This Is the Way the World Ends

James Morrow turns his wit and vision to the ultimate fate of our species in this seriocomic tale of one George Paxton: devoted husband, adoring father, Everyman par excellence. A happy tombstone carver in the sleepy little town of Wildgrove, Massachusetts, George lacks only one thing: an anti-radiation “scopas” suit—all the rage in America in 1995—to protect his daughter in the event of nuclear war. Then fate (or the devil) intervenes, and for the price of a mere signature, George secures the longed-for suit. Unfortunately, what he has signed is an admission of complicity in beginning World War Three—and as that war that could never happen happens, George is whisked off on a series of surreal adventures. When the nuclear blast devastates Wildgrove, George is rescued by the mysterious crew of a U.S. submarine whose other passengers include a TV evangelist, the Assistant Secretary of Defense, a psychotherapist, and an Air Force general in despair over the end of his career. Journeying into the past and the future, with people who have died and people who will never be born, George grapples with the need to explain exactly why this is the way the world ends. Finally, on a deserted plain in the wastes of Antarctica, he is made to face the consequences of his complicity.