In Justin Cronin's The Passage trilogy, the method is a virus, mutated from bats and then genetically engineered by scientists who at first just want to eliminate death. The method of the end of the world is as varied as the (enormous) amount of novels speculating about it. But it is delicious, delicious tea to me. What will destroy humanity? How, if at all, will we manage to rebuild? How would the world itself heal or change if most of us vanished? How would the survivors put to use the leftover everything of human society? How would people interact? With the savagery of The Road? with the human ingenuity of Alas, Babylon? with the humanity hodge-podge and genetic mutations of Oryx and Crake? What would it feel like to be alive in such a world? It's far harder to pull of an awesome dystopia than an awesome post-apocalyptic, I think, because the former requires genius while the latter requires.less genius. Post-apocalyptic fiction is almost at a dead heat with dystopian fiction (and yes.they are closely related but I insist they are different speculative fiction subgenres!) when vying for my affection I like the great dystopians more than most post-apocalyptics, but the majority of dystopian novels are barely good.
I'm still trying to figure out why this is true for me: I am endlessly fascinated by the idea of the world stripped of most of its people.
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