The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF (collection)

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We seem to have a fascination for the Apocalypse, the end of all things. It’s not that we welcome it, least I hope not, but it seems that we can’t help wondering about it, even predicting it. “The End is Nigh”, a phrase perhaps too-oft used to have the impact it once had, has now passed into our language to signify yet another fallacious prediction.

There are the obvious religious connotations of the Apocalypse or the Day of Judgment — the biblical Armageddon, the Nordic Ragnarok, the Islamic Qiyamah (Doomsday), and so on — and this in turn may feed into the growing scientific awareness of our mortality through such possibilities as pandemics, cosmic catastrophes, climate change or the inevitable death of the Sun. The imagery of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, representing Conquest, War, Famine and Death, is as potent today as ever.

This anthology brings together stories that look at many of the ways that the Earth, or life upon it, may be destroyed, from plagues to floods, nuclear war to collision with a comet, alien invasion to new technologies run wild, and a few things beyond your widest imaginings.

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