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This Is the Way the World Ends 

This Is the Way the World Ends (1986)
A novel by James Morrow

 
Awards
John W Campbell Memorial Award (nominee)
Nebula (nominee)
"The only book in the last two years that I've read twice. A remarkable achievement."
Arthur C Clarke


When George Paxman, a contented tombstone engraver in a sleepy Massachusetts town, is offered a bargain, he doesn't hesitate long. The deal is that his beloved daughter gets an otherwise unaffordable scopas suit to protect her from radioactive fall-out and all George has to do is sign a document admitting that, as a passive citizen who did nothing to stop it, he has a degree of guilt for any nuclear war that breaks out. George signs on the dotted line. And then the unthinkable happens. The world and everyone in it (scopas suit or no scopas suit) is destroyed in nuclear Armageddon. Except for George and five others who must now face prosecution from the great mass of humanity who will now never be born. And George Paxman stands accused in the name of all the people who stood by and never raised a finger to stop the horror of nuclear war.James Morrow had published SF novels before, but This Is the Way the World Ends (1986) reached a new level of intensity, tackling World War III horrors with ultra-black magic realism plus a touch of Lewis Carroll. Like George Orwell's 1984, it still packs a grim punch although history took another course.

As the Cold War heats up, Americans frantically buy "scopas suits"(Self-COntained Post-Attack Survival) as protection against nukes. Tombstone engraver George Paxton can't afford one for his young daughter, until a strange old woman commissions epitaphs for her "parents" and pays by directing him to a magic shop where the scopas suit costs only his signature--acknowledging responsibility for any nuclear war. Soon we realise George's improvised epitaphs are for Eve, Adam and everyone:

She was better than she knew. He never found out what he was doing here.

Whimsy and social satire give way to nightmare as the missiles fall, scopas suits prove useless, and post-nuclear hell is painted in stomach-churning detail: flashburns, melted eyes, shattered people begging for death.

George, though, is rescued. As one of six who signed the McMurdo Sound Agreement, he must stand trial in Antarctica for complicity in murdering humanity. Prosecution, defenders, judges and police are the "unadmitted", unborn future generations now denied real life, whose sheer rage has won them temporary existence. Old disarmament and deterrence arguments, wittily rehashed in the Nuremberg-like court, seem all too different after the worst has happened. This queasy tragicomedy isn't easily forgotten. --David Langford

 
Used availability for James Morrow's This Is the Way the World Ends


See all available used copies of this book at: Abebooks UK or Abebooks US
 

 

Hardback Editions

February 1987 : Hardback
Title: This is the Way the World Ends
Author(s):: James Morrow
ISBN: 0575039728 / 9780575039728 (UK edition)
Publisher: Gollancz
Availability: Amazon CA   Amazon UK   Amazon   

June 1986 : Hardback
Title: This Is the Way the World Ends
Author(s):: James Morrow
ISBN: 0030080371 / 9780030080371 (USA edition)
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
Availability: Amazon   Amazon CA   Amazon UK   

Paperback Editions

June 2013 : Paperback
Title: This Is the Way the World Ends (S.F. MASTERWORKS)
Author(s):: James Morrow
ISBN: 057508118X / 9780575081185 (UK edition)
Publisher: Gollancz
Availability: Amazon UK   

May 2000 : Paperback
Title: This Is The Way The World Ends (Gollancz SF collector's edition)
Author(s):: James Morrow
ISBN: 057507101X / 9780575071018 (UK edition)
Publisher: Gollancz
Availability: Amazon UK   Amazon   

March 1995 : Paperback
Title: This Is the Way the World Ends
Author(s):: James Morrow
ISBN: 0156002086 / 9780156002080 (USA edition)
Publisher: Harvest Books
Availability: Amazon UK   Amazon   Amazon CA   

May 1989 : Mass Market Paperback
Title: This Is the Way the World Ends
Author(s):: James Morrow
ISBN: 0441807119 / 9780441807116 (USA edition)
Publisher: Ace Books
Availability: Amazon CA   Amazon UK   Amazon   

June 1989 : Paperback
Title: This is the Way the World Ends
Author(s):: James Morrow
ISBN: 0099630702 / 9780099630708 (UK edition)
Publisher: Legend paperbacks
Availability: Amazon   Amazon CA   Amazon UK   

Kindle Editions

June 2013 : Kindle edition
Title: This Is the Way the World Ends (S.F. MASTERWORKS)
Author(s):: James Morrow
ISBN: B00DCVYLIQ
Publisher: Gateway
Availability: Amazon UK   

 


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