Toward the End of Time
by John Updike
Fiction > Literary
Ben Turnbull is a 66-year-old retired investment consultant living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of the year, retains much of its accustomed comforts. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions and vagaries of the 'many universes' theory; his identity branches into variants extending back through history ... Read More
Ben Turnbull is a 66-year-old retired investment consultant living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of the year, retains much of its accustomed comforts. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions and vagaries of the 'many universes' theory; his identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-shrouded existence move toward the end of time. Read Less
Alternate Editions (2)
1998, Random House Trade
Publisher: Random House Trade
Hardcover, Good
Bookmans
Fair. General wear Satisfaction 100% guaranteed.
Hardcover, Fair
Hardcover, Fine/Like New
Like New.
2006, Penguin Classics, London
Mass-market paperback
1999, Penguin Books Ltd, London
1998, Random House Trade, New York, NY
1998, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London
1997, Knopf Publishing Group, New York, NY
All Editions of Toward the End of Time
2006, Mass-market paperback
Books by John Updike
My Father's Tears and Other Stories
The Early Stories: 1953-1975
Rabbit Run
The House of God: The Classic Novel of Life and Death in an American Hospital
Gertrude and Claudius
by Professor John Updike
The Witches of Eastwick
Rabbit at Rest
dCarey
Updike's Dystopia
Updike's take on a sci-fi dystopian future is pretty much exactly what I expected of this novel. As we've come to expect from Updike, the prose is no less than superb and the narrator is a classic, self-absorbed Updikian misogynist, but there are some ridiculous holes in his sci-fi future that are hard to overlook.
For example: The book was published in 1997 and takes place in the not-so-distant future of 2020. Would it have been that difficult to imagine a future where computers are wireless and entertainment technology has moved beyond VHS tapes?
Regardless of its predictive shortcomings, this is a novel that deserves much more respect than it has received. The dystopian wreck of a future was the result of a Sino-American nuclear war, and anyone who is keeping tabs on foreign affairs and the rise of China should recognize just how frighteningly realistic Updike's prophecy looks ten years later. Also, while dystopian sci-fi is hardly a new genre, Updike managed to give the old species a literary bent nearly ten years before Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" ignited the current trend of apocalyptic literary fiction.
Bottom line: If you dig Updike, Sci-fi or just spending an afternoon thinking about how terribly wrong the future might end up, this book is probably worth your time.