![]() ![]() In his memoirs, Sherriff recalled, “I told myself that the average man in the ranks, who had no education - did not have these awful nameless fears. After arriving as an officer in France, he found himself strained to the breaking point by the tension on the front lines. ![]() Born in 1896, he was working as an insurance clerk in London when the First World War erupted. As Aldiss wrote, “The essence of cozy catastrophe is that the hero should have a pretty good time … while everyone else is dying off.”Īldiss described the cozy catastrophe as a narrative that traded in “anxiety fantasies,” of which Sherriff had plenty of firsthand experience. Reissued this month, this wonderful novel should powerfully resonate with readers whose consciences are troubled by inequality and climate change. Although the genre is often associated with the work of John Wyndham, especially “The Day of the Triffids” (1951), Aldiss traced it back to THE HOPKINS MANUSCRIPT (Scribner, 385 pp., paperback, $18), by R.C. In “Billion Year Spree,” his influential 1973 study of science fiction, the writer Brian Aldiss identified a kind of post-apocalyptic novel that he called “ the cozy catastrophe.” These were stories about the end of the world in which a resourceful survivor - usually a British man from the middle class - puts together a relatively comfortable life for himself in the ruins. ![]()
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