post-apocalypse

(adj.)
Following a large-scale disaster in which civilization has been destroyed or has regressed to a more primitive level; (of a story) having such a setting. Compare post-apocalyptic, post-catastrophe, post-holocaust.

• 1970 J.R. Frakes Washington Post Book World (Oct. 18) № 2/3: The time is post-apocalypse; the setting, the flats west of the city, a kind of terminal chessboard where every space must be staked out.
• 1976 Times (London) (Feb. 5) № 11/4: Grimly visionary story on the usual post-apocalypse theme, with magic having superseded science as the basis of the last remaining State, and a lone stranger battling it out with malign forces.
• 1979 B. Searles, et al. Reader's Guide to SF № 40: "The Prince in Waiting" series concerns a post-apocalypse future where the culture has returned to the medieval.
• 1981 B. N. Malzberg Engines of Night SF Rev. Summer № 40/1: This post-apocalypse story in which the end of the world becomes a metaphor for the shocks and injuries of existence which prefigure and replicate death (and make the state of death their eternal re-enactment) is almost unknown today.
• 2004 D. Bailey End of World as We Know It Mag. of Fantasy & SF (Oct./Nov.) № 83: Some end-of-the-world stories present us with two post-apocalypse survivors, one male and one female.

---