Genres
Dying Earth
Science fantasy or science fiction set in the far future at the end of life on Earth, when the laws of the universe themselves fail.
Dying Earth is a subgenre of science fantasy or science fiction which takes place in the far future at either the end of life on Earth or the end of time, when the laws of the universe themselves fail. It deals not with catastrophic destruction but with the entropic exhaustion of Earth, which makes it more melancholic than apocalyptic fiction; its recurring themes are world-weariness, entropy, the heat death of the universe, depleted resources and the hope of renewal. Jack Vance's short story collection The Dying Earth gave the subgenre its name, building on Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique; Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun and M. John Harrison's Viriconium stories carry the mode forward, and H. G. Wells's The Time Machine already ended on a freezing, sunless Earth.
For novel and web-serial writers this is science fantasy at its most elegiac: sorcery and lost science blur together, and the setting itself is the antagonist. The line against post-apocalyptic fiction is worth holding: collapse has already finished, so the story comes from what remains, not what broke.