The End of the World News (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: John Anthony Burgess Wilson
- First Published: 1982
- Type of Work: Science fiction, biography, and political musical comedy
- Time of Work: The 1890’s through 1938, 1917, and 1999-2000
- Setting: New York City, Vienna, America, Western Europe, and Australia
- Principal Characters: Dr. Valentine Brodie, Robert Courtland van Caulaert Willett, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Lev Davidovich Bronstein, Leon Trotsky, Dr. Vanessa Brodie, Olga “Mooney” Lunacharskaya, Dr. Carl Jung
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Socialism, Authors or writers, New York City, Future, Science or scientists, Space flight or travel, Adventure, Austria or Austrians, End of the world, Western Europe or western Europeans, Satire, Psychoanalysis or psychoanalysts, Australia or Australians
- Locales: New York, NY, Europe, Vienna, Austria, Australia
The Novel
The End of the World News, consists of three largely independent narratives. Apart from some clever verbal and thematical parallels, the three interwoven texts do not come together before the very end of the novel.
The science-fiction story begins in Australia, where, during a Nativity play in the winter of 1999, an amateur astronomer becomes the first ordinary citizen to spot Lynx, “a bloody new star in the bloody east.” In this story, which self-consciously alludes to Rudolph Mate’s 1951 disaster film When Worlds Collide, Lynx is discovered to be a...
[The entire page is 1924 words long]
Navigate
- The End of the World News (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
- The End of the World News (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
See Also:
- Add The End of the World News to your favorites