Postapocalyptic fiction and the social contract: "we'll not go home again"

Introduction : Thinking the end of the world

Last one out, please turn out the lights : On the beach and The road

"... solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" : Hobbes and Lucifer's Hammer, the classic post-apocalyptic text

"Industrious and rational" : John Locke and Alas, Babylon : the rational life post-apocalypse

"Man is born free; and everywhere is in chains" : Rousseau and Malevil : the responsibilities of civil life

"Maybe effort counted" : John Rawls and thought experiments

"To take root among the stars" : Octavia Butler's Parable of the sower and rethinking the social contract

"We can choose" : Octavia Butler's Parable of the talents and the meaning of security.