The Other End

Do you ever feel you’d like to reboot the world? Do you ever think that the human world is hopelessly out of balance, blighted, off track, and the only hope is some kind of apocalypse, some sort of “Judgment Day with justice” that would allow the human race to start over–without, ah, certain people? You know you don’t want–and can’t believe in–the usual Judgment Days that are predicted and ballyhooed by hysterical, superstitious people. But when you look around at the world as it stands you see Darfur, you see Somalia and the Congo, you see the modern slavery of indentured servitude, you see children sold into prostitution, you see millions starving, you see mindless wars, you see people you care about dying of Alzheimer’s and children dying of cancer and millions of others trapped in schizophrenia or living lives of media-hypnotized desperation… And you know that it’s only going to get worse. This can’t go on; something has to change. What if you could change it? What if you could design your own Judgment Day? Not a Judgment Day based on childish interpretations of religion, on bias and cultural narrowness… What if you could design a Judgment Day, for the whole world–one that offers real Justice?What would it be like? In John Shirley’s novel, THE OTHER END, a wave of light shatters the world’s assumptions; human behavior takes a sudden unexpected turn. Swift, a newspaper reporter, has to find his missing daughter in a panicking world even as something from Every Where makes millions of people suddenly look inward. And looking inward, strangely, takes them outward again… And then come the Adjustors. Who are they? Where exactly are they from? They say they’re not angels, or aliens… Then who are they? The usual End Timers offer one End of the World as We Know It… John Shirley’s courageous, genuinely risky new novel offers the other end. The other end of the ideological spectrum; the other end of the world. Does it involve…aliens? No. Does it involve God? Not really–but then, it depends on your definition. John Shirley, the award-winning author of DEMONS, IN DARKNESS WAITING, CELLARS, A SPLENDID CHAOS, ECLIPSE, BLACK BUTTERFLIES, and so much more gives us a totally unexpected Judgment Day. Something is coming, to near-future Earth–to the whole world. Something is coming that will finally give the human race the chance it never had before…to bring it to THE OTHER END.