Apocalypse: An Epic Poem - Hardcover

by Frederick Turner (Author)

It's 2067. The Antarctic ice sheets have collapsed. World sea levels have risen several feet and are rising faster still. The climate has changed catastrophically, and meteorological disasters are becoming a daily occurrence. Yet global power structures fail to respond, remaining frozen in political and ideological gridlock.

To confront this chaos, billionaire Noah Blazo recruits a team of genius misfits to bypass the political paralysis. With support from a coalition of island and coastal nations that are vulnerable to these catastrophes, his team launches an unsanctioned geo-engineering effort to restore the Earth's ecological balance--an activity that prompts a global power struggle immediately leading to war.

Events in the center of this conflict inadvertently trigger the emergence a quasi-divine being, Kalodendron, who dwells within the Internet. With her arrival comes a further threat to the Earth--the appearance of the dark star Wormwood, which looms within our solar system and is drawing closer.

With Kalodendron's help, can Blazo's team avert this two-fold threat to the Earth's destruction? Or do the tragedies that quickly follow ensure the planet's final destruction?

Apocalypse features a rich cast of fully realized characters, including the old Texan, Noah Blazo, a beneficent Captain Ahab with his own secret grief; Anneliese Grotius, the internet genius who is also the curator of the Amsterdam Museum's Flemish collection; big gloomy Ala Ifu-Eshu, who has dealt with her Boko Haram husband and becomes a leader in the art of seawater farming; the mathematicians Chandrasekhar Engineer and his son Gopal; the British naval maverick Peter Frobisher; the two popes, Pius XIII and Francis III; and the troubled narrator, Nemo, who has been commissioned by Noah to compose the poem itself as its events occur.

Apocalypse is a major new work on the poetic landscape, an odyssey that addresses the global anxieties, emerging technologies, and spiritual yearnings of our time. Addressing themes of humanity's capacity for creation, destruction, rebirth, and redemption, Apocalypse is a transformative vision of the deepest and most passionate relationships that define us and give our lives meaning.