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.