Catastrophes!
Foreword
It is quite customary for a piece of fiction to contain at least the threat of disaster. It is the threat, the menace, the apprehension of something one desperately does not want to take place that creates the suspense, and that rouses the interest of the reader.
To be sure, the disaster may be a very slight and personal one-the youngster who may fail the test, or lose the game, or be turned down for a date-but it is there. To be equally sure, the story may be a lighthearted one with a happy ending, but the disaster, however slight, must be there in the mid-course for the ending to shine happily against.
This is not to say that a story cannot be written without a disaster, but what a dull story it would be and how little worth the reading.
And, as in so many other respects, science fiction manages to outshine other types of fiction. Where but in science fiction can real disasters be found?
Take the most elaborate of realistic suspense and what can you have? The loss of a war? The enslavement of a nation?
In science fiction, the destruction of civilization is the least one might expect as the threat of disaster, or its actual accomplishment, is represented to the reader.
In this collection of twenty stories, we have four stories dealing with each of five different levels of disaster, organized according to a scheme I devised in my nonfiction discussion entitled A Choice of Catastrophes (Simon and Schuster, 1979; Fawcett Columbine, 1981),
The movement is from the most all-encompassing catastrophes toward progressively narrower ones. If this sounds to you like a journey into anticlimax, you are wrong, for as the catastrophes become narrower, they also become more probable. In short, in this book you may be steadily decreasing the scope but you are as steadily increasing the danger.
Why bother? Why scare yourself?
For one thing, these are memorable stories you will enjoy and won't easily forget. For another, humanity does face catastrophes of various levels of scope and various gradations of likelihood, and if there is any chance at all of evading them or blunting them, that chance will be heightened if we know what the dangers may be and consider in advance how to prevent or ameliorate them.
Staring at danger may not be pleasant-but closing your eyes will not make the danger go away, and with closed eyes you will surely be destroyed by it.
Isaac Asimov
Part 1. Universe Destroyed
In A Choice of Catastrophes, "Catastrophes of the First Class" are those in which the whole Universe is destroyed.
Actually, the possibility of such a catastrophe long antedates the imaginings of modern science fiction. In ancient times, it was usually taken for granted that the Universe would be destroyed someday (as it was created) by the Word of God, or by the decree of Fate.
Even today there are many who assume that there will be a Day of Judgment and that it is even imminent. In every generation there are those who await it momentarily ("The Last Trump" by Isaac Asimov). And, of course, the end can come about through the action not of the Creator of Humanity, but of the Created of Humanity ("No Other Gods" by Edward Wellen).
If we put mythology to one side and confine ourselves to the even mightier and more colorful conclusions of science, we do not have the crash of the Lord as He slams shut the Book of Life, but rather the long, long dwindle of sound ever, ever fainter as the Universe whispers dyingly to its death; as entropy increases, ever more slowly, to its maximum; as available energy dwindles to zero and with it all change, life, us ("The Wine Has Been Left Open Too Long and the Memory Has Gone Flat" by Harlan Ellison).
Or else, there can be a revival. The expanding Universe can recontract, the unwinding rewind, the dying undie. That sounds good and hopeful but what the revival ends in is as surely, if much more gloriously, the death of all ("Stars, Won't You Hide Me?" by Ben Bova).
The Last Trump
by Isaac Asimov
The' Archangel Gabriel was quite casual about the whole thing. Idly, he let the tip of one wing graze the planet Mars, which, being of mere matter, was unaffected by the contact.
He said, "It's a settled matter, Etheriel. There's nothing to be done about it now. The Day of Resurrection is due."
Etheriel, a very junior seraph who had been created not quite a thousand years earlier as men counted time, quivered so that distinct vortices appeared in the continuum. Ever since his creation, he had been in immediate charge of Earth and environs. As a job, it was a sinecure, a cubbyhole, a dead end, but through the centuries he had come to take a perverse pride in the world.
"But you'll be disrupting my world without notice."
"Not at all. Not at all. Certain passages occur in the Book of Daniel and in the Apocalypse of St. John which are clear enough."
"They are? Having been copied from scribe to scribe? I wonder if two words in a row are left unchanged,"
"There are hints in the Rig-Veda, in the Confucian Analects-"
"Which are the property of isolated cultural groups which exist as a thin aristocracy-"
"The Gilgamesh Chronicle speaks out plainly."
"Much of the Gilgamesh Chronicle was destroyed with the library of Ashurbanipal sixteen hundred years, Earth-style, before my creation."
"There are certain features of the Great Pyramid and a pattern in the inlaid jewels of the Taj Mahal-"
"Which are so subtle that no man has ever rightly interpreted them."
Gabriel said wearily, "If you're going to object to everything, there's no use discussing the matter. In any case, you ought to know about it. In matters concerning Earth, you're omniscient,"
"Yes, if I choose to be. I've had much to concern me here and investigating the possibilities of Resurrection did not, I confess, occur to me."
"Well, it should have. AH the papers involved are in the files of the Council of Ascendants, You could have availed yourself of them at any time."
"I tell you all my time was needed here. You have no idea of the deadly efficiency of the Adversary on this planet. It took all my efforts to curb him, and even so-
"Why, yes"-Gabriel stroked a cotnet as it passed-"he does seem to have won his little victories, I note as I let the interlocking factual pattern of this miserable little world flow through me that this is one of those setups with matter-energy equivalence."
"So it is," said Etheriel.
"And they are playing with it."
"I'm afraid so."
"Then what better time for ending the matter?"
"I'll be able to handle it, I assure you. Their nuclear bombs will not destroy them."
"I wonder. Well, now, suppose you let me continue, Etheriel. The appointed moment approaches,"
The seraph said stubbornly, "I would like to see the documents in the case."
"If you insist." The wording of an Act of Ascendancy appeared in glittering symbols against the deep black of the airless firmament.
Etheriel read aloud: "It is hereby directed by order of Council that the Archangel Gabriel, Serial number etcetera, etcetera (well, that's you, at any rate), will approach Planet, Class A, number G753990, hereinafter known as Earth, and on January 1,1957, at 12:01 pm., using local time values-" He finished reading in gloomy silence.
"Satisfied,?"
"No, but I'm helpless,"
Gabriel smiled. A trumpet appeared in space, in shape like an earthly trumpet, but its burnished gold extended from Earth to sun. It was raised to Gabriel's glittering beautiful lips.
"Can't you let me have a little time to take this up with the Council?" asked Etheriel desperately.