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Cosy catastrophe
The "cosy catastrophe" is not an intentional style of post-apocalyptic science fiction, but rather a criticism of certain apocalyptic works that were not considered as believably harsh enough for the critic's stated preferences. Stories subject to this criticism generally involve some sort of catastrophe wherein civilization comes to an end with mass deaths, but the main characters survive relatively unscathed and are freed from the constraints of vulgar civilization in their hideaway, perhaps finding a kind of quiet happiness in the changed world. The term was coined by Brian Aldiss in Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973). Aldiss was directing his remarks mainly at English author John Wyndham, especially his novel The Day of the Triffids (1951), whose protagonists did not suffer enough associated hardship from the collapse of society for Aldiss's taste, as well as other British books in the era following the Second World War. The genre has been defended though as being a valid take on more low-key catastrophes of an ecological sort, and other books have been questioned if they qualify at all - Margaret Atwood defended The Day of the Trifflids as not as "cosy" as alleged, for example.
ENGLISH LITERATURE SUCCESSFUL REPRESENTATIVES
Alfred Walter Stewart's 1923 novel Nordenholt's Million, an engineered strain of bacteria denitrifies almost all plants, causing a collapse of food supply. The plutocrat of the title establishes a haven in central Scotland for a chosen group of survivors, while deliberately wrecking all alternative refuges.
In Alfred Bester's story "Adam and No Eve" (1941), an inventor takes off in a rocket whose propulsion uses a dangerous catalyst. From outer space he sees that the entire world has been destroyed by fire in a runaway reaction caused by the catalyst. Fatally injured in a crash landing, he crawls to the sea so that the bacteria in his body can initiate new life on Earth.
In John Christopher's novel The Death of Grass (1956), a mutated virus kills cereal crops and other grasses throughout Eurasia, causing famine.
Kurt Vonnegut 's novel Cat's Cradle (1963) ends with all the bodies of water turning into "ice-nine", a fictional phase of ice that forms at room temperature.
In J. G. Ballard's novel The Burning World (1964, expanded into The Drought in 1965), pollution in the oceans creates a surface layer that resists evaporation, bringing about a worldwide drought.
John Brunner's novel The Sheep Look Up (1972) describes an environmentally-degraded world rapidly collapsing into social chaos, revolution, and anarchy.
Richard Cowper's three-volume novel The White Bird of Kinship (1978–82) envisions a future in which anthropogenic global warming has led to a catastrophic rise in sea level. Most of it takes place two millennia later.
Ursula K. Le Guin's novel Always Coming Home (1985) takes place long after worldwide disasters—apparently largely environmental though nuclear war may also be involved—have drastically reduced the population. It paints an admiring picture of a primitive society that will not repeat the mistakes of civilization. It won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and was a runner-up for a National Book Award.
Palladium Books' Rifts roleplaying game (1990) features an apocalypse caused by various natural disasters including the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano which releases a large amount of magical energy that is amplified by deaths of millions occurring during a solstice, at midnight, during a planetary alignment, creating the titular rifts that bring forth various beings and monstrosities from throughout the Megaverse.
In Octavia Butler's 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, climate change and corporatism are the human-caused reasons for societal collapse.
In the film The Day After Tomorrow (2004), based on Whitley Strieber's speculative non-fiction novel The Coming Global Superstorm (1999), extreme weather events caused by climate change invoke mass destruction across the planet, and eventually result in a new ice age.
The video game The Long Dark (2017) depicts survival in the wilderness of northern Canada during winter after a geomagnetic disaster has disabled all modern technology.
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