The Eschatological Library

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:56:38 GMT

Posted by: sunfell

Eschato- what?

Eschatology is the study of The End (from the Greek word 'eschatos', meaning 'last'). Most searches on this word will lead you to Christian sites full of prophecy and whatnot, but the Christians do not have a monopoly on the subject. Heck, they're only the lastest in a very long line of people who like to scare themselves silly with apocalyptic tales, prophecies and wild imaginings of all sorts. They've made an awful lot of money at it, too, and seem to delight in scaring themselves silly with Rapture Ready this and Armageddon that. It isn't a religious monopoly, though- I seriously think that we as a species have a built-in circuit that encourages this sort of terrible speculation, just like we have a hard-wired religious circuit.

But, whatever the source, studies and stories about The End permeate our culture. There are plenty of books around about the subject and its myriad iterations- and one of the functions of this community will be to create a virtual library- with links, if possible- to fictional and non-fictional books on the subject and related matters. There are tons out there- I have a pretty good collection of speculative fiction (OK, SciFi) books about various ways we get whacked- from nukes to alien invasions to asteroids. Many of them are as much about how we pick up the pieces afterwards as they are about the events themselves.

I invite you to post about your favorite fictional or non-fictional eschatological book- whether it's "Lucifer's Hammer", "The Stand", "Collapse", the "Dies the Fire" series, or some of the myriad 2012 books out there. Just make sure to use the tag 'eschatological library' or if you can't remember how to spell that word, simply 'library'. When we get enough posts about it, I'll do a mega-post and link to it.

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2012: Investigating the Possibilities

The Eschatological Library