The End (Repeat)

n+1, in honor of Sandy (so they say), just reposted this essay-review by Chad Harbach of Matthew Sharpe’s Jamestown (2007) and a host of other post-catastrophe lit, “The End, The End, The End.” Like Robert Charles Wilson’s recent Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America (2009), the catastrophic novels Harbach discusses lie on the other side of global oil-depletion: “Now we’ve burned half the available oil, or close to it, and burning it (along with so much coal) has altered the earth’s equilibrium. Our future, like our past, may be virtually free of oil, and global culture, and many of the social safeguards we enjoy. Thus the novel of future catastrophe threatens to become a version of the historical novel.” Harbach also has an old review of DFW’s Oblivion for n+1.

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