Everything Must Go
The Stories We Tell About The End of the World
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
'I was blown away by this book. The staggering range of references, the razor-sharp analysis, the wisdom, left me gasping out loud at times. Lynskey also somehow manages to make a book about the end of the world feel . . . hopeful. One of the best non-fiction writers around.' – Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland
A riveting and brilliantly original exploration of our fantasies of the end of the world, from Mary Shelley's The Last Man to Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, by the Baillie Gifford and Orwell prize-shortlisted writer and co-host of the podcast 'Origin Story'.
For two millennia, Christians have looked forward to the end, haunted by the apocalyptic visions of the Biblical books of Daniel and Revelation. But for two centuries or more, these dark fantasies have given way to secular stories of how the world, our planet, or our species (or all of the above) might come to an end.
Dorian Lynskey's fascinating book explores the endings that we have read, listened to or watched over the last two dozen decades, whether they be by the death and destruction of a nuclear holocaust or collision with a meteor or comet, devastating epidemic or takeover by robots or computers.
The result is nothing less than a cultural history of the modern world, weaving together politics, history, science, high and popular culture in a book that is uniquely original, grippingly readable and deeply illuminating about both us and our times.
'Impossibly epic, brain-expanding, life-affirming and profound. You’ll never see humanity the same way again.' – Ian Dunt, author of How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This sweeping cultural history from journalist Lynskey (The Ministry of Truth) chronicles how films, novels, and other media have imagined the apocalypse from ancient times through the present. He explains that cultures across the world held a cyclical understanding of time until ancient Persian Zoroastrians developed a linear view that influenced Judaism and Christianity, as reflected in the Book of Revelation's "bloodthirsty, psychedelic visions" of fiery end times. Contending that artists have used apocalyptic stories to make sense of global and personal tragedies, Lynskey discusses how Lord Byron composed the poem "Darkness" to reckon with the blackened skies and failed harvests caused by the 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies, and how Mary Shelley wrote her dystopian 1826 novel The Last Man, about a plague that nearly eliminates humanity, to work through her grief over the deaths of her husband and children. "Writers of fictional doomsdays all reveal what they love or hate about the world... and what they fear," Lynskey argues, exploring how such films as Godzilla dramatized anxieties over nuclear weapons, and how Don't Look Up took a scathing view of indifference to climate change. Lynskey's astute analysis excels at teasing out the existential concerns that have animated artists over the course of millennia. Readers won't want this to end.
