Philip Wylie’s last science fiction novel, The End of the Dream (1972), ought to be a cult classic. On the other hand, if the book had attracted more readers, he might have been arrested. He was put under house arrest in 1945 after the publication of his short story, “The Paradise Crater” (1945), which revealed information about the atom bomb only a few months before the U.S. tested it successfully at Alamogordot. In his brilliant novel, The End of the Dream, Wylie explores the causes of an ecological holocaust. Much of this has happened already, sometimes on a smaller, other times on a larger scale.

Much of the novel is told in the form of documents. After the decimation of most of the world’s population, the narrator collects Secret government documents, letters, books, newspaper articles, and scientific data for a historical archive. The multiple causes of the ecological holocaust are air and water pollution, industrial waste, nuclear waste, genetically altered food, climate change, and catastrophes resulting from all of the above. And in the novel, the narrator’s Ground Zero is a book published in the fictional future called 1975: Date of No Return. (Our own date of no return used to be, I believe, 2025. One gathers that it has shifted.)

There is also a fictional narrative to illustrate the documents. Sometimes the episodes seem rushed, but they make their point. The main characters are the narrator, Willard Page Gulliver, and his friend Miles Smythe, the wealthy founder of a Foundation that researches the most imminent threats to the environment. The Foundation also helps victims of environmental accidents.

Wylie is blunt about hushed-up nuclear reactor accidents and fish kills in rivers by nuclear and industrial waste. In Cleveland, the Cuyahoga River, which actually caught fire in 1969, not only burns but explodes. And it could happen there. The river has caught fire several times.

But perhaps the most horrifying “accident” occurs because of innocuous Christmas shopping.

‘Tis the season, after all….

During the Christmas season, meteorologists have warned the government that a climate event, an inversion layer of smoke, stagnant air, and an unprecedented emission of air pollution particles in New York and New Jersey, is about to kill much of the population if they are not locked down immediately. At the meeting to determine their action, the mayor, a general, and a Harvard-educated merchant blithely decide to ignore the recommendation so as not to hurt their shopping profits.

Here is a priceless quote from a merchant: “If, in the few shopping days remaining, any event, any act of God, of weather, if –ahhh– anything should lead to a further diminishing of the shopping crowds, I can guarantee you that thousands– yes, thousands- of business enterprises will be ruined.”

Yes, we can see this happening only too well. The End of the Dream is historically accurate and scientifically possible and plausible. Wylie, who attended Princeton, not only became became a prolific writer, but worked a stint as the director of the Lerner Marine Laboratory and as an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy.

Read this strange, brilliant book if you can find it. It seems very radical, much more so than the average dystopian novels published these days. I wonder if this would be published now.

And if anyone knows where I can find Wylie’s subversive short story “The Paradise Crater,” let me know.