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ics. In this sense, the apocalypse must also primarily be seen as a story that can make sense of an otherwise chaotic and possibly hopeless present. It can func- tion both as a moral structuring device for testing or promoting the values and alternative interpretations of good and evil of a given group, or it can simply be reduced to a piece of mass entertainment for the alienated subjects of late capitalism. The difference between the two functions or readings of the apoc- alypse amounts to the degree of consciousness and reflection involved in the telling and listening to of the apocalyptic tales. By reflecting on these different readings and foregrounding narrative forms of worldmaking with their respec- tive maps of morality, Atwood’s trilogy allows the reader to come to their own ethical conclusions about the ecological crisis through aesthetic simulations, without foreclosing any definite answers. This distinguishes her speculative fic- tion fundamentally from other tales of the contemporary apocalyptic imaginary and provides a link back to the original meaning of the apocalypse as revelation. The MaddAddam Trilogy uncovers that it is through stories that we make worlds and that there is a need for new and different stories to create better futures. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aldiss, Brian W., 1973, Billion Year Spree. The True History of Science Fiction, Garden City: Doubleday. Alkon, Paul K. 1994, Science Fiction before 1900. Imagination Discovers Technology, New York: Twayne. Atwood, Margaret, 2004 [2003], Oryx and Crake, New York: Anchor Books. Atwood, Margaret, 2010 [2009], The Year of the Flood, London: Virago. Atwood, Margaret, 2014 [2013], MaddAddam, New York: Anchor. Beaudrillard, Jean, 1994 [1981], Simulacra & Simulation, translated by Sheila Faria Glaser, Ann Ar- bor: University of Michigan Press. Benjamin, Walter, 2008, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Oth- er Writings on Media, edited by Michael Jennings, translated by E. F. N. Jephcott, Cambridge: Belknap. Bouson, J. Brooks, 2004, “‘It’s Game Over Forever’: Atwood’s Satiric Vision of a Bioengineered Post- human Future in Oryx and Crake”, Journal of Commonwealth Literature 39, 3, 139–56. Bouson, J. Brooks, 2011, ‘We’re Using Up the Earth. It’s Almost Gone’. A Return to the Post-Apoca- lyptic Future in Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood, Journal of Commonwealth Literature 46, 1, 9–26. Ferrando, Francesca, 2013, Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms: Differences and Relations, Existenz. An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts 8, 2, 26–32. Horn, Eva, 2014, Die Zukunft als Katastrophe, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Jendrysik, Mark S, 2011, Back to the Garden: New Visions of Posthuman Futures, Utopian Studies 22, 1, 34–52. Jennings, Hope, 2010, The Comic Apocalypse of The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood Studies 3, 2, 11–18. Korte, Barbara, 2008, Fundamentalism and the End: A Reading of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake in the Context of Last Man Fiction, in: Stierstorfer, Klaus / Kern-Stähler, Annette (eds.), Literary Encounters of Fundamentalism. A Case Book, Heidelberg: Winter, 151–163. Just Popular Entertainment or Longing for a Posthuman Eden? | 49www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 31–50