I had been wondering at the sudden assumption in society that the world was due to end in 2012. I finally got around to reading the book.
I was left with the same feeling that last great societal delusion gave me. “The Da Vinci Code” was another work of badly written fiction which tapped into America’s “Need to Believe”. And as America goes, so goes the rest of the Western Civilisation. Although I am beginning to see that phrase as an oxymoron.
Steve Alten has written a book which requires a major suspension of disbelief along with an ability to ignore a number of internal contradictions. I’ll mention just one. The nasties crashed into the Earth 65 million years ago. Somehow the goodies AND the nasties lay around doing nothing for some 64,975,000 years and then suddenly began “Doing things”. Yeah! Right!
While the plot has some coherence, the characters are, to put it mildly, off the planet. High levels of World Government are all shown as largely incompetent. While this is probably true, I would prefer not to have it pointed out quite so graphically.
As with Dan Brown’s novels, if you are happy simply reading words and not thinking then this may be the book for you. Alternatively, should you be weary of your current belief system, then you will find a new, apocalyptic set of beliefs here. If you have any sense, then I would suggest finding something else to read.
No, I don’t want to read the sequel. I have better things to do with my time.
Ærchies Archive - Digital Detritus 
Apocalypse is a-comin’ don’t cha know…
I just finished reading a critique of the Bible written by a guy who studied the earliest greek fragments of copies of copies of possibly written letters. One of the things he points out is that the early christians totally believed that the end of the world was going to happen in their lifetime. It informed many of the “gospel” teachings of the day. Of course, now, 2000 years later that early belief has proved to be a delusion and yet they are still convincing themselves that the End is Near it’s going to be next year, this time for sure. Get your end of the world supplies here, which begs the question that if the world has ended and you have been raised to the right hand of god to live in the utopian world to come, what the hell do you need supplies for?
I believe the world will end in fire in a few billion years when the sun goes nova. all humans will probably not be around to witness it since we will probably have suffocated in our own wastes before that time.
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