Visions of the future in many examples of well-known literature are far from heartening. Government systems become cruelly oppressive, advanced technology creates moral quandaries or causes complete moral numbness, and society embraces hedonistic self-indulgence on a cosmic scale. I’m not sure how to measure the extent to which such works have shaped our perceptions of how future events will proceed, but I think the dystopian and apocalyptic literary genres can broadly be classified as ones that always seek to show the darkness inherent in and approaching for the world. 

That said, the aims set forth in these two genres are subtly different, in a way that shows itself significant here. In classic dystopian literature, such as Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984, the authors identify key errors emergent in modern society—dangerous choices that will inevitably bring future destruction to pass. The dystopian novel sets such faults on a much larger scale in a wildly reimagined but still recognizable society, where the dramatization of the supposedly fictional setting asks readers to examine the current climate. Essentially, Orwell, Huxley, Camus, Burgess, Atwood, and others all seek to be prophets, using a surreal world characterized by stranger things—eugenics programs where embryos are manufactured, brutal competitions that unabashedly exploit violence as entertainment, computers that rebel against their programmers—to examine the very real horrors we now face. 

In apocalyptic narratives, by contrast, some world-overturning catastrophe has already been wrought, or unfolds at the start, and the major events of the story detail what humanity does in the face of such a calamity. There is no moralistic instruction about what we could do now to defray a dystopian disaster; the only questions that remain deal with what humanity will do to survive.

Despite their differences, both genres generally select their heroes from similar stock. Protagonists of dystopian and post-apocalyptic worlds are visionaries in their time—sharp enough to see through the lies that surround them, and courageous enough to articulate the truth without fear of consequences. They act as saviors of themselves and others, which is not to say that they do not fail, but that they are (in a literal sense or not) superhero-like protectors of the innocent.

So, ultimately, both genres conceive bleak visions of the future for a shared purpose: to guide us in our current lives—in our “present darkness,” to borrow the title of Frank E. Peretti’s apocalyptic tale of spiritual warfare. A question we might consider, then, is not whether we are awaiting an apocalypse, some significant disaster that overturns the world, but whether we are already there. It might feel like a stretch to most of us to define our current time in history as “apocalyptic”—the global fallout of international crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine notwithstanding. We cannot quite complain of disasters on a story-scale, whether natural or nuclear; we are probably not yet face-to-face with the literal end of the world.

However, our time could certainly be characterized as one of revelation, which the Greek apokalypsis translates to. The literal meaning of the word comes closer to “unveiling” or “laying bare.” Certainly, we are waiting for the second coming of Christ. But we also acknowledge that Christ inaugurated his kingdom on earth at the incarnation. Like those who waited for the Messiah, we look to the arrival of the one who will deliver us; but unlike them, we already participate in the kingdom. In the interim, in the darkness, we wait for this kingdom to be fully realized.