Review of This Is the Way the World Ends (Paperback)

Sandwiched between vignettes of Nostradamus, "This is the Way the World Ends" is the tale of George Paxton, and the five other remaining humans on Earth.Unfortunately for George, he and the others are being tried for war crimes stemming from the nuclear destruction of the planet by the "unadmitted"; basically unborn generations that have willed themselves into existence for a brief time in order to inquire why their potential will never be realized.Compounding George's dilemma is the fact that unlike his fellow defendants, who are all wizards of nuclear strategy, George is just a simple everyman (with the ironic profession of tomb stone carver) whose only "guilt" was in not carefully reading a sales contract for a free nuclear survival suit for his daughter.

As one can tell from this brief synopsis of the plot, this is not your ordinary work of post-apocalyptic fiction.Or rather, it covers the same ground, but from a completely different angle.The Nostradamus bookends offer an air of inevitability to the narrative, and introduce a major plot device, and Morrow's description of a nuclear war's aftermath is highly engaging.Where this novel really shines, however, is in the trial.

One might expect Morrow to be a staunch proponent of disarmament given the theme of his book, but that assumption is not entirely true.Through the mechanism of the trial, he rails against both the naiveté of the doves, and the hawks' disconnect from reality.As another reviewer so eloquently stated, he demolishes the generally accepted duality of nuclear politics, and demands the reader consider a third path of their own making.That's where George comes in; his real guilt is not in his action, but in his inaction.

While much of "This is the Way the World Ends" is written in the language of 1980's Cold War rhetoric, and the threat of a massive nuclear exchange has, if not passed, certainly lessened immensely, the novel still offers great insight.First of all, Morrow's discussion of deterrence versus disarmament is fascinating; in fact (and I say this with the benefit of a degree in the subject) they would be more than adequate points of departure for any undergraduate course in international security.Particularly fascinating are his statements within ten pages that (paraphrased) 1. You can't have deterrence without strength and 2. Strength leads to escalation leads to instability.Morrow doesn't offer any answers, but he does frame some fascinating questions.Around those questions he has built a novel of intense emotion and beautiful characters; the last time a book's ending moved me so intensely was another classic of the genre, "On the Beach".And while I wouldn't place it in quite the same league as Nevil Shute's masterwork, it is nonetheless a remarkable book that is eminently worth reading.

Enjoy!



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