Reply #12: I find myself fighting that apocalyptic impulse, but loved the book

[hatrack]

There's something about The End Of The World that is irresistably appealing to me - damned if I know why, since God knows (so to speak) it's not from any religious impulse.

Maybe it's the wish for resolution of one kind or another, even if that resolution is nihilistic and fundamentally appalling. Maybe it's the wish for the kind of brutal lessons with which, as I heard the opening battles of World War I described, "God teaches the law to kings". Maybe it's the wish for venal, petty and profoundly stupid political leadership to be revealed as the fools that they are - not giants, but dwarves standing on piles of money.

There is, in fact, a fascinating book called The End Of The World. I can't remember the author's name to save my life, but it's a dark romp through western history, ranging from the fall of Rome to the Black Death to the Lisbon Earthquake to the Albigensian Crusade - came out maybe 20 years ago.

It's in me, and I try to fight it, but it's what made Oryx and Crake so fascinating - that, and the realization that if there's a way to screw things up, human beings will find it. Or, as Harry "Lucky" Towns was heard to exclaim when the torpedo hit the Lusitania (after surviving the Titanic and the Empress of Ireland as a sailor), "Now what?"