Every culture and religion seem to have their own story about the end of the world. People seem to be strangely fascinated with potential end-of-the-world theories. Take the Mayan calendar, for example. Their calendar ended when the stars were in the same position in the sky as when the calendar started – one complete cycle; not the end of the world. Yet people have turned it into one of the biggest end-of-the-world stories of our time.
This obsession with the end of the world as we know it also spills over into our literature, movies, and television. I could name dozens of stories and shows that include this theme. I have written several of my own.
Dystopian stories are also popular; especially dystopian stories with a post-apocalyptic setting. What is dystopian fiction? It is a story about a society in a repressed or controlled state. According to this blog dystopian stories are more popular than they have been in 50 years. Does that also correlate to the current surge in popularity of post-apocalyptic fiction? Why do you think society tends to gravitate to these types of stories?
Not sure if a story is dystopian or post-apocalyptic? Here is a handy flow-chart.
Read my writing samples | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook
