Since the early 1980s, the civilized world has been crushed beneath sheets of onrushing glacial ice. We’ve watched in horror as the world’s great cities have fallen beneath those relentless, grinding masses, as the lights have gone out in heartbreaking, poignant flickers, overrun by darkness that will not retreat for thousands of years, if ever.
Here we sit, in our caves, the few survivors of a once-populous world, and … What? The world isn’t covered in sheets of ice, cities aren’t ground to rubble beneath the onrushing glaciers, we aren’t all dead? Sonuvabitch. If only that had happened, we could have been spared Wham! and glam-rock.
But the world did end on January 1, 2000. Here we are, our civilization crushed by our foolish dependence on computers, living in caves and starting fires by banging rocks together and …. and … Dammit. We missed that one, too?
For those of you who missed the Ice Age that glaciated the populated world in the early 1980s, or the devastation of Y2K, be sure to catch the exciting hysteria and fun panic of your very own chance to die horribly in ten years.
Fascinatingly enough, the end of the world is always ten years from now. Or at least on a Number Ending In Zero. In the early seventies, we were ten years from the ice age. Y2K — many zeroes. Now we’re ten years from a melt-down. If you’re getting a bit suspicious of the magic sky-is-falling God Hates Decimals doom mark (and yeah, you should be), take the time to read Michael Crichton’s The State of Fear. I’d already figured out global warming was hype before I read the book. (I was about thirteen when I read that in ten years everything and everyone I loved was going to be living in perpetual snow. And I was one of those jackasses who thought the carefully documented disaster scenario of Y2K was plausible.) Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. Burn me three times … I don’t think so, pals. I started doing my own research.
But if the end of the world is new territory for you — and with it, the people who make a whole lot of money and gain a whole lot of power when you buy into their scenarios — you’ll appreciate a novel that is massively and comprehensively researched, footnoted, appendixed, and intelligent. And a writer who doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but who is very, very good at pointing out the lies told by those who do claim to.
