Sci-Friday: Apocalypic

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Welcome once again to Sci-Friday, a game I play every week where 20-some writers on Substack team up to publish something related to science fiction on the same day. We generally give you some kind of recommendation by way of a list, and that’s what I’ll do today. I’ll link to some of those other lists I’ve made below, at the end of this article.

For this week’s piece, I wanted to do something a little special: a short list of just three books in a subgenre of sci-fi I’m just calling “apocalyptic.” These are end-of-the-world type scenarios, but told predominantly through a rational lens (although there is an element of fantasy in all of these).

I wanted to stretch the boundaries a bit by going way back.

Theologus Autodidactus

I said “way back”, but I bet you didn’t think we’d go this far back.

Theologus Autodidactus was written in the 13th century by Ibn al-Nafis, one of a great many Arabic polymaths out there during this time perio…