The Doomsday Report - Hardcover

Brynner, Rock

2.9

10 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688159192 ISBN 13: 9780688159191

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1998

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What if we learned that mass extinction caused by global warming is imminent and inescapable? What if we had no future. . . and we knew it? That's the premise of this provocative, highly topical thriller, an explosive mix of passion, murder, sex, science, and unremitting suspense.

It is 1998 -- or Doomsday minus forty years, according to renowned NASA scientist Dr. Roger Belacqua. When Terry Bancroft, a young assistant editor in New York City, comes across his mysterious, unsolicited manuscript, she realizes that its horrific conclusions must be made public. What she cannot imagine is the staggering impact of The Doomsday Report on her own life and the whole world: By the time it becomes a bestseller, it has sparked a global explosion of decadence, violence, and ruthless terrorism, with Terry Bancroft and those she loves at the very heart of the firestorm.

Part murder mystery, part love story, this novel is an all-too-plausible warning to our fragile, endangered planet.

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About the Author:

Rock Brynner's first play was produced on Broadway in 1970; for his first novel, The Ballad of Habit and Accident, he was described by The Wall Street Journal as "a modern Dante." He has also written a memoir about his father, Yul, the Man Who Would Be King. His 1993 doctoral dissertation in history from Columbia University is being revised for publication.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Awkward hybrid of thriller, farce, and environmental polemic. After two treatments of his relationship with his charismatic father Yul (a novel, The Ballad of Habit and Accident, 1980; Yul: The Man Who Would Be King, 1989), Brynner offers a comically improbable, name-dropping spoof involving a New York commercial publishing house reluctantly deciding to add to its fall list a pop-science eco-diatribe announcing the imminent, and unavoidable, extinction of the human race. Terry Bancroft, a mildly neurotic, Smith College Gen-X editorial assistant who, with two years in the business, has already learned to loath all authors, knows that egghead-penned gloom-and-doomers have uneven track records. But when she glances at the first few pages of the unsolicited manuscript of The Doomsday Report, she finds, of course, that she can't put it down. When her fatuous boss seems unimpressed by her enthusiasm, Bancroft slips copies to Commonwealth's backbiting editorial board, where the graying, sincere, conveniently widowed CEO Franco Sherman decides that the book has great potential, especially after the be-ribboned US General Shriever warns him that powerful, unnamed forces want it squelched. News of the irreversible end of life, scheduled for 2050, makes Bancroft ditch her sexually monotonous Capitol Hill boyfriend for Sherman's perversely paternal advances. Doomsday, naturally, conquers the best-seller lists, inspiring people of every stripe to do wild, wacky, murderous things as the end of the world looms. All of this is wonderfully hilarious, and would be just fine if Brynner didn't take himself so seriously, swamping his campy satire and insider jokes in a self- indulgent flood of eco-dreck that, we eventually discover, might not be as accurate as it sounds. A witty premise mired in tedious, journalistic pessimism about Mother Nature's numerous aches and pains. (Author tour) -- Copyright �1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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