Photo: Dome Genbaku ruins, declared World Heritage by UNESCO, in the "zone 0" Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945 was one of those events, as the saying goes, forever change the history of mankind. That day the Japanese city of Hiroshima was devastated by the first nuclear weapon used in war history. The scenes of utter devastation left by war crime that goes unpunished impress even today, more than 60 years later and left a deep impression that inevitably influence in all spheres of art and human creativity. With them would be born a new subgenre in science fiction, devoted to speculate on new horizons of destruction that science laid bare: the post-apocalyptic genre , commonly known as the stories of the "morning after." Because, although some of these stories in which the disaster is natural causes, or that the culprits are aliens, are exceptions to the rule that the war between superpowers would inevitably cause the collapse of civilization.
I must warn that this little article contains a few spoilers do not wiggle. Although almost all refer to the classics we've all seen / read (or should have seen / read) more than once.
already as early as 1948 , writer Aldous Huxley published one of the first stories of the genre: Mono and essence. Huxley, who complained of not having included in his famous work Brave New World is no reference to nuclear power, presents us with a world devastated by nuclear war. From New Zealand, the only area of \u200b\u200bthe planet saved from pollution, part an expedition to find in what was American disaster survivors. They found a people of mutants to the radiation has affected their sexual activity, which is now subject to periods of heat. These lender shall worship the devil, because they believe the war that destroyed the planet is a clear proof of the triumph of evil, and that Satan is the only true God. The creature has begun to take its first steps, but to start walking firmly, needed another major historical event. I needed the Cold War.
Of course, without the need of the Cold War, also have made great apocalyptic stories. By way of example, mention the novels The Drowned World of George Ballard (1962), or I Am Legend of Richard Mathesson (1954), in which the apocalypse happens by purely natural causes. But undoubtedly, are much more suggestive stories take as their starting point the self-annihilation of the human race because of his own madness and the belief that anything goes when it comes to achieving absolute power. No doubt because of the element of criticism and analysis of human psychology that they contain. And also because I never lose sight of the methods to achieve this apocalypse was already there (in fact, are still where we left them just 15 years ago, waiting patiently, knowing that again), waiting to be used by someone crazy enough for it. There was little of a lot of science fiction and in such cases. Having said this, we can understand why the golden age of the genre, except for some precursors and some works twilight cover from 60 to late 80's.
Picture: Poster of the movie On the Beach (original title On the Beach), 1959 In 1959 opens perhaps the first film that shows all the cliches of the genre: Final Hour (On the Beach) of Stanley Kramer, with two big stars like two main characters: Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner . Nuclear war has devastated the planet, and the few survivors are living as refugees in Australia, awaiting the time when the pollution eventually reaches the antipodes and all will inevitably die. One of the most memorable scenes this oppressive drama is the city of San Francisco completely deserted, where the submarine led by Gregory Peck had moved to rescue an alleged survivor, who happens to be a bottle of Coke which pushed up against a telegraph by a curtain to the wind blew, it sent the signal by chance.
Charlton Heston in 1968 , interpret a classic of science fiction, Planet of the Apes , directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, an astronaut after a long journey comes to what he believes an alien planet, where a curious fate of evolution has worked upside down, and while humans have not passed the intellectual level of Cave, the great apes have developed the intelligence to become the dominant species on the planet. Only at the end the hero will find that he has traveled in a circle, returning to the Earth itself in the future, and that the decline of the human species is the result of self-annihilation. For the history of the genre will be the image of Charlton Heston cursing humanity from the ruins of the Statue of Liberty. This film led to several sequels, along the 70's, which abounded in the same issue but only with great generosity could say that reaching the level of the series B.
the mythical final scene of Planet of the Apes (1968): "I will curse ..."
