Apocalypse When? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mary Shelley

Published eight years after "Frankenstein", Mary Shelley's "The Last Man" is often claimed to be the first "post-apocalyptic" novel. It is set at the end of the twenty-first century, in a world devastated by a plague that is slowly killing off the whole population. At the time of its publication, critics were disturbed by its pessimistic tone and it was not well reviewed.

Answer: London

"After London", which was published in 1885, does not specify the nature of the disaster which causes England to become depopulated and the survivors to revert to a tribal way of life. It is most admired today for the first section of the book, which describes nature reclaiming the deserted towns and cities of England.

Answer: Death of the Earth's sun

"The Night Land" was the last major work of William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918). It describes an Earth many millennia in the future, when the sun has gone out and a few surviving humans live together in a huge pyramid-like structure known as the "Last Redoubt", besieged by mysterious creatures.

The story was highly praised by H P Lovecraft, and for readers who can cope with the bizarre pseudo-archaic prose in which it is written, the power of Hodgson's imagination creates an unforgettable picture of strange, unseen horrors. An easier read, but equally imaginative and unsettling, is his shorter novel "The House on the Borderland".

Answer: Jack London

Jack London is of course best known for his books "White Fang" and "The Call of the Wild". As the title implies, "The Scarlet Plague", published in 1912 and set in the year 2073, describes the aftermath of a devastating plague which has killed off most of humanity.

Answer: On the Beach

During his lifetime, Nevil Shute was an extremely popular writer, and had an equally successful career as an aeronautical engineer. "On the Beach" is his only "science fiction" novel. Unlike many post-nuclear war novels which are set in the far future, Shute's is set in the immediate aftermath of the war, and takes the pessimistic view that there are unlikely to be any human survivors once the radioactive fall-out has spread around the Earth.

Answer: Riddley Walker

"Riddley Walker" is written in a broken form of English, and describes how the survivors of a nuclear war have created a society and mythology based on scavenged pre-war artefacts and stories handed down by word of mouth.

A number of writers of post-apocalyptic fiction have been attracted by the challenge of writing in a form of post-apocalyptic prose, showing how language as well as human society as a whole survives in a debased and altered form. This is a difficult trick to sustain for a whole book, and some manage it better than others. Despite the challenge this provides for the reader, "Riddley Walker" probably does it best.

The other options are all characters in "Turtle Diary", another novel by Russell Hoban.

Answer: Cloud Atlas

The section of "Cloud Atlas" entitled "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After" describes a world most of whose population has been destroyed by an unspecified apocalyptic event. The inhabitants of Hawaii have regressed to a pre-technologic tribal society, although they are visited occasionally by a ship whose crew retain the modern technology that the islanders have lost.

"Cloud Atlas" is structured like a chronological palindrome, consisting of six narratives which proceed in the order "1,2,3,4,5,6,5,4,3,2,1". Each of the stories in the second half of the novel proceeds from where its counterpart in the first half left off. The other options are the titles of three of these other sections; the other two are "Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery" and "An Orison of Sonmi-451".

Answer: Road

Until the publication of "The Road", Cormac McCarthy was probably best known for "historical" novels such as "Blood Meridian", "All the Pretty Horses" and "The Crossing", set in America's recent past. McCarthy's characteristically emotionless prose is perfectly suited to this bleak tale, and "The Road" won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A film version was released in 2009.

Answer: Will Self

"The Book of Dave" describes a post-apocalyptic society whose religion and way of life is based on the writings of a deranged London tax-driver named Dave Rudman. The book alternates between an account of Dave's life in early twenty-first century London, and events in the year 523 AD (After Dave).

Answer: Ability to see particular colours

The unspecified apocalyptic event that precedes the novel has in some way affected the ability of individuals to perceive colour. Those who cannot distinguish colours at all are known as "Greys", and are the lowest on the social ladder. Those who can see purple are at the top, with blue, green, yellow, orange and red in descending order in between. "Shades of Grey" is unusual among post-apocalyptic novels in that it has a strong vein of comedy running through it, although it is less obviously humorous than Jasper Fforde's other books such those in the "Thursday Next" and "Nursery Crime" series.

NB - Jasper Fforde's novel should not under any circumstances be confused with the very different "50 Shades of Grey" books by E L James.