On January 10, 2026, Kasie and Rex took on the appeal of apocalypse. Here are the show notes:

Topic: The End is Near

Agenda:

• Quick catch up
• Why is post-apocalyptic fiction so popular?
• What are the key elements?
• How can you do it?

Segment 1

The appeal of the apocalypse. Seems like everyone takes a stab at writing about the end times. What does it look like in your imagination?

Let’s remember that a lot, a LOT of what we have now was once imagined by writers. For example, Fahrenheit 451 predicted headphones, Frankenstein imagined transplants, Isaac Asimov predicted the rise of computers (link). Apple watches, self-driving cars, even video chatting were all predicted by writers who imagined a better way of doing everything.

They may not have had the science or engineering to make it happen, but writers certainly started the process by envisioning and then describing the technology that would come to be.

Okay, so then if writers are imagining dystopia, does that mean it’s inevitable? And why wouldn’t they spend more time focusing on utopia instead?

For the truly literary, there’s this list of Booker Prize dystopian fiction, many of which will have gone without your commercial-fiction sniff.  It does crown Margaret Atwood the reigning monarch of dystopian fiction after The Handmaid’s Tale and its sequel, The Testaments, were made into a TV series. 

This Wikipedia list probably better matches the ones that come to mind immediately:

Segment 2

Okay, so what are the elements of dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction? (link)

There’s typically some kind of centrally-planned organizational design that suppresses any who would not fit the categories planners have designed. The Divergent series focuses on that. 

You’ll have kid warriors, helpless adults, resources that have been fully exhausted, broken infrastructure, desolation, survival as the priority, a lack of community and trust.

Segment 3

So why do readers love it? There’s a kind of catharsis in imagining the worst-case-scenario. It reminds us that things aren’t really that bad. Some other reasons (link):

• Reflects current anxieties and fears: deportations, censorship, authoritarianism
• Exaggerates current crises: climate change, war, social breakdown
• Examines technology: what is the role of ever-faster, ever-more-invasive technology?
• Reflects political polarization: authoritarian regimes, globalism, populism, us-vs-them
• Demonstrates a desire for resistance: hope, goodness, triumph of the human spirit

Dystopia simplifies complex social, political, and ecological forces. We did an episode on the PESTEL analysis for worldbuilding and dystopian novels do this, they imagine the Political, Economic, Sociocultural, Technological, Environmental, and Legal ramifications of whatever the story’s “big bad” is.

Segment 4

How to do it? Maybe start with the big bad? What, if you were thinking about the future, is your biggest fear? Is it total state control and the loss of liberty? Is it magic or some other power concentrated in the hands of a specific group?

Certainly most dystopian literature is about power, and how that power is used to advance some causes and dispel others. So what is the cause those with the power are trying to advance?

I like this blog for being practical about some fundamentals:

• Don’t imagine what could be, find what actually was and say, “what if it happened here? Now?”
• What horror are we currently living in? The Hunger Games: what we’re already doing to teenagers: turning their suffering into entertainment and watching as they suffer.

Read that blog. It’s gold.