Apocalypse 2012

Never judge a book by its cover. This one will make you LITERALLY SHIT YOURSELF

Another book review? I'm afraid so, fellow cinephiles. One of the perils of working a full time job means less time spent watching movies and more time either working or commuting. But don't worry - Apocalypse 2012 is perhaps the most terrifying book I've ever read. If that sounds a bit hyperbolic then it's quite apt. Apocalypse 2012 is the most hyperbolic book I've ever read. I'm still not entirely convinced it wasn't written by Roland Emmerich or that Woody Harrelson character from his movie adaptation. Thank you, Lawrence E. Joseph for ruining my lunch break and making me want to jump on a super boat and hide behind a mountain or whatever the hell was going on in that movie.

That said, if the world does end in 2012 then I suppose it makes this blog amongst the pinnacle of human achievement. Bear with me here... look, if the world ends very soon, then that makes my writing in 2012 as like the very thing millennia and millennia of humanity have been building towards. Fuck Shakespeare and Mr. Dickens; my shitty movie reviews might very well be the last thing you ever read. And the first thing re-discovered by future generations/aliens when our Internets are discovered by future generations. Relax, I'm being at least 20% ironic here.

Lawrence Joseph's affable yet whiny prose takes in Mayan calendars, solar flares, grey goo, the Yellowstone supervolcano, nuclear oblivion and practically every other world-ending possibility you can imagine. Despite touching on religious apocalypses, Joseph's emphasis is on the science of it all. His findings: yes, it is entirely likely that we might all die in 2012. Thanks for that Joseph, way to put me off've my cheese salad baguette. He ends one chapter with the epithet "Have a nice day". Fuck off, I've just pissed all over my work trousers.

I hope for Joseph's sake that the world does end in 2012 though. After all, he's put a lot of work into his Apocalypse, and if this is as much of a dud as the year 2000 was, then he's gonna be left with egg on his doom-mongering face. Do I think that the world is about to end? Apocalypse 2012 is scary and convincing but no, I don't. I don't think the universe is stupid enough to take its cues from a terrible Roland Emmerich movie. I'm far too small-minded to even concieve of the world exploding while I'm still on it. And I hold no water with old Mayan prophecies or religious bullshit. Mind you, it's always good to be prepared. So my advice is to start building the Ark, stock up on the bottled water/tinned goods, obsessively play Fallout 3 and invest in a really good motorbike. Get John Cusack on speed dial too. Dude's got some hella good driving skills.

Apocalypse 2012 is well-written, well-researched and entirely effective in its aims. That is, if its aims are to scare the shit out of one's readers. There's hardly a jot of reassurance or optimism (no, "we'll evolve into a better form of humanity... but you'll all die first" doesn't count as optimism) in the book, nor any real underlying point to it aside from rampant scaremongering and over-the-top metaphors about sharks and such. Books and movies theorising about 2012 are all a bit pointless, when one stops to think about it. After all, we'll find out for sure in a couple of years anyway. Have a nice day.