The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) movie

The Day the Earth Caught Fire, a 1961 British movie, was co-written, directed and produced by Val Guest, better known for his movie The Quatermass Xperiment. The film's doomsday scenario has the Soviet Union and the United simultaneously exploding nuclear bombs with devastating consequences: the Earth's axis is not only tilted to produce bizarre weather patterns due to the shift of the equator, but the Earth's orbit is also changed and it's sent on a path towards the Sun. The movie, in glorious black and white, is notable for the red tinted sequences to simulate the heat of a truly scorched Earth. The film also has some great effects of a dried up Thames River in London, England.

The Doomsday Key (2009) novel

The Doomsday Key (2009) novel by James Rollins seesaws between the past and present and a threat to mankind's existence locked within an artifact called the Doomsday Key

City of Ember (2008) movie

The tween novel City of Ember: The First Book of Ember (2003) by Jeanne DuPrau appears to have translated well into a movie adaptation starring Bill Murray as the Mayor of Ember, with the two young protagonists played by Saoirse Ronan in the role of Lina Mayfleet, a messenger, and Harry Treadaway as Doon Harrow, who works in the underground Pipeworks. Tim Robbins is the other big star and he plays Doon's father, Loris Harrow, an inventor of gadgets and contraptions.

I was particularly struck by the ominous, opening voiceover: "On the day the world ended the future of mankind was carried in a small metal box." The City of Ember reminded me throughout of the computer game Fallout 3 and the Vault where people lived and didn't know that there was a post-nuclear holocaust world outside.

Doomsday (2008) movie

The 2008 movie Doomsday is about a virus that's hit the United Kingdom and threatens the rest of humanity with extinction. Except for setting this in the future and giving it a science fiction spin, does this not sound a lot like 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007), the zombie-laden horror films also set in the same location. Well, ok, they aren't really zombies in the latter two films, nor are there any in Doomsday, just very angry, sick people who have to be killed before they tear innocent, unaffected people apart.

The main plot of the movie, set in the year 2035, is about a woman soldier played by Rhona Mitra who leads a team back into Glasgow, the original vector for the spread of the virus, to try and find a cure for the virus that the politicians believe exists based on the satellite evidence of survivors first seen in 2032.

The Core (2003) movie

In the 2003 movie The Core, Earth's core has stopped spinning and within the geomagnetic force to which some forms of life have adapted, not only do mysterious catastrophes begin to occur but at least one geophysicist has figured out what's going on. Even more unbelievably, not only is there a device capable of reaching the Earth's core, an unlikely plan to restart its rotation by exploding nuclear bombs is devised. Since the United States Army had caused the Earth's core to stop rotating, it's totally up to U.S.A. technology and heroes to spin it up again save us all from doomsday.

Waterworld (1995) movie and novel tie-in

On a future Earth the polar icecaps have melted and civilization has vanished, with most land being submerged. Pockets of people exist on relics of floating vessels and whatever parts of land are above the waves. In the 1995 post-apocalyptic movie Waterworld and the novel tie-in by Max Allan Collins, Kevin Costner stars as a drifter in a trimaran who aids a woman and a young girl who are trying to find a mythical place called Dryland.

The Road (2009) movie

Based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, the 2009 movie The Road sounds like a cheerless vision of a post-apocalyptic world in which a father and son struggle to find a place they can call home.

The Last Night of the World (1951) short story

Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors and he too has written his share of end-of-the-world stories. This one gets right to it in the title and it is literal to its meaning. In 1951, "The Last Night of the World" was pegged at October 19, 1969. But we're still here.

The Rest is Speculation (2009) short story

Eric Brown's short story "The Rest is Speculation" was first published in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF edited by Mike Ashley. The story is compelling and mindblowing indeed as we witness the tragic and grand end of Earth and the solar system while simultaneously witnessing the birth of a new universe, about which, as the title says, the rest is speculation.

Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (2004) article

John Joseph Adams, the editor of the short story anthology Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (2008), published an article in the Internet Review of Science Fiction titled "Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction" (January 2004). The article contains a bibliography of essential novels, short fiction, anthologies and "other recommended works."

Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction (2003-) bibliography

Paul Brians, a Professor of English at Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, first published in 2003 an online "comprehensive survey of fictional depictions in English of nuclear war and its aftermath" titled Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction.

Fuel computer game

The computer game Fuel is set in a future North America modeled on parts of the Pacific Northwest, California and possibly Nevada. Global warming has wreaked havoc with weather systems and vast territories have been abandoned in the face of environmental disasters. Youthful drivers have taken over these areas and race a wide variety of vehicles, including muscle cars, motorcycles, ATVs (called quads in the game), monster trucks and SUVs. Somehow, there's always another cache of fuel around the next tree or bush or on the top of the many abandoned buildings.

Half-Life 2 computer game series

The Half-Life 2 computer game series is set on a future Earth that's been taken over by an alien group known as The Combine from another dimension, elsewhere in the universe or even another universe. This invasion occurred after a portal was opened into that dimension or other place during the action in an earlier game called Half-Life (1998). Half-Life 2 was released in 2004 and a subsequent trilogy of episodes started appearing in 2006 (Half-Life 2: Episode One) and 2007 (Half-Life 2: Episode Two). Half-Life 2: Episode Three has not been released as of August 2009.

Fallout computer game series

The first Fallout computer game was released in 1997, Fallout 2 was released in 1998 and Fallout 3 was released in 2008. The game is set in the 22nd century but the world resembles what we imagined a post-nuclear world war would look like in the 1950s.

On the Beach (1957) novel

Australian author Nevil Shute's On the Beach published in 1957 during the first decade of the Cold War capitalized on Western fears of a nuclear war that would destroy North America and pollute the rest of the world with deadly radiation. The bulk of the novel is set is Australia.

The Drowned World (1962) novel

Science fiction authors on occasion mimic catastrophes of Biblical and scientific proportions by projecting from current conditions and imagining, as J.G. Ballard did in his 1962 novel The Drowned World, a global flood and extreme weather conditions caused by melted icecaps induced by solar radiation. The novel was expanded from a novella published in a magazine the same year.

Armageddon (1941) short story

Fredric Brown specialized in short stories with a surprise ending. In his 1941 tale "Armageddon" a boy at a magic show manages to save the world from certain satanic doom with something very special inside his water pistol. And for that he gets punished by his father.

History Lesson (1949) short story

Venusians visit an Earth in the far future that is still experiencing a devastating, global ice age. What they discover hidden atop a mountain cave that has survived the glaciers will both stun and amuse you. Arthur C. Clarke's 1949 short story "History Lesson" is a true gem.

The Hammer of God (1993) novel

You'll notice that fiction about doomsday that associates God with the event may use either the word hammer or fist. Arthur C. Clarke's novel The Hammer of God is set in the 22nd century where the technology isn't much better than it is today at stopping a giant asteroid headed to Earth because Murphy's Law works equally well in the future as it does today.

Lucifer's Hammer (1977) novel

Science fiction authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer examines what would happen if a comet hits the Earth. It's a terrific read.

2012: The War for Souls (2007) novel

Whitley Strieber's 2012: The War for Souls continues his 2006 novel The Grays. In 2012, he couples the Mayan prophecy of the end of the world with an alien invasion.

Field Guide to the Apocalypse (2005)

Meghann Marco's Field Guide to the Apocalypse: Movie Survival Skills for the End of the World is a humorous examination of the kinds of post-apocalyptic worlds we can expect and how to survive in them.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (2008) anthology

Edited by John Joseph Adams, Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse is an anthology of stories about human survival after the collapse of civilization through one means or another. The story dates are their copyright dates. The anthology includes a bibliography of post-apocalyptic fiction. The book's Web site includes the edictor's introduction to each story, story excerpts, information about the story authors and a book video trailer created by Tobias S. Buckell, with music by Jack Kincaid.

