The End of the World

The essays selected by the editors to ex­plore these apocalyptic visions are: “The Re­making of Zero: Beginning at the End,” by Gary K. Wolfe; “The Lone Survivor,” by Robert Plank; “Ambiguous Apocalypse: Transcendental Versions of the End,” by Robert Galbreath; “World’s End: The Imag­ination of Catastrophe,” by W. Warren Wagar; “Man-Made Catastrophes,” by Brian Stableford; and “The Rebellion of Nature,” by W. Warren Wagar.

Wolfe sees in these postholocaust narra­tives a central attraction—“the mythic power inherent in the very conception of a remade world.” This power derives from three sources: the emergence of a new order from the ashes of the old system, and thus a kind of denial of death; the reinforcement of one set of values as opposed to another; and as something always replaces whatever was destroyed, a promise that nothing can anni­hilate humanity.