It’s the end of the world as we know it.

We’re not sure whether it was the heightened tensions between the USA and North Korea, or merely the miserable summer we endured, but this month, we decided to move on in to the post-apocalyptic world of fiction.

Hopefully, the apocalypse will remain something in fiction only.

It is hard to ignore the excellent landscape it can provide a writer looking to create a narrative that would not work in the world as we know it.

John Wyndham gave us a new meaning to flower power with The Day of the Triffids.

If ever there was an incentive not to let your garden become too overgrown, this book is it. More than 50 years old, it raises serious questions about GM crops that remain relevant.

Richard Matheson’s classic I Am Legend comes from the same decade, the fifties, as The Day of the Triffids.

It was a time when the apocalypse was a very real threat.

In this instance, one man - and his dog - appear to be the sole survivors of a pandemic that creates a plague of vampires.

There have been several film adaptations of the story itself, with The Omega Man arguably a superior movie to the more recent version featuring Will Smith.

It is also said to have inspired The Night of the Living Dead.

That’s some influence.

Post-apocalyptic worlds do appear to be rather welcoming towards the undead.

Another example is Word War Z by Max Brooks.

Its full title is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War and takes the form of a number of accounts of, well, you can probably guess the rest.

The Stand, by Stephen King, is the author’s longest novel.

The apocalypse provides the basis for a vast, sprawling narrative that helps to create what many believe may be his greatest work, although not necessarily the jump-out-of-your-skin scariest.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road tells the story of a father and son and their journey in the aftermath of the end of civilisation.

It does not have the easiest of endings, but deservedly picked up the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007.

The concept of a family struggling to stay together against a new threat caused by some cataclysmic event is a standard one.

But, in Bird Box, by Josh Malerman, you never get to see what the threat is.

Any character who does, meets with an unpleasant end.

So, if you despair at the world we live in now, dip your toe into the pool of post-apocalyptic fiction.

It could be much worse!

The Family Library is next to the children’s playground in Westmoreland Road, Douglas.

It operates as a charity and also runs the Mobile Family Library and a Schools Service.

To keep up to date on events and to find out more about the services available, check out the Family Library page on Facebook or visit www.familylibrary.im or call the library on 640650.

By The Family Library

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