The world has ended (apocalypse thriller is for when the world is ending); this is the world that comes after. This is often similar to the dystopian theme, but pushed forward in time and involving a world that has fallen by whatever caused it, but so long ago that everything has finally stabilized. Imploded. Turned into a junkyard.

Maybe the zombie apocalypse hit, and these are your survivors

The future that appears to be coming instead, after we have thrown away all of those fantastic possibilities that the 1970s promised. The corporations are in control of your life. Of everything. If you don’t have (Lots and Lots of) money, you are little people. A victim of circumstances. Think Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins for the sorts of world where the rich have won and everyone else has lost and must often dance for their supper. Or otherwise overcome a deck that has been stacked against them. Where life is cheap and ugly, except for the pretty people with a lot of money.

It might not look like it is true hard science (see below), but it is closer to that intellectual space. We live today (2020s) in a world where climate change is having a significant, measurable impact on our world and our lives. Where the high-water mark of the 1970s, in terms of rights for minorities and women in the United States has been slowly driven backwards. Where billionaires

Back to apocalypse thriller Please note that not all apocalypse thrillers follow this blueprint exactly, and most don’t follow it perfectly. If your book will still be thrilling and interest readers without one of these pieces, or with some of them done differently or in a different order, feel free to do your own thing. This blueprint is just so that you can understand a basic format that your readers might expect from the genre. Three Act Apocalypse Thriller Act 1 Act 1 is shorter than the other acts, as the action is contained mostly in Acts 2 and 3....

This is the moment when all hell breaks loose, and the heroes must find a way to survive those first few hours or days when everything is falling to pieces around them. Later, after things stabilize, you might have some sort of “Return to Normalcy” moment. Or you evolve forward into post-apocalyptic storytelling as things will never be the same and folks must make do.

What is ’Punk?

A new technology that has overturned the expected traditions of the past, thereby changing the world. Heroes in punk stories tend to be people interested in and exploiting this new tech before it becomes mainstream. Inventors. Adventurers. Occasionally criminals using their new knowledge to right some wrong that the system is perpetrating.

Related to Alternate History, this sort of story started with the characters traveling (presumably backwards) through time, either to make some change, witness some important event, or discover that time itself is unchangeable.

To write in this subgenre

Go back in time and pick out some event that happened. Or didn’t. Make a change as a world-builder, then extrapolate outwards from there. The Difference Engine (William Gibson and Bruce Sterling) posited a world where Babbage’s invention of the same name was completed, and the Computer Revolution started a century earlier. (This book also is somewhat foundational in the entire Steampunk Genre.)

If you want to write in a genre, you have to read that genre. Experts in the industry are consistent with their advice that you must be an avid reader of a genre to write well in it. Along with the books below, read the books on the steampunk bestseller list, especially the self-published ones, to know what's happening in the genre now.

The 1950s went a little crazy with this genre, in books but especially in movies. In those days, it tended to verge over close to horror without actually crossing over. (Remember, in real horror, the bad guys win. Only in Hollywood is the monster defeated by the heroic guy, his romantic interest, the older scientist, and occasionally a plucky sidekick who might survive.)