Thought is clearly a far better prophet than Mr. Camping:
http://www.webpronews.com/harold-camping-rapture-rescheduled-for-october-21-twitter-laughs-on-2011-05 As hilarious as this is, I'm at a point where I just feel sorry for this old man and his ravenous need for validation.
Or maybe people just think it'd be exciting? When something's lacking in people's lives and it takes the apocalypse to fill that void...that's a little creepy.
It's something like that, I think. Lord J's post lead me to think that in addition to the reasons he mentioned, and a general association of Darkness and Grimness with Realism and Authenticity (which drives me crazy, by the way), we just see few opportunities for heroic acts. A hundred years ago there was at least the possibility that you could venture across the world in search of new experiences and find something that few people had ever seen before. Video has done away with that, of course. Advances in technology have always popularized survival stories, and I guess the simplest and most compelling way of setting the premise for one in our era is the apocalypse.
Pessimistic storytelling is very big right now, both in the form of apocalyptic fiction and dystopian fiction. It's getting nuts in sci-fi; like a virus it's the flavor of the moment and it's hard to find sci-fi that doesn't at least have these kinds of undertones.
You know, it's funny you mention this, because a friend of mine forwarded this article onto me yesterday:
http://futurismic.com/2009/06/18/pessimistic-science-fiction-is-a-cop-out/ We live in a comfortable, rich world, as you say, and it's just incredible to me that people will come up with that many excuses to write something grim! Especially when trying something different from the norm, and getting your work published, is such a difficult task for modern-day writers.
The reason, of course, is the one you give: people are not fulfilled, they don't know how to be fulfilled (and they are predisposed to whining). To say nothing of the fact our evolution hasn't caught up with the technological demands of our society yet.
And honestly, a lot of smart, aware people I know are genuinely terrified:
http://www.utne.com/Environment/Truth-Hurts-Conversation-Altered-World-Systemic-Failures.aspx Most of the time I am inclined to chalk it up to a love of conspiracy and general paranoia, but that's not quite fair. There's a heartstopping amount information out there, and much of it is negative-- one can, fairly easily, be well-read and inquisitive and be exposed largely to articles and analysis that is generally negative, and dismiss the positive information one finds as manipulative or unrealistic.
Also, most people aren't equipped to deal with many of the unnatural stressful particulars imposed upon our society--such as unsatisfying jobs, hydralike social webs, and the attention-sapping barrages of media. On top of everything else, we live in an age where our enemies are hard to touch (existing, variously, as foreign terrorists, huge corporations, or even such abstracts as the environmental pollution caused by our very existence), and our champions are nowhere to be found--often drowned out by the mass media.
I can't add anything to this except to say that it is spot-on, and presents an interesting challenge to those of us who are storytellers.
There's been a lot of analysis on the cultural function of superheroes as heroic myth, but I feel we need to begin talking about heroism in particular outside of the standard tropes of fantasy, sci-fi and superhero stories. It's very hard to figure out how to do this in a compelling way, however. But that's another post altogether, probably best delegated to the writing thread!
