The Postapocalyptic Imagination in the American West

The origins of the postapocalyptic genre are debatable, but modern fictional accounts involving a small band of survivors in the aftermath of a devastating global catastrophe seem to date from the 1880s. This article traces the postapocalyptic imagination to the American West in this era, considering especially the instability and volatility that characterized San Francisco and other Western locales in the wake of the midcentury Gold Rush. The boom-and-bust nature of enterprise in the region encouraged speculation about rapid accumulation and sudden annihilation. Robert Duncan Milne, a Scottish American author who wrote for San Francisco periodicals, emerged as one of the first figures in the world to pen a postapocalyptic fiction. And Milne’s work in turn inspired succeeding influential authors, leading eventually to books by Jack London, George R. Stewart, and Kim Stanley Robinson. This article argues that the American West might thus be considered the birthplace of the modern postapocalyptic imagination.