The stories are:

"The End of the Whole Mess" (1986) by Stephen King
"Salvage" (1986) by Orson Scott Card
"The People of Sand and Slag" (2004) by Paolo Bacigalupi
"Bread and Bombs" (2003) by M. Rickert
"How We Got in Town and Out Again" (1996) by Jonathan Lethem
"Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels" (1973) by George R.R. Martin
"Waiting for the Zephyr" (2002) by Tobias S. Buckell
"Never Despair" (1997) by Jack McDevitt
"When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" (2006) by Cory Doctorow
"The Last of the O-Forms" (2002) by James Van Pelt
"Still Life with Apocalypse" (2002) by Richard Kadrey
"Artie's Angels" (2001) by Catherine Wells Dimenstein
"Judgment Passed" (2008) by Jerry Oltion
"Mute" (2002) by Gene Wolfe
"Inertia" (1990) by Nancy Kress
"And the Deep Blue Sea" (2005) by Elizabeth Bear
"Speech Sounds" (1983) by Octavia E. Butler
"Killers" (2006) by Carol Emshwiller
"Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus" (1988) by Neal Barrett, Jr.
"The End of the World as We Know It" (2004) by Dale Bailey
"A Song Before Sunset" (1976) by David Rowland Grigg
"Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers" (2007) by John Langan

Nemesis (1998) novel

Kind of a Da Vinci Code meets Revelations, Bill Napier's thriller Nemesis is about an asteroid of that name headed to Earth ... or is it. A 17th century Latin manuscript somehow figures in the plot. Not content with blowing up the asteroid, the Americans want to blow up the Russians instead.

No Morning After (1954) short story

In his darkly humorous look at doomsday, "No Morning After," Arthur C. Clarke has a telepathic race of extraterrestrials contact a man to warn him of the Earth's imminent destruction from its sun going nova. In order to save the Earth's population, the aliens will create wormholes all over the Earth and through which people can enter to instantly find themselves on a new world. All the contactee has to do is inform others of what to do. Due to his personal problems, however, things don't go as planned for the aliens, except for the part about the sun exploding just as they had calculated it.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) novel

Considered one of the finest post-nuclear apocalyptic novels, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., can be tedious at times. But if you have not read any doomsday fiction before, this is not necessarily the work to start with. The beginning is a lot better than the middle and conclusion.

The Nine Billion Names of God (1953) short story

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), one of my favorite science fiction authors, like several other sci-fi authors, has written his share of short stories and novels around the general theme of planetary destruction, the destruction of civilization as we know it, or far-future societies on the verge of experiencing their end. One of his best short stories, first published in 1953, on the theme of not just planetary destruction but the destruction of the universe is "The Nine Billion Names of God." In this story Tibetan monks utilize modern technology (a device Clarke calls an Automatic Sequence Computer) to complete their list of all the names of God. When their work is done, the world will end.

Deep Impact (1998)

Quite possibly the finest asteroid or comet impact movie made in the 20th century, this movie also starred Elijah Wood prior to his Lord of the Rings trilogy. A comet or asteroid heading to Earth can't be stopped despite actor Robert Duvall and his astronaut crew's best attempt to blow it up. Once again it's up to the U.S. government to save humanity from extinction by randomly selecting through a lottery system 800,000 ordinary citizens as well as 200,000 of the elite (scientists, doctors, artists and so on). These million get to live out this extinction event in caves. A ray of hope, however, is offered at the end when Wood and his girlfriend, who hasn't been selected for the caves as Wood's family was, outrace a giant tsunami and reach the safety of a hilltop.

This was not the only planetary impact movie of the year, as Bruce Willis starred in the Biblically titled Armageddon, a much less realistic depiction of what might happen.

Independence Day (1996)

Roland Emmerich wrote and directed the alien invasion saga Independence Day tied to the U.S. Independence Day and that starred Will Smith. The Earth seems doomed by superior exterrestrial technology, but the American way of life must go on and so it does. Somehow the U.S. fighter jets all seem to work perfectly. Why is it, I wonder, that the aliens always pick on the USA.

When Worlds Collide (1933) novel and movie (1951)

I remember reading as a teenager Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie's 1933 novel When Worlds Collide and being frightened by it. In their scenario, rather than Planet X (Nemesis or Niburu), which is hypothesized as being part of our solar system, another planet they call Zyra comes careening into our solar system and smacks into the Earth. Some resourceful people manage to build a spaceship and launch themselves to get away.

