aliens and only escape at the very last minute before the mother ship gets blown to smithereens in true spectacular sf special effects tradition.

Gotta love it!

My interest in all things apocalyptic, I think, goes back to the being born on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. That happened in 1945 and I was born 16 years later but that was also at the height of the cold war and the middle of all the nuclear testing. I don't know that I actually made the connection between Hiroshima and my birthday until into my teens but do know that I had also by that time already been reading dystopian literature like 1984 and Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. There was also an underlying understanding of the threat of nuclear war and the threat of communism.

And there was a certain anxiety underlying my childhood from watching the news. I remember watching the Vietnam War on the national television news. Mostly remember watching helicopters landing, blowing tall grasses around while soldiers jumped out and ran, rifles held out. Did they show many wounded soldiers being brought to helicopters on stretchers? Or is that just video I saw later that I am superimposing on the past? I doubt they (being the government) would have allowed such footage during WWII (if there had been TV) but I don't think they had as much control over the media during Vietnam so it would certainly have been possible.

What would draw anyone to stories about the end of the world? What would draw anyone to horror stories? I can only come up with catharsis. You come out the other side alive. You the reader and (usually) you the narrator of the story. Life may be forever changed but it is still life.

In most cases, you have been tested against something horrible. In the end of the world scenario it's usually communal. (When I say end of the world, I don't necessarily mean the total destruction of a planet but it could be so, but in which case someone must also escape--by the skin of their teeth! But that something so catastrophic happens--whether man-made or natural--that entire societies are left in the balance.) But horror can be much more individual and even internal. A mystery or a suspense/thriller is similar in some ways in that something has happened to disrupt the social order and balance must be returned. In a thriller, it may be that only one or two people know of the disruption and must get others to acknowledge it or must hide it all together and solve it themselves. In a mystery, it's usually about justice but not always.

No doubt humankind has thought about the end of the world for as long as they have been aware of a world that could end. The authors of every holy book certainly have. No doubt the people who lived through the black death thought about it!

And me... Weird I know. But that's me, Pinky...