Now that we’re all waiting to see just how bad climate change is going to get, why not relax with some environmentally-themed horror ? Think of it as a catharsis.
Earlier in 2021, Kendall Review published my guest column on Ward Moore's "eco-horror" novel GREENER THAN YOU THINK (1947).
I recommend GREENER THAN YOU THINK not only because it mixes horror with black humor to great effect, but also because it doesn’t flinch — things get worse and worse and no implausible happy ending or last-minute rescue occurs.
Another memorably unflinching eco-horror story is Richard Corben’s comic strip How Howie Made It In The Real World (1970), originally published in the underground comic-book Slow Death. Corben sardonically depicted how humans dodge environmental destruction by simply refusing to see it… even to the point of choosing to live in a hallucination.
Stanislaw Lem did something similar in his (highly recommended) novel FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS (1971).
In the movie MAD MAX 2 / THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981) and its sequels, the environment has been devastated by nuclear war. Food is scarce; water and fuel are fought over in the most barbaric ways. (This is entertaining stuff, although the absence of agriculture in these movies made me wonder why the whole cast didn’t starve to death. They look suspiciously well fed, considering how little there is to eat except other people.)
Even bleaker is the 1973 movie SOYLENT GREEN (loosely based on Harry Harrison’s novel MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! (1966)). Environmental degradation combined with overpopulation turns New York into a hellhole where human life is cheap.
And after a total ecological collapse, what might come? Dougal Dixon painted a strange, unique (and gorgeously illustrated) vision of far-future Earth in AFTER MAN: A ZOOLOGY OF THE FUTURE (1981). In this fictional book of future evolution, the whole history of Homo Sapiens is a parenthesis; we exterminated ourselves and then life simply went on.
Now, the real scare is of course out there in the world. It’s a creeping kind of terror, coming at us slowly for the most part — or more abruptly in the case of floods.
What more can I tell you? There is a future, but it’s anyone’s guess how bleak it’s going to be…