Everything Must Go by Dorian Lynskey review – why is it always apocalypse now?

This entertaining study of our obsession with Armageddon and its energising impact on the arts shows that every generation believes it will witness the world’s end

Throughout the 500-plus pages of Dorian Lynskey’s overview of the art and literature of the end of the world, terrible things are done to the Earth. It is frozen, boiled, irradiated and desiccated. It is bombarded by asteroids, comets and rogue planets; volcanoes and earthquakes destroy it from within. The planet is depopulated, or overpopulated, then riven by pandemics, droughts and disease. The seas drain away or rise, drowning everything. And even if the Earth itself survives, its inhabitants are easy pickings for the genocidal zombies, aliens, robots and artificial intelligences that artists have imagined along the way.

In less skilled hands this 10-Armageddons-a-page pace might make for a depressing read, but Lynskey’s encyclopedic knowledge (we race from James Joyce to Joy Division, from Alan Turing to The Terminator), and his glee at the sheer inventiveness of the doomsayers’ creations, make this an unlikely page-turner.