/lit/ - Literature

just briefly, but because it's one of these phenomena i always wonder about - the curious place in which the post-apocalyptic parallels the cyberpunk world. in the post-apocalyptic world the destruction and devastation wrought on cities is external, it comes about as a result of nuclear weapons and their explosive impact. with cyberpunk the devastation is just as intense, but the weapons are implosive - it is not that something has happened to *history* but that something has happened to *time.*

post-apoc also goes very well with americana and american culture, i think, or at least a kind of culture with recognizably american tropes, such as the wild west. true, Mad Max is an Australian film originally, but Fallout has become to post-apoc what 40K is to Catholic Space Nazis. they've taken the genre and really industrialized it, run wild with all of its possibilities. *irony* seems to work better with post-apoc, perhaps because there is something playful or even hopeful about a New World even on these terms. or maybe because after the end of the world there is a kind of releasement, a sense in which utopian or quasi-fascist plans to reconstruct the world and reclaim history and so on *always comes too late.* post-apoc takes the seductive bloom off the rose of fascism because the world is already lost and you can go ahead and LARP Caesar's Legion or whatever, that's fine. but in a world which is *still going* - our world - it's different, in a way.

just thought i would float that one out there b/c it's something i think about sometimes.