The theme of the end of the world was explored in Whitley Streiber and James W. Kunetka's Warday (1984). In Warday, however, the human race does not come to an end; the Soviet Union and the United States have pulverized each other, and both countries are at the point of disintegration (we see mostly the U.S. perspective).

Similar, though, is the matter-of-fact reportage of occurrences too enormous to easily contemplate. Fail-Safe , by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler (1962), also recounts in a calm, yet chilling, tone the effects of a nuclear confrontation gone out of control.

Farnam's Freehold (1964), by Robert A. Heinlein, although considerably different in story line, still raises the idea that control and social cohesion may be the only things that will get mankind through such an occurrence as a nuclear apocalypse.

There are numerous novels that deal with the end of the world by...