How will the end of the world be announced - or presaged? Is "the world" Earth or the universe? Do we mean the end of everything or only of the present world order? Will the end, in whichever sense, arrive unannounced?
In Paris, on the Left Bank overlooking the Boulevard St. Germain, in 1902:
"Everard tried not to remember that in a dozen years this world would crash to ruin."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART ONE, 1902 A. D., p. 119.
The precursors of the Jehovah's Witnesses had predicted the end of the world - or at least the end of the present sinful world order - in 1914 and subsequently, of necessity, reinterpreted it. Thus, a supernatural event occurred then but the end will come soon.
In Anderson's After Doomsday, spaceships re-enter the Solar System after Earth has been sterilized. Its inhabitants would have had no warning. In his Tau Zero, the crew of a relativistic spaceship sees the universe fading and contracting. However, the sterilized Earth will be re-seeded and the contracted universe re-expands so is there an end? In Anderson's Harvest Of Stars and Genesis, the latter a highly appropriate title, consciousness and intelligence might survive the heat death of the universe.
(A British TV program is just now showing the East window in York Minster which begins with (the Biblical) Genesis and ends with Apocalypse.)
Before the Ragnarok, three cocks crow, in Jotunheim, Hel and Asgard, respectively. See Cockcrow, Addendum.
See also Gabriel's horn.
I could also reference James Blish, Isaac Asimov, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman but perhaps Anderson alone, plus Voluspa and Apocalypse, is comprehensive enough?
This post was initiated by a passage in which James Bond reflects that Goldfinger, funding SMERSH, is:
"...piling up the surplus for the day when the trumpets would sound in the Kremlin and every golden sinew would be mobilized."
-Ian Fleming, Goldfinger (London, 1959), CHAPTER 7, p. 64.
So the free world would have ended when, metaphorically of course, trumpets sounded in the Kremlin? Unlikely and, in any case, did not happen.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But there might have been nuclear strikes by the USSR if Khruschev had not backed down over those missiles he installed in Cuba. And I don't think Ian Fleming or Poul Anderson thought it was totally unlikely for such a nuclear clash between the West and the USSR to happen. Fortunately, it did not.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I did not quote this part but, in the passage to which I referred, Bond anticipated not a nuclear exchange but what he called "Red Revolution."
Paul.
I should have mentioned that the Maurai also anticipate the end of their world order but we will come to that.
Kaor, Paul!
It really is time I got back to rereading some of the Bond books, despite thinking Anderson's Flandry stories and William F. Buckley's Blackford Oates novels being better when it comes to spy stories.
Right now I happen to be rereading Julian May's MAGNIFICAT, the last of her Pliocene/Milieu books.
I don't think a Red Revolution in the West was ever truly likely after about 1950. Except among die hard fellow travelers or Marxist sectarians, the sheer brutality of the USSR had discredited Marxism with most people.
I do recall from THERE WILL BE TIME of a Maurai statesman expecting his people's time as a great power to soon end. Set before ORION SHALL RISE?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
They are not really set in the same timeline. THERE WILL BE TIME has resistance to the Maurai after only a couple of hundred years.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't find that convincing, because it's too short. I have argued for a Maurai timeline of at least 800 years. E.g., the Perio roee and fell during the time when the Maurai were still arising and starting to become a great power. Say, 400 years after the War of Judgment by the time of "The Sky People."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I agree with the comment about the Perio. I get the feeling Poul was downplaying that length of time in ORION, though.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Thanks! And here I have to disagree with Poul Anderson, a longer Maurai timeline simply makes sense and is more plausible: allowing for the rise of the Perio, which happened before the Maurai Federation became a great power. A longer timeline gives TIME for all the events described or hinted at in the stories to occur without being crowded together too tightly.
Ad astra! Sean
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