Hopeful Views of Dystopian Worlds

I picked up Fever, by Deon Meyer, at my bookclub, not expecting at all that it would be unlike any other of his books that I have read. No Benny Griessel thriller, but a post-apocalyptic South Africa in which survivors coalesce for survival against packs of rabid, starving dogs and pillaging bikers, to form communities – some predatory, some collaborative. It is also a post-pandemic tale, but written in 2016, before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, which was a surprise to me. The pandemic in Fever is caused deliberately, to bring down population numbers and ensure the survival of our species – but goes wrong and kills many more than was intended.

A couple of books later, I chose one of our Philip K Dick collection, Dr Bloodmoney: Or How We Got Along After the Bomb. Again, it was a random pick, and its story unexpected. This 1965 novel is sci-fi but also post-apocalyptic, taking place largely in Marin County in the United States in the aftermath of a nuclear accident caused by Dr Bluthgeld (Bloodmoney), which has killed many, contaminated many more and caused mutations in others. In it, too, small communities of survivors form, organising themselves in different ways – some militaristic, some democratic.

As a genre of writing, post-apocalypse (PA) has many elements in common, which are evident in these two works. But both books resonated with me particularly: the first because I was amazed by Meyer’s foresight of a world so like our Covid disaster and, living in South Africa, I recognised the landscape and architecture, people and personalities; the second because it reminded me of the first and because it is set during the Cold War when the West thought it was on the verge of the Third World War and a nuclear conflagration. And this is the point. With Russia beating up Ukraine, and the West providing long-range missiles to help Ukraine defend itself, prompting Russia to test a nuclear-capable missile against Ukraine, our fears of nuclear war have surfaced again. Not to mention our devastation by the horrors against humanity happening elsewhere – among them, Israel blasting the Palestinians into oblivion, sucking other Middle Eastern states into that black hole, and Sudan’s big men (two of them) battling for power, massacring their people, culture and country in the process.

The insanity of our world today seems more extreme than ever. And insanity exists in these two books, too. But they also offer some comfort. People still come together to form supportive communities. In Fever, there is the wise visionary, Willem Storm, who draws people from across South Africa to build Amanzi and restore a semblance of a stable society. In Dr Bloodmoney, Walt Dangerfield, alone in a satellite orbiting Earth, transmits readings, music and chat, which people gather to hear, at the exact time the satellite passes above them, huddling over radios manufactured from miscellaneous parts and home-built batteries. They rebuild their world with what is left, horsepower if necessary, and they rebuild it with each other. I found the sense of hope within these books consoling.