The End: Surviving the World Through Imagined Disasters

Author: Katie Goh

Throughout history, apocalypse fiction has explored social injustice through fantasy, sci-fi and religious imagery, but what can we learn from it? Why do we escape very real disaster via dystopia? Why do we fantasise about the end of the world?

The word “apocalypse” has roots in ancient Greek, with apo (“off”) and kalýptein (“cover”) combining to form apokálypsis, meaning to uncover or reveal. In considering apocalypse fiction across culture and its role in how we manage, manifest and imagine social, economic and political crises, Goh navigates what this genre reveals about our contemporary anxieties, and why we turn to disaster time and again.

From blockbusters like War of the Worlds to The Handmaid’s Tale and far beyond, we venture through global pandemics to the climate crisis, seeking real answers in the midst of our fictional destruction.

Let’s journey to the end.