Dying Earth (subgenre) - Examples

Examples

• H. P. Lovecraft and Robert H. Barlow - "Till A’the Seas" (1935, published posthumously, copyright 1970 by August Derleth) is a tale of the slow fading of human civilization and the extinction of all life on Earth, as the planet became a desert under the sun that has expanded into a red giant. The story centers on a male protagonist named Ull, the last of his tribe, and his journey across lands and abandoned cities in hopes of finding water, shelter and other survivors. But all he finds is desolation and death.
• Edmond Hamilton — The City at World's End (1951) and the comic book story "Superman Under the Red Sun" from Action Comics #300 (1963).
• Arthur C. Clarke — The City and the Stars (1956), a revision and expansion of the earlier novella "Against the Fall of Night".
• John Brunner, Catch a Falling Star, an extended version of The 100th Millennium, first published as "Earth is But a Star" (1958) which features in the Broderick anthology, (2001, below). An early example of a far future tale influenced by Vance.
• Brian Aldiss — Hothouse (1962, also known as The Long Afternoon of Earth). The earth has locked rotation with the sun that has increased output, and plants are engaged in a constant frenzy of growth and decay, like a tropical forest enhanced a thousandfold; a few small groups of humans still live, on the edge of extinction, beneath the giant banyan tree that covers the entire day side of the earth.
• Michael Moorcock — The Dancers at the End of Time series (1977–).
• M. John Harrison — a series of short stories and novels set in Viriconium from 1977 onwards. Viriconium is the capital city in which much of the action takes place. Viriconium lies on a dying Earth littered with the detritus of the millennia, seemingly now its own hermetic universe where chronology no longer applies.
• Philip Jose Farmer - In Dark Is the Sun (1979) a tribesman from the distant future quests across the landscape of a dying earth. As with much of "Dying Earth" science fiction, this text ruminates on the nature of ending, and the meaning of time itself.
• Gene Wolfe — The Book of the New Sun (1981–3) chronicles the journey of a disgraced torturer named Severian to the highest position in the land. Severian, who has a perfect memory, tells the story in first person. The Book takes place in the distant future, where the sun has dimmed considerably. Wolfe has stated that Vance's series directly influenced this work. The Book has several associated volumes.
• Damien Broderick, ed. — Earth is But a Star: Excursions through Science Fiction to the Far Future (2001), an anthology of canonical dying Earth short stories mostly set on Earth in the far future, interwoven with specially commissioned critical essays on the dying Earth theme.
• C. J. Cherryh — Sunfall (2004), a collection of short stories set in various locations on Earth in the far future. The tone, themes and fantasy conventions employed in this collection differ by story. (These were reprinted in The Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh).
• Greg Bear, City at the End of Time (2008), a novel that is a homage to William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land.