This week, All the Best radio asked what it means for our perception of apocalyptic events that they always happen in world capitals: Godzilla in Tokyo, The Day after Tomorrow in New York, 28 Days Later in London. Does it make it harder or easier to believe that even here in a backwater like Melbourne we could meet our doom?
The lovely Emma Koehn interviewed me about the imaginary dystopian Melbourne in A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, and also asked me about what I’d learned about Melbourne’s future while researching my new, non-fiction guide to surviving climate change. The show also features actual experts on nuclear terrorism in Melbourne. You can listen to it here.
Meanwhile, Annabel Smith‘s tremendous new Australian dystopia, The Ark, is coming out later this week. Annabel has set the apocalypse in the Australian alps, which may be a first. I’ll be interviewing Annabel on this blog a bit later on about imagining apocalypses.
Do you think the setting of dystopian novels and apocalyptic films affects our ability to imagine ‘the end of the world’? Or have you read or seen an Australian-set apocalypse that really opened your eyes?
