Library Notes
May 15, 2011
Cathy Brown

Authors have long been fascinated with the end of the world. Even the renowned Robert Frost wrote about it almost a century ago in his poem “Fire and Ice.” In the post-apocalyptic genre, however, most lean toward the fire and less toward the ice.

One of the most recent young adult series in the genre is the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. With casting recently announced for the main character of Katniss Everdeen in a planned movie trilogy, interest in the book series is sure to increase. In The Hunger Games, readers are introduced to the nation of Panem, which is the successor to an unknown part of the North American continent some time after a devastating war. Panem is controlled by the Capitol, located in the area of the Rocky Mountains, which originally controlled thirteen districts. However, seventy-four years before the events of The Hunger Games, District 13 rose up against the Capitol and the other twelve districts have been told that it was completely destroyed. As punishment for the rebellion, every year each of the remaining districts must send two “tributes”--one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen--to compete in the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is a fight to the death with the sole survivor and his or her family being provided a home in the Victor’s Village in their home district, while also being paraded through Panem on a Victory Tour as a reminder to the other districts of the power of the Capitol if they ever decide to rebel again. Throughout the three novels, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mocking Jay, Katniss becomes the inspiration for a new rebellion against the Capitol and the end of the Games.

Another young adult trilogy in the post-apocalyptic genre is the Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner. The two published books, The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials tell of a world that has been decimated by a solar flare and a virus called the Flare. In order to find the cure, a mysterious group called WICKED locks a group of teenage boys in a maze in a desperate attempt to find the most intelligent of those not infected. The second book picks up after the boys have left the maze, but have not yet passed the tests that WICKED deems necessary in order to find the cure. The third book in the trilogy, The Death Cure, is expected in October of 2011.

Of course, the end of the world isn’t restricted just to young adult literature. In the past two years, several adult books in the genre have been published, among them Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Justin Cronin’s The Passage. The Road takes place after an unknown cataclysmic event has caused a “nuclear winter”. Readers follow the travels of the main characters, known simply as the man and the boy, a father and son attempting to move south in order to find warmer weather. Along the way, they fight against starvation, cannibals, and disease.

The Passage is the first in a planned trilogy of novels covering not only the apoclyptic events that end life as humanity knows it, but also a century later as the descendants struggle to continue. In The Passage, the end is brought about by a virus, meant to cure all disease, which instead causes vampire-like mutations to those that are infected. Most of the novel deals with the Colony, located in present-day California. The Colonists are the descendants of children brought there by the US Army when the virus overtook North America. They subsist on century-old generators and batteries, waiting for the day when the lights go out and they are left defenseless against the “Virals,” the name given to the infected. Cronin has given his world a supernatural twist in that the Virals are connected to the original Viral that created them. Otherwise, it fits in well with the post-apocalyptic genre.