Einsteins Monsters

The synopsis has it wrong - well, not wrong so much as not right. Amis delivers not a caveat, nor a sci-fi pomo romp, but a startlingly clear elucidation of his very justified fear of the end of the story of man. It couldn't be more inevitable, as Amis makes clear in the introductory essay, "Unthinkability." He has identified the source of his nausea for the last 50 years, and it is nuclear weapons. There is no turning back; there is no "winning"; and there is no fixing the mistakes. These burn indelible in his writing, and he makes these points neither to make us all lose sleep nor to educate us. Rather, Amis tells it like it is: there is no tomorrow after a nuclear war, and there is no way a nuclear war is able to be isolated to one bomb dropping. Once the accident happens, we are all screwed, and at this point we are on borrowed time. The stories, if you are unfamiliar with Amis's style, are charming and compelling, and in some cases only abstrusely about nuclear war. The one real notable exception is "The Little Puppy That Could," truly the most horrifying tale I have ever encountered. A slim read, a permanent addition to any bookshelf, Einstein's Monsters reminds us what it is that is catching in our throats nowadays - the very life-force of all human history.