- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (18 May 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 057507101X
- ISBN-13: 978-0575071018
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.2 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 201,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
James Morrow had published SF novels before, but This Is the Way the World Ends (1986) reached a new level of intensity, tackling World War III horrors with ultra-black magic realism plus a touch of Lewis Carroll. Like George Orwell's 1984, it still packs a grim punch although history took another course.
As the Cold War heats up, Americans frantically buy "scopas suits"(Self-COntained Post-Attack Survival) as protection against nukes. Tombstone engraver George Paxton can't afford one for his young daughter, until a strange old woman commissions epitaphs for her "parents" and pays by directing him to a magic shop where the scopas suit costs only his signature--acknowledging responsibility for any nuclear war. Soon we realise George's improvised epitaphs are for Eve, Adam and everyone:
She was better than she knew. He never found out what he was doing here.
Whimsy and social satire give way to nightmare as the missiles fall, scopas suits prove useless, and post-nuclear hell is painted in stomach-churning detail: flashburns, melted eyes, shattered people begging for death.
George, though, is rescued. As one of six who signed the McMurdo Sound Agreement, he must stand trial in Antarctica for complicity in murdering humanity. Prosecution, defenders, judges and police are the "unadmitted", unborn future generations now denied real life, whose sheer rage has won them temporary existence. Old disarmament and deterrence arguments, wittily rehashed in the Nuremberg-like court, seem all too different after the worst has happened. This queasy tragicomedy isn't easily forgotten. --David Langford
Book Description
A lacerating Swiftian satire on nuclear war, as relevant now as when it was first published
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In order to distract a young boy whose mother is giving birth in the next room, Dr Michel de Nostradame, aka Nostradamus, performs a slideshow, (using a picture thrower recently invented by his good friend Leonardo) describing the end of the world. He admits that he wrote all his prophecies as obscurely as possible simply because he knows people in the future will are confused by them.
All this comes in the first few pages, the body of the book is concerned with the story he tells. It concerns an everyman figure who is worried that his daughter might not survive a nuclear war and is persuaded to sign a VERY unusual contract in order to purchase the only radiation suit in the world that would actually protect the wearer properly. After he has bought it for her, Morrow shows his penchant for irony by starting WW3 before he can get it home to her.
He spends most of the book finding out why the war happened and being put on trial for complicity in nuclear armageddon by the ghosts of those who were never born.
This was the first Morrow book I ever read, and it convinced me to pick up all his other books as soon as I see them. It is highly imaginative, exceedingly well written, and unlike much of his other work, not unkind to God.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book holds a special place in my heart, as it was the first James Morrow book I read. Others I have spoken to about Mr. Morrow, and reviews I have read here and elsewhere, appear to confirm that those touched once by his magical imagination remain lifelong converts. This book manages in turns to entertain with humour whilst simultaneously highlighting the madness surrounding military strategic thinking at the height of the Cold War. It also contains some of the most poignant imagery I have encountered in literature, especially the hero's attempts to come to terms with the loss of his young daughter. A number of excellent cameo appearances by Nostradamus round off a book for all serious-thinking literature fans.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In the same vein as the black comedy "Dr. Strangelove", "This Is The Way The World Ends" is a true achievement in cautionary satire. The men who helped launch the war and the civilian fighting for his life are held accountable for the world's destruction. Paxton's near-death and final reckoning with his family are among the most poignant work in any piece of fiction I've ever read.
To remember just how real the nuclear threat was not even so long ago, "This Is The Way The World Ends" is an absolute must-read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Bleak
This book actually manages to make Neville Shute's "On the Beach" look upbeat. It's another hauntingly grim tale of the destruction of humanity, but this time with a... Read more
Published on 29 Jan 2006 by Tralfamadore
From the cold war til today
Good book, it gave you a lot to think about. As my roomate says, this isn't a book you read straight through, sometimes you need to come up for air. Read more
Published on 4 Nov 2005 by s
An insane romp through insane subject matter
Though the summary might suggest I did not enjoy this book, very little could be further from the truth. I thought this book was poignant and meaningful. Read more
Published on 8 Nov 1997
Certainly one of the best books ever written...period.
I've just finished reading This is the Way the World Ends for the third time. I could read it another three times in the next week. Read more
Published on 17 May 1997
A hilarious satire of the nuclear world.
Although this book now comes off feeling somewhat dated,
with the passing of the Cold War, it still stands as one of
the best satires of the nuclear age. Read more
with the passing of the Cold War, it still stands as one of
the best satires of the nuclear age. Read more
Published on 1 Jan 1997
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