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Part 72 of Fandom Stats
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2015-03-08
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[Fandom stats] Apocalypse - how?

Summary:

A look at common types of apocalypses in fiction, over time (according to Wikipedia, as of 2015).

Notes:

Originally posted on Tumblr. Later covered on io9.

This should not be taken too seriously, as it's very dependent on a list on Wikipedia, which is in no way a complete list and has biases.

Note that unlike most of my analyses, this is not about fandom, but about original fiction works. Apocalypse also looms large in fandom imagination; there are lots of fanworks for some apocalyptic stories (e.g., Mad Max, Walking Dead), and also many fanworks tagged "Apocalypse" (or subtags) across many fandoms. It would be interesting in the future to compare apocalypse in original fiction vs. fanworks, though I don't currently have a good data set for direct comparisons.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

I went to a panel discussion about apocalypses (and their aftermath) in fiction yesterday.  I also got curious and did some apocalyptic stats (shocking, I know ;) ).  For data, I used Wikipedia's List of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction. (See the article for definitions).  It's unfortunately woefully incomplete; a lot of my faves aren't on there, especially from recent years (and you can see the drop-off in number of works per year during the 2010's in the final graph -- I totally don't believe that is accurate.  

Take this with a large grain of salt -- and please go add any missing books/films/shows to the list on Wikipedia!  The apocalypse fandom clearly has a lot to contribute here (especially, I suspect, in terms of fiction by women, POC, and non-Western/non-English language authors), and I will be doing the same. :D

Raw data and more graphs here.

Edit: Thanks to oldgrimalkin for spotting the missing zombies -- fixed!  And thanks to fffinnagain for noting the probable language bias!

Notes:

Comments welcome, but I’m in the middle of a massive fandom stats backup due to Tumblr purge, so I may be slow to respond.

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