January 24, 2009
Last week the AMC cable channel posted a profile of our post-apocalyptic book club and conducted an interview about the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The result is embedded above.

One of the questions Kevin Maher posed to Nnenna Ogwo, Conor Stinson, and myself was what makes a good post-apoc story? After discussing the novel The Chrysalids at the most recent club meeting this past Thursday we attempted to expand on our answers and hastily cobbled together list of key components. What stood out most starkly was that these stories are at heart humanist retorts to religious millennialism.

Though the meaning of the Apocalypse in the Christian narrative is subject to debate, its pre-ordained manner and suggested finality chafes at secular millennialists. For the post-apocalyptic author, Armaggedon is the outcome of nature or human error with no salvation above or damnation below. Humankind is always bound to earthbound rules and Darwinian actions.

The post-apoc story may not focus on the causes as much as the repercussions of a calamity, but the fact that there are survivors left behind to scrap together an existence or resurrect society indicates God may only a bit player. Stripped of civilization those survivors must make extreme moral choices (a recurring theme in The Chrysalids) that question absolute right and wrong.

However that does not mean the post-apoc story is devoid of hope or salvation. The breakdown of community has human sins (posed as social excesses in the form of religious dogma or intellectual elitism) at its source, but the individual also has the potential to redeem those sins. Honestly, the kinds of tests these secular protagonists face don't differ much from those in the bible. But, for the post-apoc author, destiny is always in our hands not a higher power's.

The next book club pick is in my hands, and it will be Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. However, what would have been the February discussion will now take place on March 12 to give people extra time to read the 400 page novel. Instead, for February we will celebrate the one year anniversary of the club on Valentine's Day by showing a few short films in the spirit of our theme and the romantic holiday.
--Peter Miller