Cosy Catastrophe
Entry updated 21 April 2025. Tagged: Theme.
A term coined by Brian W Aldiss in Billion Year Spree (1973) to describe the supposedly comforting ambience shed by the sort of Disaster tale told by UK writers like John Wyndham (see also Holocaust; Post-Holocaust). Though later critical work on Wyndham has emphasized the ambiguities and darknesses of his work, the term remains convenient as a pointer to a period in the UK when certain solaces were sought by readers – or viewers of later episodes of Survivors (1975-1977) created by Terry Nation – whether or not they found what they were looking for. It is not perhaps a term to fully merit a retrofit historizing of Aldiss's impulsive insight; it would in any case be difficult to argue that most of the Scientific Romances published earlier in the twentieth century were easily describable as cosy. Some Pastoral tales like Richard Jefferies's After London or Wild England (1885) might be understood as paving the way; but the link is tenuous. [JC]
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