Page - 32 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

buster, likewise pictures the end of Earth’s capability to host human life; The Day after Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, US 2004) imagines the worst possible results of climate change that makes large parts of the planet uninhabitable – so does Snowpiercer (Bong Joon Ho, KR/CZ 2014), only here the whole world is affected; in the Disney film Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, US 2008) humanity has already abandoned earth and left the cleaning of its mess to robots. The list of popular 21st-century future fictions portraying end-time scenarios as a result of anthropogenic ecological destruction could readily be continued – there is even a name for the newly emerging genre of science fiction dealing with the devas- tating legacy of climate change: cli-fi.2 Against the backdrop of doomsday prognoses of ecological degradation and numerous other problematic future-related tendencies, it seems to be im- mensely appealing these days to imagine the end of the world as we know it, or at least the end of humanity. Many of the films and novels which feature the end times are also tagged as apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic, which refers back to the biblical story of the apocalypse yet has come to mean something very different today. Often oblivious of the original story conveying hope and revela- tion, the apocalypse in popular fiction has become a synonym for catastrophe. Andrew Tate argues that “[a]pocalypse is widely understood in the shared, pop- ular imagination as a kind of classy synonym for spectacular destruction, death on a vast scale and the collapse of all that a society might hold dear (families, cars, the comforts of home)”.3 Some contemporary works, however, still exhibit parallels to the Book of Revelation, adapted and playfully twisted to fit the ethical challenges of the contemporary historical circumstances. Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilo- gy (2004 [2003], 2010 [2009], 2014 [2013]) is a case in point which depicts the demise of human civilisation resulting from a bio-engineered plague. It differs from other popular “apocalyptic” or “post-apocalyptic” future fictions in so far as it functions as a meta-narrative on apocalyptic tales and worldmaking through storytelling. Atwood’s novels use the template of the apocalypse and at the same time foreground its story-ness while imagining possible futures de- rived from present developments. By simulating these future worlds and point- ing to their narrative constructedness, the novels further allow the reader to assess their ethical potential. In representing competing worldviews, the apocalypse and its aftermath become catalysers of the distinct maps of morality upheld and constructed by different social groups through the stories they tell. In this sense, as in the orig- inal biblical tale, the apocalypse works as a moral structuring device. However, 2 Mayer 2014, 23. 3 Tate 2017, 11. 32 | Stephanie Bender www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 31–50