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15 Influential Early Works of Apocalyptic Fiction

(Listverse)

R.U.R.
by Čapek, Karel

Call Number:
PG5038.C3 R6

Publication Date:
1921

Nightfall
by Asimov, Isaac

Call Number:
LEISURE READING FICTION ASI or PS3551 .S5 N44 1991c

Publication Date:
1941

When worlds collide
by Balmer, Edwin

Call Number:
PS3503.A45 W5 1933B

Publication Date:
1933

Machine Stops (The collected tales of E.M. Forster)
by Forster, E. M.

Call Number:
PR 6011 O58 C6 c. 2

Publication Date:
1909

Scarlet Plague
by London, Jack

Call Number:
PS3523.O46 S3

Publication Date:
1912

Ayn Rand's Anthem is a hymn to man's independent spirit and to the highest word in thehuman language - "Ego."First written in 1937, Anthem was published in England, but was refused in publication inAmerica, for reason which the reader might discover by reading it for himself. In 1946, it appearedas a pamphlet, issued by Pamphleteers, Inc., of Los Angeles. This is its first American publication inregular book form.Anthem tells the story of a man who rediscovers the individualism and his own "I" - in a world ofabsolute collectivization, a world where sightless, joyless, selfless men exist for the sake of servingthe State; where their work, their food and their mating are prescribed to them by order of theCollective's rulers in the name of society's welfare - a world which has lost all the achievements ofscience and civilization, when it lost their root, the independent mind, and has reverted to primitivesavagery - a world where language contains no singular pronouns, where the "We" has replacedthe "I," and where men are put to death for the crime of discovering and speaking the"unspeakable word."The story tells of one man who rebelled, of his struggle and his victory. Assigned to the life work ofstreet sweeper by the rulers who resented his brilliant, questioning, unsubmissive mind - hebecomes a scientist, secretly, risking his life for the sake of his quest for knowledge. In the midst ofcollective stagnation, where men toil at manual labor by the light of candles - he discoverselectricity. In the midst of eugenic planning and State-controlled Palaces of Mating - he discovers apersonal love and a woman of his own choice. In the midst of brutal morality which proclaims thatman is only a sacrificial animal to the needs of others - he discovers that man's greatest moral dutyis the pursuit of his own happiness. He endures danger, denunciation, imprisonment, torture - buthe breaks the chains of the Collective, he escapes with the woman he loves, to start a new life inan uncharted wilderness, and he reaches the day when he is able to predict that "my home willbecome the capital of a world where each man will be free to exist for his own sake."Anthem presents not merely a frightening projection of existing trends, but, more importantly, apositive answer to those trends and a weapon against them, a key to the world's moral crisis andto a new morality of individualism - a morality which, if accepted today, will save us from a futuresuch as the one presented in this story. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Call Number:
PS3535 .A547 A7 2005

Publication Date:
1938

Last Man
by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

A futuristic story of tragic love and of the gradual extermination of the human race by plague, The Last Man is Mary Shelley's most important novel after Frankenstein. With intriguing portraits of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, the novel offers a vision of the future that expresses a reaction against Romanticism, and demonstrates the failure of the imagination and of art to redeem the doomed characters. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Call Number:
PR5397 .L3

Publication Date:
1826