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Notes -
Does anyone have any recommendations for sci-fi works involving population decline? I ask because most late 20th century — and even early 21st century — works I'm familiar with assume continual population growth, and frequently an overpopulation crisis. (Even the grimiest dystopian cyberpunk seems to take for granted that people will somehow keep popping out kids, enough to more than replace all the people getting gunned down by megacorp hit squads or torn apart by psychotic cyborgs.)
The only exceptions I can think of are works involving sudden plagues of infertility (Handmaid's Tale, Children of Men) or are Japanese (Yokohama Shopping Log). Anything else out there?
Edit: I'm talking less the "post-apocalyptic" genre, where the collapse has already occurred and the focus is rebuilding, but during the decline — particularly a slower one like Yokohama Shopping Log.
A lot of wildbow's works (Worm, Pact, Twig...) hit similar themes; though the decline is usually violent, he has a recurring pattern of stories starting from a place of relative stability and affluence and gradually cranking up the bleakness/hopelessness/lack of resources available both to individual characters and to society at large.
On the Japanese media side, Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou (English title might be something like Girls' Last Tour) is a worthy spiritual successor to YKK, perhaps slightly more on the bleak and eventful side. It's a sort of cute slice of life series about two girls traversing a ruined world in the wake of WW4 in search of a something/anything, as the last remnants of human activity around them flicker out. The author's narration and Twitter feed pattern-match against the worst cases of inadequately medicated clinical depression I have encountered. Both the manga and the anime adaptation are pretty great.
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