The apocalypse – the literal end of the world – has long captured humanity’s dark imagination. Is it because the end of life on Earth is so impossible to comprehend, or that it feels so frighteningly close at hand? I personally enjoy the terrible dread of dropping into a world near enough to my own that the path it takes to destruction is unsettlingly familiar. However, I also seek out the more personal, poetic explorations of the concept of “apocalypse”, when what is popped is the intimate bubble of our own reality.

Black Wave by Michelle Tea review – a rollicking apocalypse fantasy Read more

Apocalypse films and TV shows keep me on the edge of my seat, heart giddily racing – The Walking Dead, where the horrors perpetrated by the living outpace the deeds of the (un)dead; World War Z and 28 Days Later occupy their own space in my psyche. But as captivating as these flicks may be, it’s the apocalypse in literature that really mesmerises with its ability not only to detail the poignant, terrifying elements of The End both internally and externally, but for its potential to explore it as metaphor. Perhaps the reason we are so curious about the big apocalypse is that so many of us have sustained our share of tiny ones.



I wrote my book Black Wave as an exploration of an actual, environmental apocalypse, as well as to plumb my own personal apocalypses: the times that my world felt irrevocably changed, some part of it absolutely gone, in the ending of a long relationship or a reckoning with alcoholism.

Here is a collection of literary apocalypses that will stun you with their visions of ultimate endings both small and catastrophic.

1. The Stand by Stephen King

My apocalyptic first love. An epic tale about the ultimate battle of good and evil in an America devastated by weaponised influenza. Told through multiple perspectives, we watch the continued breakdown of both humanity and the planet. I remain haunted by the image of Trashcan Man, radiation-poisoned, dragging a nuclear warhead through the desert.

2. 100 Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses by Lucy Corin

In this collection of vignettes, apocalypses take the form of menstruation, PTSD, a dinner party, infanticide and other scenarios fantastic and mundane. Corin’s voice is poetic, sometimes stark and always clever. Some apocalypses wash over you like an emotion or a dream, while others, such as Godzilla vs the Smog Monster, grip you with their all-too-realism.

3. Children of Men by PD James

Don’t get too comfortable, England. While the US’s current political horror show reaches its logical conclusion in many of the titles below, this novel of mass infertility, deranged government, exploited immigrants and war could be the dystopia lurking in the UK’s future. James selected 1995 as “Year Omega”, when things began to fall apart. Could she have been but a couple of decades out?

4. Tenth of December by George Saunders

If you love Black Mirror, this collection is for you. Saunders’ grip on how today’s technological folly may lead to tomorrow’s grotesque inhumanity is both hilarious and completely disturbing. Beware of these stories; their combination of casual future horror and doddering human vulnerability will maim your heart.

5. What Becomes Us by Micah Perks

The apocalypses of the past haunt the present in this magical novel narrated by twin foetuses. The ghost of Mary Rowlandson, a white colonist captured by Native Americans during King Philip’s war, has seemingly possessed Evie, a pregnant schoolteacher on the run from an abusive husband. But it’s not only Evie being ghosted – her entire community is bound up in this moment of violent history. “The hem of the world has ripped open,” Rowlandson thinks. “The seam has broken and things I cannot fathom have fallen through.” I can think of no better way to explain an apocalypse.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Don’t get too comfortable, England … a still from the film version of The Children of Men. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

6. Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

Amid the counterculture of a war-drunk America on the verge of collapse we meet Della, a vegan cafe worker who calls in bomb threats in her downtime. When bombs actually explode at Della’s targets, things get heavier and more confusing. This Philip K Dick-ish novel takes place in subcultures familiar to many, within a heavily mediated America that is all too recognisable.



7. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Interest in this feminist classic is growing, for reasons good (an upcoming Hulu adaptation) and horrific (a Trump presidency with a cabinet of white men who seem happy to make this fiction a reality). In a future America taken over by totalitarian rule, women have lost all autonomy and are used as reproductive slaves in a time of decreased fertility. Flashbacks to terrible turning points, such as when women’s ATM cards are suddenly shut off, are chilling.

8. Gutted by Justin Chin

Can a poem be an apocalypse? Poet Justin Chin, who died in 2015 from complications of Aids, makes a potent case for the power of poetry to devastate and enlighten. The bulk of this collection explores the intimate apocalypse of the death of a parent, the poet’s father, but Chin never lets you forget that life with HIV can be its own apocalypse, experienced daily.

9. Zone One by Colson Whitehead

If you like your zombie apocalypse brainy and urban, check out this masterpiece. New York City is recovering from an undead Armageddon; Mark Spitz (his name borrowed from the Olympic swimmer) works as a “sweeper”, taking out remaining brain-thirsty zombies and their comatose victims. The surviving population flounders in the throes of PASD (post-apocalyptic stress disorder); flashbacks provide scale as to how far the culture has fallen. Haunting, with pockets of sly humour.

10. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert’s environmental journalism for the New Yorker has long been sounding the alarm of environmental catastrophe. In this nonfiction bestseller she engagingly details the planet’s natural history of extinction, building toward the damage – probably irreversible – that humanity continues to do to its home. Unlike the other titles, the fear this story inspires cannot be shrugged off as fiction.

