Tolkien: the End of the Third Age of Middle Earth.
Poul and Karen Anderson: the Fall of the Roman Empire and the drowning of Ys.
Tennyson: Morte D'Arthur.
Dornford Yates: the post-War end of Merrie England (forgetting the Chartists and Peterloo).
Fleming, le Carre etc: the end of the Cold War.
Poul Anderson: the last days of the Polesotechnic League, then of the Terran Empire.
James Blish's Earthman, Come Home: the end of the Okie era.
Blish's The Triumph Of Time and Anderson's Tau Zero: the end of a universe.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I could quibble and argue that Tolkien gave some stress to how, after the end of the Third Age of Middle Earth and the fading of the Elves, the Fourth Age began, that of the Dominion of Men.
The end of the Cold War did not mean the end of this time of Chaos we are still struggling with!
We see the end of the Polesotechnic League, yes, but strictly speaking, not of the Terran Empire. The latter was still a strong and powerful going concern at the end of THE GAME OF EMPIRE.
Sean
Sean,
But we do see "the last days" of League and Empire.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Strictly speaking, we don't. We have no stories from Anderson directly showing us the end of first the League, and later, the Empire. The League tottered on for about a century after MIRKHEIM, and we see Flandry hoping, in THE GAME OF EMPIRE, that Terra's Empire would survive another two centuries.
Sean
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