Welcome to Fallen Worlds, my blog devoted to Post Apocalypse fiction, television, film and games. Along the way you'll find reviews, thoughts and general pieces about the end of the world and the way our ideas about it reflect what's going on in society, politics, economics and so on. There'll be pieces about zombies, Triffids, alien invasions, and mutants as well as the more mundane likes of nuclear wars, epidemics, famines and other things. I hope to even throw in some field trip reports as I start wandering about looking at things like British nuclear bunkers, and tracking down information about some of my favourite Post Apocalypse authors. In addition I may be putting together some pieces about politics and economics and how they affect our perceptions of the end of the world.
So who am I?
I'm Steve Cotterill and I find all this stuff fascinating... even the zombies, though I do like to keep them at the back of the property (they have such sloppy table manners). I am particularly interested in the British Apocalypse, from Mary Shelley's The Last Man, through the War of the Worlds and onto the Cosy Catastrophes of the 1950s and 1960s, and into the modern day with our increasingly fragile sense of what's real. I really believe that the British stories have a different timbre to those written in the USA or elsewhere, one that is uniquely based on class and which reflects the UK's nature. Generally these are less about lone gunmen or the terrifying nature of mutation, and more about communities and horror.
But why do I like these stories? The apocalypse has become something of a monster mash over the years, and I suppose you could argue it always has been. The focus is on the strange things that arise from the apocalypse, be they the undead, mutants or something else. The heart of these stories is people though and how we react to the huge upheavals that any form of apocalypse would bring.
I find that fascinating and often intensely hopeful.
Speaking of hope, I hope you'll find the pieces I put up interesting, and come with me on this long journey through the Fallen Worlds.
