Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels In End-Time America - Softcover

Heard, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385498527 ISBN 13: 9780385498524

Publisher: Crown, 2000

Synopsis

The inspired madness of America's apocalyptic and pre-millennial organizations may have reached a fever pitch with the turn of the twenty-first century, but intrepid cultural traveler Alex Heard spent a ten-year period witnessing the crescendo firsthand.  Heard's enthusiasm led him on errands as diverse as being a voyeur at a Republic of Texas militia standoff, accompanying an expectant UFO "greeting party" to a remote field in Minnesota, and enacting the grief of the California quail at an ad-hoc therapy group for fierce environmentalists who believe the earth is an actual living entity that's preparing to kill off its human population--and soon...or at least pretty soon.

Amazing as it may seem, however, throughout this trenchant subcultural travelogue, Heard never stoops to ridicule his subjects.  As one reviewer puts it, "Heard's real achievement may be that he makes us care--in a way that is more than voyeuristic--about the colorful characters he meets on the road to the new millennium.  He takes these people seriously, allows his assumptions to be challenged, and lets himself find that some of their beliefs and fears reflect his own" (San Jose Mercury News).

Apocalypse Pretty Soon will appeal to science fiction fans and students of subcultures, as well as anybody interested in way-out alternatives to the brave new world.
Amazing as it may seem, however, throughout this trenchant subcultural travelogue, Heard never stoops to ridicule his subjects. As one reviewer put it, "Heard's real achievement may be that he makes us care--in a way that is more than voyeuristic--about the colorful characters he meets on the road to the new millennium. He takes these people seriously, allows his assumptions to be challenged, and lets himself find that some of their beliefs and fears reflect his own" (San Jose Mercury News).

Now in paperback, this book will have an audience well beyond "millenniamania," from science fiction fans to students of subculture, and anybody interested in way-out alternatives to the brave new world. -->

About this title

Review:

Since 1987, New York Times Magazine editor Alex Heard has scouted out Americans with out-there beliefs: people who breed red heifers to hasten Christ's Second Coming and pen books like The Dead Are Alive and If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive; astral-plane sky pilots; homicidal survivalists. The best piece is "Welcome, Space Brothers!" about UFO fans whose leader, Ruth Norman, "combined the couture sensibilities of a drag queen with the joie de vivre of a Frisbee-chasing Irish setter." He conveys what it must be like to be one who sat rapt as Ruth spoke, "sounding like a combination of Julia Child, Aunt Clara on Bewitched, and a bossy little girl telling other little girls the rules of her playhouse."

Heard gets inside their closed systems to poke fun from within, and often puts things in historical context. You'll understand mainstream apocalyptic literature like the bestselling Left Behind thrillers far better once Heard briefs you on the whole range of stranger biblical end-times interpreters. Like David Gelernter's 1939: The Lost World of the Fair, Apocalypse Pretty Soon has a poignant sense of what commonsense culture has lost in giving up its millennial dreams.

Heard is valuable because he's thorough and genuinely interested in why Arthur Blessitt finds it blessed to drag a 105-pound cross across the globe, surviving attacks by mamba snake, crocodile, Nicaraguan firing squad, and LAPD choke hold. His book is madly funny, and deeply sad. --Tim Appelo

About the Author:

Alex Heard is an editor at Wired magazine.  He has also edited and written for The New York Times Magazine, Outside, The New Republic, Slate, and many other publications.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0385498527
• ISBN 13: 9780385498524
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368