It's the End of the World

**WINNER** The British Science Fiction Association Best Non-Fiction 2020 Are we doomed? Is an almighty power or an earth-shattering meteor waiting for us just around the corner? In this thought-provoking book, Professor Adam Roberts explores our many different cultural visions of the end of the world - likely and unlikely, mundane and bizarre - and what they say about how we see ourselves and our societies. What is it is that we are really afraid of? An uncaring universe; an uncontrollable environment; the human capacity for destruction; or just our own, personal apocalypse - our mortality? From last man and dying earth fiction to zombies swarming on screen and the ruined landscapes of immersive gaming, via sweeping contagions, invading aliens, falling bombs and rising robots, buckle up for the end of the world.

Professor Adam Roberts is a writer, critic and Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway University. Among his many academic works are studies of Browning and Coleridge. He is also the author of more than twenty science fiction novels, including Jack Glass, which won the BSFA Award for Best Novel. He is the author of the Palgrave History of Science Fiction and reviews regularly for the Guardian. He lives to the West of London with his wife and two children.