The End of the Dream
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In The End of the Dream, venerated science-fiction author Philip Wylie trains his sights on the ultimate catastrophe--the destruction of the world through human beings' unheeding and willful poisoning of the atmosphere, the land, the seas and rivers, and finally of the human race itself. The End of the Dream describes a horrific future when toxic chemicals, mutated creatures, and noxious gases all contribute to the eventual death of the human race and of the earth itself through a choking, painful, and pitiless exposure to foul air, disease, and the eruptions of outraged nature.
Shortly before his death in 1971, Wylie wrote this warning on the dangers of pollution in the hope that constructive action against environmental disasters might yet be possible. Although many positive changes have taken place in the intervening forty years, Wylie's haunting tale still points out many unaddressed abuses--abuses that still have the potential to cause enormous damage to the ecosystem and humanity. The End of the Dream is still relevant today--its dire tableau highlights now as earlier the problems and choices we continue to face.
Philip Wylie
Philip Wylie (1902–1971) was a prolific writer whose work spanned a range of genres from men’s adventure and detective stories to science fiction and social criticism. Several of his novels, including When Worlds Collide, Night Unto Night, and Los Angeles: A.D. 2017, as well as the Crunch & Des stories, were adapted as movies and television shows, and his novel Gladiator is considered one of the inspirations for the iconic character Superman. Wylie was also a commentator on American society. In 1942 he published Generation of Vipers, a bestselling book of essays that attacked the complacencies of the American way of life. His novel The Disappearance presents a dystopia in which men and women vanish from the perception of the opposite sex, allowing Wylie to explore the issues of women’s rights and homosexuality. Wylie recognized early the potentially catastrophic effects of pollution and climate change and wrote both fiction and nonfiction on those topics.
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