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Failure of modern technology
In E. M. Forster's novelette "The Machine Stops" (1909), humanity has been forced underground due to inhospitable conditions on Earth's surface, and is entirely dependent on "the machine," a god-like mechanical entity which has supplanted almost all free will by providing for humankind's every whim. The machine deteriorates and eventually stops, ending the lives of all those dependent upon it, though one of the dying alludes to a group of humans dwelling on the surface who will carry the torch of humanity into the future.
In René Barjavel's novel Ravage (1943), written and published during the German occupation of France, a future France is devastated by the sudden failure of electricity, causing chaos, disease, and famine, with a small band of survivors desperately struggling for survival.
Fred Saberhagen goes one better than Barjavel with the Empire of the East series which starts, in the 1968 book The Broken Lands, sometime after the "Change" (with sincere nods from Boyett and Stirling), in which a defense designed to temporarily make nukes inoperative, permanently changes some of the laws of science for magic.
Steve Boyett's novel Ariel (1983, sub-titled "A Book of the Change") also has all technology—including electricity, gunpowder, and some physics principles—ceasing to function, while magic becomes real. He also contributed to the 1986 Borderland series, which investigates a return of the Realm of Faery to the world.
The Quiet Earth, a 1985 New Zealand movie notable for its visually stunning ending, follows a scientist's descent into madness after he wakes up to a world where every single member of the kingdom Animalia has seemingly disappeared. After recovering and finding other people, he realizes his experiments with energy transfers through the Earth's magnetic field are to blame, and that unless he shuts down the experiment, it will destroy the planet.
S. M. Stirling also takes a swipe at the inconstant-physical-constants field with the Emberverse series. Dies the Fire (2004), The Protector's War (2005), and A Meeting at Corvallis (2006), depict the world's descent into feudalism after a sudden mysterious "change" alters physical laws so that electricity, gunpowder, and most forms of high-energy-density technology no longer work. Civilization collapses, and two competing groups struggle to re-create medieval technologies and skills, as well as master magic. Like Boyett's novel, Stirling's features Society for Creative Anachronism members as favorably disposed survivors, and a hang glider attack against a building.
Afterworld (first aired in 2007) is a computer-animated American science fiction television series where a network of satellites firing persistent electronic pulses, combined with a strange nanotechnology, has not only destroyed most electronic technology on the planet, but also caused the deaths of 99% of humanity, and is now causing strange mutations to occur in lower forms of life.
NBC's Revolution (2012–2014) also revolved around a "change" after which the principles of electricity and physics are inoperable. However, the focus of the story was how a group of protagonists tried to get the power back on while opposing the efforts of a tyrannical militia leader to understand it first (so that he can take absolute power).
The web series H+: The Digital Series (2012-2013) depicts in part, the aftermath of a world in which a computer virus that infected a popular brain-computer interface killed one-third of the population, leading to a breakdown in order and the lack or shortage of electricity and other modern conveniences.
All Systems Down (2018) is an American novel which describes a cyber war that cripples Western infrastructure, resulting in the collapse of society.
Robert Harris's novel The Second Sleep (2019) is set in a fundamentalist agrarian society several centuries after the collapse of global civilisation, which is inferred to be the result of a sudden breakdown of the internet, possibly as the result of cyberwarfare.
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