NOTES FROM AN APOCALYPSE

Prize winning very, very funny and popular Dublin writer Mark O'Connell is not concerned himself by the end of days, but sets out to meet them. Are you ready for the end of the world? In the remote mountains of Scotland, in spartan bunkers in South Dakota and in the lush valleys of New Zealand, small groups of determined men and women are getting ready. They are environmentalists who fear the ravages of climate change, billionaire entrepreneurs dreaming of a life on Mars, and right-wing conspiracists yearning for a lost American idyll. One thing unites them - the certainty that we are only years away from the end of civilisation as we know it. Greta Thunberg said, 'I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis... because it is.' We meet all manner of cranks to the details of The Founder's paradox and uneasy fascination with the utopian future imagined by the techno-libertarians of Silicon Valley. Sounds like a strategy board game where you acquire land, rich resources and clean air, away from the chaos and ecological devastation gripping the rest of the world. Utterly fascinating and global in scope. 252pp.