Customer Reviews

The End of the Dream

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he was a voice in the wilderness. he tried to show us what lay in the canyons between who &what we are &who & what we really are. he tried to show that we humans are bound by law. and that law is nature. and nature does not give a tinkers' damn about our opinions. the "the end of the dream" is now. it's happening now. look around. if someone has to explain, you'd never understand.

I'm fairly certain _The End Of The Dream_ is Phillip Wylie's last book; alas, it is not one of his best. Although it contains some unforgetable imagery, the thread holding everything together is frayed and breaks in places. Still, the plane crash into the Regency Towers, the Antarctic exploitation, and the mass deaths due to bad air vividly illustrate his theme of the horrors coming from environmental abuse - particularly his "vibes", which will stay with long after you'd like.

Wylie's End of the Dream introduced me to the dangers of scientific specialization. That a nuclear scientist would have only a "basic" knowledge of biology and a chemist that constructs deadly pesticides only a slight exposure to genetics was shocking, yet true. I learned a great deal. If you can find a copy, read it.

THe book was apparently lost in the post between UK and western US. I was able to obtain a full refund from the seller. THere were some issues, but those have been resolved.

It came from the 1970's! After 40 or so years of environmental disaster scenarios painted by the visionary prophets of doom, guess what? The wind still blows; grass still grows; and the sky is blue. Bluer, in fact, than when these portents of disaster were written. I read Wylie's book when it came out, and like Generation of Vipers, it was essentially an anti-American crock. These screeds all have that common thread; that America, with it's historically unique position as the only superpower, is not only to blame for all bad things, but creates them in order to abuse the planet & its peaceful harmonious native inhabitants. From Wylie to Gore, the message is always the same: USA bad! If even one of these tomes had foreshadowed nightmares that actually occured, one could argue their potential relevance. Wylie's imagery is colorful & his characters interesting, but his premise is dubious at best, and his conclusions worthy of much well-deserved ridicule. At least he proves that one can still make a decent living biting the hand that feeds one. That, sadly, is still true today despite decades of fanciful tales of America the Horrible. Defend the world's powerless from tyrants; feed them ; cure their plagues; rescue them from tsunamis; and hang their ethnic-cleansing dictators, just in time to hear your fellow earthlings tell you how you are the source of all things evil. It's not easy being a 20th/21st century American, but consider the alternative.