Reviews
Tate traces a diverse array of tropes as they surface in this century's most indelible doomsday fantasies ... Fluent and perceptive., A stimulating, lucid and compact study and guide to further research on twenty-first century British, US, and Canadian writing about the end times., "Released in the "21st-Century Genre Fiction" series, this book begins by distinguishing two ways of depicting a "ruined future": as dystopia and as "a devastated Earth in which 'technofuture' has failed." So Tate (Lancaster Univ., UK) writes in the introduction. Tate correctly defines apocalypse as an "uncovering of what was previously hidden" about the future and notes its dependence on the Bible. Having acknowledged the biblical origins of modern apocalypses, Tate discusses five types of modern apocalypse, devoting a chapter to each. The first he dubs "God Rains Over Everything." These apocalypses depict an end devised by God. The second type, which borrows its theme from the New Testament, depicts a sudden departure of people. The third resembles the implied chaos mentioned in Genesis 1:2 (Earth as without form and void). Type four depicts what Tate terms walking after catastrophe (i.e., life beyond a traumatic end), and the last, discussed in chapter 5 ("Keep Watching"), develops the walking theme further. On the plus side, the book surveys a wide range of literature and provides a useful way of categorizing apocalyptic fiction. On the negative side, Tate articulates no obvious thesis, so the reader is left to wonder what this literature adds up to. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Lower-division undergraduates; general readers." - CHOICE, "Released in the "21st-Century Genre Fiction" series, this book begins by distinguishing two ways of depicting a "ruined future": as dystopia and as "a devastated Earth in which 'technofuture' has failed." So Tate (Lancaster Univ., UK) writes in the introduction. Tate correctly defines apocalypse as an "uncovering of what was previously hidden" about the future and notes its dependence on the Bible. Having acknowledged the biblical origins of modern apocalypses, Tate discusses five types of modern apocalypse, devoting a chapter to each. The first he dubs "God Rains Over Everything." These apocalypses depict an end devised by God. The second type, which borrows its theme from the New Testament, depicts a sudden departure of people. The third resembles the implied chaos mentioned in Genesis 1:2 (Earth as without form and void). Type four depicts what Tate terms walking after catastrophe (i.e., life beyond a traumatic end), and the last, discussed in chapter 5 ("Keep Watching"), develops the walking theme further. On the plus side, the book surveys a wide range of literature and provides a useful way of categorizing apocalyptic fiction. On the negative side, Tate articulates no obvious thesis, so the reader is left to wonder what this literature adds up to. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Lower-division undergraduates; general readers." - CHOICE "A worthy contribution to the body of literary criticism devoted to the genre." - Science Fiction Studies
