Endings Eventually End: Twenty-Five Doomsday Countdowns

"Endings Eventually End: 25 Doomsday Countdowns" is "[a] collection of 25 countdown clocks and the cataclysmic prophecies associated with each end times scenario. Published under the imprimatur of Singularity Watch! and the Ecumenical Eschatology Working Group, these prophecies depict the many ways that life as we know it will come to an end. Whether due to catastrophic stage magic to orgiastic overeating, clouds of interstellar fog to giant fish, Nelson and Heckman's work suggest that our days are numbered." -- From ELMCIP

"In 1989, Francis Fukuyama published an essay titled 'The End of History.' Subsequently expanded to book-length (The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press, 1992), Fukuyama argued that history had reached an end-stage development, crowning market-driven liberal democracy as the most advanced politico-economic system possible; evolution, at least in regard to forms of government, was deemed a closed project.

Fukuyama’s assessment, coming after the collapse of Soviet-style communism, was the kind of irrational triumphalism, a kind of (dare we say) uni-dimensional paper idea, that passed for intellectual thought. Nearly twenty years later, viewed through the lens of financial crisis and the ill consequences of imperialist adventures, the prognosis of history is less certain. Gone, thankfully, is the arrogance of presumption. In its place, Anxiety.

Davin Heckman and Jason Nelson’s 'Endings Eventually End: Twenty Five Doomsday Countdowns' reflects the contemporary moment’s Anxiety.

'While this particular piece, "Endings Eventually End," tends to focus on the fringes of American culture, it also speaks to more generalized eschatological anxieties brought about by the shrinking world and the notion of rapid cultural, economic, ecological, and technological change,' Heckman says.

Heckman and Nelson’s apocalyptic vision treads into the Absurd. Events that trigger the End Times include 'The Birth of Mirth,' lost shoes, and 'Monster Goldfish.' Instead of the 'End of History,' Heckman and Nelson write of 'The End of Cheese.'

Amidst this entertaining piece come hard questions: what happens when all possible doomsday scenarios have been imagined? When all possible musical compositions have been played? When high-speed random text generators produce all the possible textual variations that we can hope to create? Will the result be doomsday?" -- From The New River Journal

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