| Toward the End of Time Contributor(s): Updike, John (Author) |
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ISBN: 0449000419 ISBN-13: 9780449000410 Publisher: Random House Trade OUR PRICE: $14.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 1998 Annotation: Ben Turnbull, the hero of John Updike's eighteenth novel, is a sixty-six-year-old retired investment counselor 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. The dollar has been locally replaced by Massachusetts scrip; instead of taxes, one pays protection money to competing racketeers. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of a year, retains many of its accustomed comforts, as supervised by his vibrant wife, Gloria. He plays golf; he pays visits to his five children and ten grandchildren. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions and vagaries of the "many-worlds" hypothesis derived from the indeterminacy of quantum 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-enshrouded existence move toward the end of time. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Science Fiction - General - Fiction | Psychological |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 98096345 |
| Physical Information: 0.93" H x 5.32" W x 8.02" (0.64 lbs) 352 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Set in the near future of 2020, this disconcerting philosophical fantasy depicts an America devastated by a war with China that has left its populace decimated, its government a shambles, and its natural resources tainted. The hero is Ben Turnbull, a sixty-six-year-old retired investment counselor, who, like Thoreau, sticks close to home and traces the course of one Massachusetts year in his journal. Something of a science buff, he finds that his disrupted personal history has been warped by the disjunctions and vagaries of the "many-worlds" hypothesis derived from the indeterminacy of quantum theory. His identity branches into variants extending back through the past and forward into the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-haunted existence move toward the end of time. |