"The End of the World is just around the corner . . . ," proclaims Ken Kesey in Sailor Song. From his opening description of a smoking, hog-filled garbage dump to his concluding depiction of an icy gale and a sun obscured by banks of blue-grey mist, Kesey portrays an environmental doomsday. Focusing upon the small community of Kuinak, Alaska approximately thirty years in the future, Kesey graphically presents the loss of vital fishing grounds, the effects of ozone depletion, the development of gigantic mutated sea creatures resulting from accidents with Trident missiles, and the shocking decline in the number of male high school students. He also suggests that Ike Sallas's participation in "the subversion of a natural process in the name of Bug-Free Drug-Free Thug-Free World" may have contributed to the death of his daughter. Humanity in Kesey's novel is paying for ecological abuse.

A second issue of concern...