The End

Serious authors address serious issues. We need not yet again list how often Poul Anderson and James Blish addressed the theme of "the end of the world," especially since this phrase has different applications: the end of a universe, the end of a planet, the end of human life on Earth etc. The end of a civilization can seem to be "the end of the world" to those who live, and die, through it. Poul Anderson shows us the decline of the Roman Empire, the aftermath of the Fall of the Terran Empire and immortals outliving civilizations.

Anderson's Old Phoenix Inn exists between universes and therefore, we hypothesize, is unaffected by the coming to an end of any particular universe. Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe is a place that people time travel to before returning to their respective eras. Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End is sustained by the continual coming to an end of worlds in different senses of the word, "world."

I raise this issue again because I recall that, at a Memorial Evening for James Blish, Bob Shaw told us that, on first meeting Blish, he expected him to be a very serious person on every level, especially since "Armageddon" came up so often in his works, and, presuming to advise such a man, he said, "Jim, don't worry so much about Armageddon. It's not the end of the world!"