While the Soviet Union is a thing of the past and the Cold War has been replaced with the War on Terror, I still found James Morrow’s darkly satirical post-apocalypse meditation This is the Way the World Ends to be very insightful.

Under the threat of an all-out nuclear war the latest fashion among the American public is to buy SCOPAS suits – high-tech protective gear supposedly equipped with everything needed to survive the nuclear aftermath. Our protagonist, George Paxton, is a tombstone engraver in a small Massachusetts town. Being a loving family man he is deeply mournful to the fact that he can’t afford such a suit to protect his daughter, until he is given an offer for a free SCOPAS suit on the condition that he signs a special contract – with an agreement Paxton doesn’t put much consideration to with the love for his daughter in mind.

Then the nuclear war, with retaliations and counter-retaliations happens, and Paxton finds himself on a submarine along with the five other survivors of the human race. They find out that they are on the way to a trial – prosecuted by the “unadmitted”, the future generations that never got to be born because of the war. While the other defendants all had active roles in the nuclear proliferation, Paxton is tried as a representative of the bystanders that passively let the arms race happen.

Morrow’s storytelling is quite full of fantastic elements, besides the overall concept of the unadmitted there is also a few passages taking place in 16th century France, featuring no other than Nostradamus himself. In the trial itself the author makes excellent use of the Cold War rhetoric, and speculates on ideas of deterrence contra disarmament. There is also a what probably is described as a certain kind of bizarre over-exaggeration in the way certain scenes are depicted, like a fairy-tale gone horribly bad, but I think it fits quite well with the big picture.

Even though two decades has passed since This is the Way the World Ends was published, I thought it was an excellent piece of speculative fiction. Well worth reading for anyone in need of some food for thought.

While I am on the subject of the author: another novel by James Morrow that I feel is worth mentioning, even though I feel it was too long since I read it to write anything detailed about it, is Towing Jehovah, in which a disgraced sea captain is contracted by the Vatican to tow the corpse of God to the Arctic for preservation. An intriguing speculation, and a great example of a satire where the author manages to get equally into the mindset of both the religious and the atheists.

Related links:
James Morrow on Wikipedia
Author’s homepage
This is the Way the World Ends at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Towing Jehovah at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk