The Ends of the Earth

<p>Three stories about The Ends of the Earth by John Fraser  </p><p>Making the world uninhabitable is a prospect facing us all each has a strategy to hasten or retard – even avoid – it. Such a project would be the greatest exploit of an evolving species – greater than the creation quicker than biology and a cock-eyed triumph of the good life and its sciences. Most of us alive won’t know if the plan succeeds so hypothesis is the mode proposed.  </p><p>The people described in these thematically connected tales are precarious but very human. Extinction would come when the exploration of the planet has barely finished – one thinks of the poet’s ‘round earth’s imagined corners’. If the world indeed is not flat it still can be conceived of as having ends.</p><p>In ‘Rain’ the characters display their comfortably familiar habits – competition jealousy distraction. They find they’re ill-equipped to wait out their end – which comes (or maybe not) from an unanticipated direction.  </p><p>‘Summer Nights’ has its protagonists at the edge of modernity – in the shadow of a monster tower they seek their space a ‘green’ beyond exploitation beyond the limitations of their work and relationships – and only partly succeed.  </p><p>‘The Esplanade’ sets its scene in an imaginary ‘Cambodia’ where the past war and massacres still looms over the new visitors and long-term occupants. Preservation of the ruins means also preserving the realm of Death. The story ends with a parade where Death  and human power are both featured in a temporary equilibrium.</p>