disaster adj.

designating a genre that deals with a global catastrophe (natural, man-made, or extraterrestrial in origin) and its aftermath

Esp. in disaster novel.

SF Encyclopedia


SF Criticism

Genre

  • 1949 S. Vick Wonderful Epic in Famous Fantastic Mysteries June 123/1 (letter) page image

    I want to congratulate you on reprinting London’s wonderful epic, a story that is outstanding among all outstanding ‘disaster’ fiction. If the Plague had been replaced by an atomic bomb, it would have been hard to say that it had not been written by a modern-day author.

  • 1959 G. Carnall in Peace News 22 May 6/1 (review) page image

    It is this which saves ‘No One Will Escape’ from being just one more disaster novel (like ‘1984’ or ‘The Day of the Triffids’), encouraging a fatalistic yielding to a situation beyond the control of human wisdom.

  • 1970 W. Connelly in Science Fiction Review (#41) Nov. 25/1 page image Wayne Connelly bibliography

    It is another fairly recent disaster novel and one written in the more traditional Wyndham–Christopher manner.

  • 1979 B. Searles et al. Reader's Guide to Science Fiction 12 Baird Searles bibliography

    J.G. Ballard stands oddly and enigmatically apart from the mainstream of science fiction. Although his early work, particularly his first four novels, continued an especially British theme (the ‘disaster’ novel), they had the quality of being internalized; most s-f tends to be militantly externalized.

  • 1979 D. Pringle Disaster Novel in P. Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 173/1 David Pringle

    American disaster novels are fewer in number. Oddly enough, where British writers reveal an obsession with the weather, American writers show a strong concern for disease.

  • 1985 D. Pringle Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels 62 page image David Pringle

    One could accuse John Christopher of cynicism, but one could also say that The Death of Grass blows a much-needed cold draught of reality through the cosy parlour of 1950s disaster fiction.

  • 1986 G. K. Wolfe Critical Terms for Science Fiction & Fantasy 22 Gary K. Wolfe bibliography

    Cosmic disaster story, Kingsley Amis' phrase for a long-popular tradition of science fiction and fantasy stories that deal with world- or even universe-threatening disasters brought on by natural forces (as in John Christopher’s No Blade of Grass, 1956, which Amis discusses) or by human folly (as in numerous nuclear war tales; see Post-Holocaust). Amis argues that such tales differ from other science fiction in that they bear no real extrapolative or analogical relationship with our own society, but instead may be used to explore propositions about the nature of society and human interaction. (Amis does not mention the nature of reality, which came increasingly to be of central concern in J. G. Ballard’s series of disaster novels such as The Crystal World, 1966.) Such works are perhaps more commonly referred to simply as ‘disaster stories’ or ‘disaster novels’.

  • 2002 Locus Sept. 27/2

    You've heard of raining cats and dogs? It gets worse here; much worse… He captures the same sort of arid power so often admired in J. G. Ballard’s classic disaster novels.

  • 2017 D. H. Wilson J. G. Ballard 2 page image

    His early disaster novels reimagined the postapocalyptic subgenre of science fiction.


Research requirements

antedating 1949

Earliest cite

letter to Famous Fantastic Mysteries

Research History
Jeff Prucher submitted a cite from a reprint of the Nicholls "Encyclopedia of SF"; Mike Christie verified the cite in a 1981 reprint, and Rick Hauptmann subsequently verified it in the 1979 first edition.
Jeff Prucher submitted a 1986 cite from Gary Wolfe's "Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy".
Jeff Prucher submitted a 2002 cite from a review column by Ed Bryant in Locus.
Jeff Prucher submitted a 1984 cite from David Hartwell's "Age of Wonders".
Jeff Prucher submitted a cite from a 1991 reprint of the 1985 "Oxford Companion to English Literature".
Jeff Prucher submitted a 1987 cite from John J. Pierce's "Great Themes in Science Fiction".
Irene Grumman submitted a 1979 cite from "A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction" by Baird Searles (et al.).
Bill Mullins submitted a 1975 cite from a review by Martin Levin in the New York Times Book Review.

Last modified 2025-04-07 14:13:48
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.