Playing for Real – A Tale of Two Calamities

A few months ago, I wrote about how the apocalypse can be used in storytelling as a powerful means of conveying the “true” nature of a world by stripping away distractions—how, despite being a story about the end of the world, the destruction is ultimately not the focus, but a lens through which the truth may be glimpsed more clearly. This month I’ll apply the same model to two substantively similar apocalyptic tales, examining how they use the details of their respective apocalypses to illuminate important elements of the worlds they’re set in. Interestingly, while both stories have radically different setting and tone, they address many of

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