Working Loscon...

[kayshapero]

"The end of the world! Or the beginning." Aughra, The Dark Crystal

Signed up to help with programming - and since this year's Loscon has an "end of the world" theme, it's occurred to me that the various ways this theme has been handled over the years might be a useful basis for a panel. Here are a few titles that come to mind right now.


Arthur C. Clarke's "Rescue Party"
Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air"
Charles Stross's "Accelerando" (fairly early in the story, at that).
Richard Mathesson's "I Am Legend" and the movies made from it.
Just About Every Zombie Movie Ever Made
Dr. Strangelove
Nevil Shute's "On The Beach"
The plethora of major disaster movies over the last few years

Anybody got more?

Comments

[mdlbear]

Arthur C Clarke's "Nine Billion Names of God" and Childhood's End.

Larry Niven's Lucifer's Hammer

Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (sort of in passing)

Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and The Starmaker (where the history of our solar system gets a whole two paragraphs, but...)

H.P. Lovecraft's "Nyarlathotep".

[martes.livejournal.com]

The book "Earth Abides."
Gore Vidal's "Kalki."
Stephen King's "The Stand" and the whole Dark Tower series in general.
"When the Wind Blows" (movie and graphic novel)
"Testament" movie

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World, The Burning World and The Winds of Time. Wait - here we go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction

[ghostwolf.livejournal.com]

Specific movies that come to mind are Armageddon, the Resident Evil series (zombies and all), The Andromeda Strain, Millennium ("This is not the beginning of the end, it's the end of the beginning") and The Satan Bug (near-miss). Books would be Niven's A World Out of Time (not the end, but serious changes and near-misses), and Michael Chrichton's The Andromeda Strain.
And let's not forget video games that have a strong component of the end of the world. Too many to name.

[kengr]

Arthur C. Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God" the short story, not the collection)

It's got the lovely lines (approximate as I'm doing this from memory):

"What? You mean like the end of the world?"

"Nothing as trivial as that."

[ghostwolf.livejournal.com]

Heh. Clarke's humour was always like that. If you aren't paying attention, you miss it; if you are, it's mind-boggling.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire and its sequels.