The End of the World:
The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction
By John Leslie
Routledge, $23
ISBN 0415140439
The dubious honor of most depressing offering goes to John Leslie's "The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction." This book should come with Prozac. A professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph, he is as conversant with environmental threats as he is with geopolitical brinksmanship. His motto might be "Pick a doom, any doom." Although Leslie doesn't waste time on biblical prophecy, his tone and title qualify them for the End Times bandwagon. For one thing, he examines the odds that, billions of years after the Big Bang, the planet's most inventive and accessorized animal will wind up fouling the nest with a Big Boom.
Dreams of Millennium
By Mark Kingwell
Faber and Faber, $24.95
ISBN 057119902X
Another Canadian has written a more entertaining look at our troubled times. Mark Kingwell is also a professor of philosophy, and a journalist to boot. He seems to think that if you're going to write about the end of the world, you might as well do it with style. No arid academy-speak for this guy. "Dreams of Millennium" is an irresistible book, a lively first-person mix of wit, compassion and unrelenting intelligence. Kingwell visits a tattoo and body piercing convention, a psychic fair, and peacenik discussion groups. He examines virtual reality, "The X-Files," the history of apocalypticism, David Koresh, the widening gap between rich and poor, Heaven's Gate and even the increasing popularity of leadership seminars. It's a cliche, but this time it's true: This book will change the way you look at the world around you.
The End of Time:
Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium
By Damian Thompson
University Press of New England, $26
ISBN 0874518490
You can find the background of millennial worries in a beautifully written new book by Damian Thompson, "The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium". Thompson's book is more of a history than Leslie's or Kingwell's. He is lucid and surprising from his very first sentence -- "The measurement of time is inextricably bound up with belief in the supernatural." After examining the early history of apocalyptic thinking, Thompson moves toward our own time, through the Seventh Day Adventists growing out of the Millerites, to the Jonestown and Heaven's Gate mass suicides. It is a disturbing story, but, in Thompson's hands, frequently amusing.
Questioning the Millennium:
A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown
By Stephen Jay Gould
Harmony, $17.95
ISBN 060960076
Stephen Jay Gould is back, with "Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown". As usual, Gould excells at explaining difficult issues. He does it in a prose so self-indulgent that sometimes it reads like a first draft, yet you keep reading because the man knows so much, and because his happily rational approach examines basic questions about calendars and time-measuring. And Gould ends his book with a lovely, touching story of the mathematical wizardry performed by an autistic man of his acquaintance.
The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1998
World Almanac, $9.95
ISBN 0886878209
You can find the ubiquitous Gould again in, of all places, the new edition of "The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1998". He assembled for them a list of "Ten Mileposts of the Second Millennium in Understanding the History of Life." John Updike offers his list of the ten greatest works of literature of the last thousand years, and other prominent figures provide their own lists. There is also a countdown calendar of projected celebrations and related events. And of course this perennial factoid grab bag remains fun to browse.
2001: A Space Odyssey
By Arthur C. Clarke
Roc, $12.95
ISBN 0451452739
No round-up of millennium books would be complete without the novel that commandeered the very date, "2001: A Space Odyssey". Note that Arthur C. Clarke understood when a new century begins. As Clarke points out in his introduction, when Stanley Kubrick called him in 1964, the moon landing still seemed a distant dream, and most people alive now had not even been born. The voyage of the spacecraft "Discovery," with its worried Earthmen and talkative computer ("What are you doing, Dave?"), is as suspenseful and provocative as ever. This edition includes the author's reminiscences about the movie, the book and the sequels.
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