Link: No Fear of the Future.
Alas, as the Hurricane Katrina disaster showed, typical mass catastrophes aren't so cozy for the victims, and upper middle class professionals loading the kids in the Volvo and heading to the Four Seasons Houston don't really qualify as Hestonian lone heroes. Watching the news coverage in 2005, as the disaster movie expectations dissipated while the grim scene of abandonment and Hobbesian disorder played out, you could almost hear the gears grinding in the establishment meme machine. (I am still waiting for the installment of Grand Theft Auto: New Orleans, with the cheat code that turns your 'Cuda into a swamp boat.)
The private yearning of all of these narratives is some vestige of community (and even love) to crack through the despair like a tiny beam of light on a cloudy day. But what happens to the literature of apocalypse when it feels like the apocalypse is actually happening?
