Black Clock 21 — Steve Erickson

The End is near, and in the final, 21st issue of Black Clock the world ends with both a BANG and a whimper, depending who's telling the tale. Apocalypse planetary and personal, metaphoric and literary blows up twelve years of Black Clock in a dispatch by T. C. Boyle from after the plague, a legend by Nalo Hopkinson from before the deluge, Rick Moody's memoir of sexual limbo both secret and revealed, Susan Straight's chronicle of social chasms both greater and smaller than we think, a devastating consideration by Joanna Scott of loneliness and the bonds we think we've formed, one of the shortest short stories ever written by cosmic miniaturist Lydia Davis, and bookending contemplations by Jonathan Lethem and Richard Powers, who notes, "The thing we dread the most will make possible (again) those endless forms most beautiful.