I enjoy a nice apocalyptic vision, me. Of course, “enjoy” is the wrong word. It’s a masochistic pleasure. The Road, for example, was exquisite torment. I wanted to stop, but didn’t, then I wanted to keep going, but couldn’t. Then I had a biscuit and a lie down.

But that was me, on a soft brown couch in a suburban flat. A dark fantasy of the world turned upside-down is only a fantasy if your world is right-side-up. If you’re in a refugee camp or a war-zone, then I imagine the story of The Road holds less of a morbid fascination founded in imagination; its connection to your day-to-day experience would be more direct.

If I was genuinely just interested in a story of a father trying to protect his son against mortal danger in an amoral world, then I would read the news.

I tend not to.

If I’m honest, I think I’m fascinated because I can imagine myself into this father’s shoes, and so the story is about me, and understanding by juxtaposition exactly what it means to have the good fortune to live in a good land at a good time with good genes.

I have a near-total failure of empathy for real people living this a less fortunate life today. Apocalyptic fiction works around that by describing a world in which a white, middle-class, educated man from Australia could find himself in that kind of situation. The line I’ve etched over thirty years between “those to whom bad things might happen” and “me and my family” is broken down and I end up half-choked by the thought of what might happen to me and mine if we’re not past caring when the oil runs out.

That’s what’s good about apocalyptic fiction.