This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Andyzero: Before relatively recent backstory cemented that it was always an Alternate Universe, this is what the Pokemon world was in my mind.
Tulling: Alternate of which universe?
Tanto: Ours.
Tulling: I suspected you would answer taht, but it doesn't make sense under the circumstances. An Alternate Universe is a twisted version of an existing fictional universe. A fictional world with some slight resemblances to our own which has a large number of sentient species coexisting with humans is a fantastic world, not an Alternative Universe of the real world.
Tanto: Nonetheless, it has the exact same history as our world.
Morgan Wick: Almost all shows set in the Present Day do. Are they Alternate Universes?
Tzintzuntzan: The current entry seems to argue that the only choices in an After the End story are between "badass bikers" and co, or ordinary middle-class white Americans/Brits. IIRC, Aldiss was complaining about another kind of people who get left out: ordinary people who are not badass bikers, but are not middle-class white Americans/Brits either. How many of these stories focus on ordinary poor people? Or on middle class Russians? Or people in China, or Africa, or...
Hasher Britarse Good question. I suspect the urban working class are assumed to have died in the catastrophe or else turned into gangs more quickly. Backwoods poor are often (unfairly) portrayed as dangerous rednecks who act as if they are in Scavenger World already. As English speakers, we know the Brit/US examples best; I don't know what kind of sci-fi they have in Russia and China. Can anyone help?
RossN: "It's widely held that British fiction is often cuter, cosier and quainter than its American counterparts." - is this really true? I don't believe I've heard this before (though to be fair I'm neither British, nor American). British comedy at least seems a good deal darker to me.
Earnest: It has some basis. The original american release and movie of A Clockwork Orange is missing the 21st chapter, without it the story missess Alex's epiphany that violence and rape are unfulfilling. The author even comments in a foreword that an american friend said just as much "America isn't affraid of unhappy endings, brits are softies", this was before Vietnam, by the way.
RossN: As a counter example the film Brazil which was given a happy ending(!) in the American release. If anything I've always considered the Americans to be fonder of happier endings (and situations generally) than the Brits. Blakes Seven vs Star Trek for instance.
Rose Quartz: Regardless of the genre's possible classism and racism or the differences in the science fiction of various Anglophone countries, as it stands, the entry reads more like a defense of cosy catastrophe stories than a discussion of a trope. I think most of what's there needs to be cut, and what's left needs to be reworked to be more neutral and less defensive—maybe something along the lines of...
...as a very rough draft. What do you all think?
Medinoc: When I read about The Survivors, I'm thinking about Stephen King's The Stand...
Does Lost really apply here? First off, the survivors of Oceanic 815 include a dirty cop, an Iraqi soldier/torturer, a Korean gangster, a con man, a fugitive, and an African mob boss. Not exactly your typical suburban neighbors. Second, while most of the castaways could be considered middle or upper class, they pretty much have to be to afford tickets on a trans-oceanic airline.
Madrugada: I don't think so. I cut that example, because even though the survivors are largely white and middle-class, the conditions they find themselves in are far from "cozy", and I think that "There was a catastrophe but it doesn't really affect us" is far more important of a criteria than "white, middle-class survivors" and Lost fails miserably to meet it.
What about Douglas Adams?? Arthur Dent???? hello!!!!
Madrugada: What about him? If you think H 3 G 3 should be included, say why.
- Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind isn't exactly unkind to "soft" middle-class folk.
Objection! Nausicaa takes place centuries after the primary catastrophe. Multiple civilizations have risen and fallen in the intervening time; we see a mature civilization in the story, not a post-apocalyptic rabble. We do see another catastrophe in progress later in the manga, but it doesn't end up being the kind of civilization-ending threat that this trope requires.
theorc: What the heck is On the Beach doing here? The Australians may not suffer much at first, but there is that tiny detail that in less than a year every form of life on earth will be dead from radiation exposure. That's not cosy in my book.
Madrugada: I believe that it's included because, while things are going to get real bad in a year or so, the catastrophe hasn't directly affected the way they live now. It's an interesting case, and I'm going to pull it out of the normal examples and flag it as a special case, because whether it's taken as a straight example or a subversion depends on the reader.
Robin Zimm: Is it just me, or are too many of the examples Complaining About Shows You Don't Like?
Camacan: Removed * "We Will Become Silhouettes". — it appears to be a song about an appocalypse but I can't see middle class people getting along just fine after the end.
Re Aldiss and the origin of the term "cosy catastrophe" — if it is a complaint that only the middle class are in post-apocalypse stories it's an odd complaint to make about Wyndham. Whatever you think of Wyndham's skills in depicting other classes The Day Of The Triffids main characters are middle, upper and lower class: Bill, Josella and Coker respectively. I'm a fan of Aldiss personally but I can't help but think his own works are usually wall-to-wall middle-class people, even if the settings are exotic. For example Non-Stop is a great book, but at several points I wondered if these supposedly exotic folk would break out the tea.