I didn't think the sequel, After Worlds Collide (1934) was half as good.

A movie, When Worlds Collide, was released in 1951. I saw it many years after first reading the novel and did not think it as good.

The Day After Tomorrow (2004) movie

Remember the lesson of this movie: send your kid to the public library in times of global catastrophe and tell him to wait for you. Of course that's not what actually happened in doomsday megahits director Roland Emmerich's 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow. While some people think that global warming will lead to another ice age, the other probability is that we'll have a hothouse planet. In this movie the ice age seems to impact only the northern hemisphere, so it's not as bad as it sounds.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) movie

Those Decepticon robots! They are bad. But we have the Autobots led by Optimus Prime, and his human mascot Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) on our side. If only they hadn't hidden the sun-killing device at the peak of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, I would have believed that the world was in mortal peril. Haven't there been studies of the innards of the Great Pyramid through imaging technology? It was fun though seeing this World Heritage Site being decimated by a giant vacuuming robot.

Meteor (2009) TV movie

I didn't realize at first that the 2009 TV movie Meteor broadcast in two parts on July 12 and 19 was a remake of the 1979 feature film of the same title. The premise is the same for both: a comet hits an asteroid and changes its orbit. What are the odds that the asteroid will head straight to Earth? In Hollywood, it's always 1 to 1 odds where asteroids and meteors and their chances of striking Earth and obliterating the planet or human civilization are concerned.

Christopher Lloyd, who plays an astronomer with a "cry wolf" reputation for a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) official played by Jason Alexander, was billed as one of the stars. Lloyd's character, who seemed to be a remix of his Back to the Future one, was killed off fairly early in part one. His female protege goes through a series of unbelievable adventures, including stumbling into a Mexican police station that's been taken over by either on-site prisoners or escaped inmates from a prison. She manages to escape, all the while clutching her laptop computer with its precious calculations on the trajectory of an asteroid named Kassandra heading to Earth. A number of sub-plots are played out, all of which are rather contrived and some of the main characters in these different sub-plots converge at the end of part 2.

Of course the Earth is saved from a horrible fate when the young female astronomer manages to convince the U.S. military to reprogram their nuclear missiles and those of the Russians and Chinese while in flight and minutes before they're set to impact the asteroid so that the missiles will detonate before impact and with their blast cushion deflect the asteroid away from the Earth and also not let nuclear radiation poison the atmosphere. Whew, I'm glad we were able to stop that from happening. The TV movie ends rather gloomily, however, when in the concluding scene the female astronomer tells the male lead character of another asteroid headed our way in a few years time for yet another close call.

2012 the movie

The one trailer I've seen in theaters so far for the movie 2012 looks impressive -- a tsunami engulfs the Himalayas and overwhelms a monk who's sounded the alarm -- all caused by Planet X, also known as Nemesis or Niburu (the Destroyer). so I'm anxious to learn what's caused this catastrophe Clearly, Mr. Monk didn't need to bother since nobody would be left to hear or heed his warning. The full trailer at the official site is spectacular. Roland Emmerich, the genius director of two other mega-death movies, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, turns his attention to the powerful Mayan prophecy that the world will end on December 21, 2012. Now if the ancient Mayans had somehow synchronized their timekeeping efforts with the Western world’s calendar and had the world ending on December 20, 2012 (get it, 20122012 as some people might express the date), I might have been a believer, but then again, maybe all the big disasters are happening on December 20 and the world officially ends on December 21, 2012. The 2012 movie premieres on November 13, 2009. Watch the full trailer and a teaser trail on the official site.

In addition to the trailers, check out some of the movie publicity sites: This Is The End from some dude named Charlie Frost -- I'm pretty sure Sony Pictures dreamed him up -- but he's even on Twitter, The IHC or Institute for Human Continuity, whose mission is to prepare the world for 2012, and Farewell Atlantis, the title of the novel by Jackson Curtis, the character played by John Cusack in 2012.