Armageddon
Wednesday 23 April 2008 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Philip Dodd presents an exploration of the art, literature and culture inspired by Armageddon and how it has changed over the last 25 years as perceived threats to world security have gone from nuclear to ecological. What are the challenges to artists and writers in creating a narrative out of the complexities of climate change and how does it compare to nuclear apocalypse?
Plus a look at fiction, from the 1980s cult classic Children of the Dust to Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
The New Apocalypse
Gutted trolley car amid Hiroshima ruins
Photo by Bernard Hoffman
Time Life Pictures
Getty Images
Playlist
The New Apocalypse
In 1885, the author Richard Jefferies imagined the changes that might transpire if London were to disappear underwater and barbarism threatened to overwhelm the land.
With the invention of the Atomic Bomb, the post-war generation of mostly science fiction apocalyptic produced novels like The Drowned World by JG Ballard and On the Beach by Nevil Shute.
Climate change has superseded the threat of nuclear holocaust as our principal apocalyptic scenario, and writers are beginning to imagine stories in which in which floods and devastation confront the decimated survivors. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, won the Pulitzer Prize last year. But do these novels succeed in telling us something new and different from their apocalyptic; and what is the role of science fiction today in imagining the new future.
Philip Dodd will be joined by Maggie Gee, who has written novels about both the nuclear and the climate threat, by the philosopher John Gray and by science fiction expert Francis Spufford to talk about how fiction is responding to the 'new' apocalypse.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is published by Picador.
The Ice People by Maggie Gee is published by Telegram.
The Flood by Maggie Gee is published by Saqi Books.
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut is published by the Penguin Group.
Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson (author of the Mars trilogy) is published by Harper Collins.
The Pesthouse by Jim Crace is published by Picador
After London by Richard Jefferies is available on the Project Gutenberg database.
