End of the World Reading/Viewing List

Improv 600 - UCBT

Will Hines, instructor

Here's a list of some movies, books and TV shows that I suggest you be familiar with before we start class. It's not complete nor is it required. I mostly did it because I thought it would be funny to have a reading list for an improv class. However, I really do think that if you read this page and click through to skim the wikipedia pages for stuff you haven't heard of -- you'll be farther along in understanding the genre of apocalyptic sci-fi. Send suggestions to whines ATSIGN gmail.

We should all know that it takes a head shot to kill a zombie, and that people in general are scared of robots taking over the universe. Right?

• Robots Take Over

  Humans create robots. They are better so they take over.

  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? a novel by Philip K. Dick. Inspiration for the movie Blade Runner.
  • The TV show Battlestar Galactica: The Reimagined Series, the mini-series in particular.
  • The Terminator movies (first and second)
  • I, Robot short stories by Issac Asimov, especially The Three Laws of Robotics.
  • Bonus: The play R.U.R., first robot story ever. The robots take over the earth by the end of Act II; Second Variety a short story by Philip K. Dick, the movie The Matrix.
• Dystopian Governments

  The government becomes too powerful and takes away all civil liberties of its inhabitants.

  • All you need is 1984 by George Orwell. Know the ideas of Big Brother, doublethink, Room 101, the telescreen and the Thought Police.
  • Bonus: The books Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the TV show The Prisoner, the novel Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury with its book-burning firemen, or We by Zamyatin or the film THX-1138 by George Lucas.
• Post-Nuclear War

  After the bomb, scraps of humanity get by.

  • Mad Max / The Road Warrior - Post-nuclear war. The idea that natural resources (in this case gasoline) can be currency. Tribes.
  • Planet of the Apes - a post-human society
• Zombies

  Usually for reasons that are never explained, the dead rise as animate (but still dead) corpses who seek to kill the remaining living.

  • Night of the Living Dead (original black and white film) - The film by George Romero is the classic example of the Zombie apocalypse.
  • Bonus: The next two Romero zombie films (Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead); The movie 28 Days Later - fast zombies!
• Plague / Environment / Running Out Of Natural Resources

  It's our own fault! We're out of stuff!

  • The movie Soylent Green - Sure there's food, but it's people! It's made of people!
  • The movie Logan's Run - Everyone over 30 is "renewed" (killed) by the government. Run, runner!
  • The movie Silent Running - A scientist won't kill the last plants alive!
  • Bonus: The movies Andromeda Strain, The Stand, The Omega Man, the book Cat's Cradle, the movie Children of Men (we're out of babies!)
• Alien Invasion

  Super powered aliens kick our ass.

  • The book War of the Worlds (note how the aliens are defeated by the common cold) and the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still for good 'ol evil bad guy aliens.
  • The original Invasion of The Body Snatchers (or the 1978 remake) - Pod People!
  • The movies Alien and Predator for cool creatures.
• The Bible / The Rapture

  Not so much religious, as much as just taking spooky stuff from The Bible

  • The Four Horsemen, The Anti-Christ, The Omen movie series
  • Bonus: As much as I hate to admit it because I think the stories themselves are pandering manipulative trite, but the idea of the Left Behind series always struck me as a good premise.
• Other Fun Stuff
  • Philip K. Dick - We could do the whole class on just his stuff. That crazy drugs are part of the future (like JJ-180 in Now Wait For Last Year, which makes you temporarily travel through time), that reality is not reliable like in Ubik, or hippies in dystopia like in A Scanner Darkly.
  • The TV Show The Twilight Zone, mostly for the ideas of twist endings and comeuppance. Burgess Meredith breaking his glasses. The pretty woman in a world of people with pig noses. The invading aliens are actually the Earthlings.
  • Doctor Who - It doesn't really fit but you shouldn't be in the class and not know the idea of the good Doctor and that he is a time lord who travels in a TARDIS and goes through regeneration when a new actor takes over his role
  • The comic book Watchmen - The idea that what's good for humanity is some horrible horrible solution.
  • Inventing new vocabularies for your world. frak, doublethink, replicant, runner.
  • Looping time structures. 12 Monkeys or its inspiration, the 26 minute long La Jetee