1. A blanket item of Terminology used in this encyclopedia for the fictionally popular variety of catastrophe which is directly caused by human or occasionally Alien action, intentional or otherwise. Natural calamities are dealt with under Disaster, as are cases where a technically human-instigated cataclysm has effects similar to a natural one. For example, human interference with the Ecology, generally through Pollution or the subtler operations of Climate Change, may have effects resembling natural upheavals; if humanity is considered part of nature (> Gaia) then such repercussions are in a sense natural.
Related entries include Entropy (holocaust is one of the more dramatic aspects of everything running down), History in SF (human-inspired disasters are often seen as part of a Toynbeean or Spenglerian process of historical cycles), the End of the World (holocaust on a major scale), Medicine (the agent of holocaust is often plague), Optimism and Pessimism, and above all, from 1945 to at least the late twentieth century, a nuclear World War Three – the most popular agent of holocaust in fiction since World War Two.
Extraterrestrial nuclear holocausts of the past are often cited as dire warnings in sf. Gerald Heard's Reply Paid (1942) and Robert A Heinlein's Space Cadet (1948) are among many works speculating that a former planet between Mars and Jupiter was broken up by such a catastrophe to become the Asteroids. Similarly, Robert A Heinlein's "Blowups Happen" (September 1940 Astounding) suggests that the Moon's inhabitants destroyed themselves through a failure of nuclear reactor safety, and the Martians of Pelham Groom's The Purple Twilight (1948) prove to be the survivors of a terrible civil War fought with nuclear Weapons. Lord Dunsany's Jorkens stories include similar awful-warning explanations of the asteroids, the moon's cratered barrenness, and the destruction of a previous cycle of the entire universe (> Cosmology).
2. The specific Holocaust of World War Two – the attempted Nazi extermination, in the name of Eugenics, of Europe's Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and others – is so strongly charged with horror that sf authors tend to shy away from actual confrontation. David Britton's Lord Horror (1989) and its Graphic Novel spinoff Lord Horror (graph in 14 parts 1990-2000) come close, using black Satire and black farce to muffle the obscenity. Martin Amis's Time's Arrow; Or, the Nature of the Offense (1991) deals with the unspeakable via the sf device of Time in Reverse. Rather more typically, Fatherland (1992) by Robert Harris, filmed as Fatherland (1994), is distanced in time from the grisly secret of its Hitler Wins world, being set in 1964. Incidental, even marginal uses of concentration-camp horrors include Hector Hawton's Operation Superman (1951), where Nazi experimentation on a human guinea-pig boosts his Intelligence. Similar experiments in a British camp following the German model create an enigmatic Superman in Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (1982-1985 Warrior; exp graph 1990), whose back-story also includes English death camps and racial holocaust.
Several Fantasy and Science Fantasy scenarios posit that the gigantic human sacrifice had a hidden purpose related to Magic, thus linking with Nazi occult obsessions. Such works include David Brin's "Thor Meets Captain America" (July 1986 F&SF), Barbara Hambly's The Magicians of Night (1992; vt Magicians of the Night 1992), Harry Turtledove's Darkness Alternate-History series opening with Into the Darkness (1999), and the title piece of Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives (coll of linked stories 2004). [DRL/PN]
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