30 June 2007TwinCities.com / Pioneer PressJulio Ojeda-Zapata
I keep expecting the world to end. As I work and eat and play, I'm hypersensitive to signs around me that society is somehow crumbling, or that the global climate is cataclysmically shifting, or that some other catastrophe is about to plunge the human race into chaos and misery.
It's a lifelong obsession fueled by Armageddon-themed novels, movies and TV series. And lately, there have been lots of these.
From Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel "The Road," recently awarded a Pulitzer and an Oprah nod, to such acclaimed movies as "Children of Men" and popular TV shows such as "Jericho," "Heroes" and "Battlestar Galactica," end-of-the-world fare seems very much in vogue.
I'm not sure what to make of this. As a geek, I'm delighted to have such a banquet. But I also fret that this media barrage is itself a sign that we are teetering on the precipice.
Look no further than Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," which terrified me with its meticulously documented argument that we're on the verge of catastrophic climate change. This is exactly the stuff I've devoured in fiction for decades - yet here it was for real.
It almost makes me sorry I had a kid.
Other recent Armageddon-type fare is a bit more far-fetched - or is it?
In "Heroes," for instance, budding superheroes recently rescued New York City from a nuclear detonation. But we are superhero-less here in the real world. How will we be saved from terrorists getting a nuclear bomb and smuggling it into a U.S. city? Is it only a matter of time? This stuff keeps me up nights.
The residents of Jericho, Kansas, didn't have superheroes to save them, either, when nuclear explosions tore their nation apart, leaving them isolated and afraid. "Jericho" so effectively showed the community's struggle for survival, especially in later episodes, that I was shocked when CBS canceled the show.
Turns out others were touched, as well. After a fan uproar, CBS revived the series for at least seven episodes. This seems to prove how believable - how relevant - end-of-the-world stories have become. Jericho could be St. Paul, or my parents' New Hampshire hamlet.
"Battlestar," too, is bitter fare. The humans populating a dozen planets are all but wiped out in a surprise nuclear strike by robotic Cylons. A relative handful of survivors in spaceships must contend with famine, pestilence, political unrest and mass murder (to name just a few sticky wickets) as they flee in a hunt for a new home (known as Earth).
Far from turning off its viewers, "Battlestar" has thrilled its geeky core viewership along with a growing cadre of converts with its implacably gritty storylines, which are often taken from yesterday's headlines. One crucial episode deals with a wave of suicide bombings. The series has been renewed for its third and final season, due to kick off in early 2008.
When I watched "Children of Men," which portrays a world in a slow death spiral because women no longer can procreate, I worried more about what we're putting in our bodies. Maybe I should stop drinking all those Diet Pepsis.
As for "The Road," I tend to boycott anything on Oprah Winfrey's book-club list, just as I avoid her touchy-feely daytime show like the, um, plague. Yet I perked right up with McCarthy's famed novel because it's about a father and son who wander a United States ravaged by an unspecified catastrophe.
This is right out of a sci-fi sub-genre once embraced mostly by geeks. Yet "The Road" is notable for its mass-market appeal. Even my wife, an Oprah fanatic but hardly a sci-fi fangirl, has read it. A co-worker who teases me and other office nerds about our sci-fi fixations, warned me not to give away the ending, as she had just bought the novel.
"The Road" touched me more than any post-apocalyptic novel, ever, and I've read countless volumes of this sort. Its ending will reduce any parent to blubbering uselessness - I was sobbing in the shower.
So I'm not sure whether to be thrilled or alarmed that more apocalyptic fare is on the way. Consider:
In "Sunshine," a movie due July 20, humanity teeters near extinction when the sun cools, plunging the planet into a new ice age.
In "I Am Legend," a movie due Dec. 14, the last man alive faces nightly assaults from former humans turned into vampire-ish types. In "The Book of Eli," a film in the works, the hero fights across a post-apocalyptic America to protect a book that can save mankind.Hmm, maybe I should have developed a lifelong obsession with baseball.
Julio Ojeda-Zapata covers consumer technology. Reach him at [email protected] or 651-228-5467.
