Ecodeath

by William Jon Watkins, Eugene V. Snyder

180 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

William John Watkins published under this name until 1980.

Reviews

[El Mar]

I recall reading this book back in the late 1970s maybe early 1980s. I did not have the right education level to completely understand it but somehow I liked it, the way it was written even though the story itself may not have been so unique or special.
It may have been a common type of genre back then but now in 2022 it is very forgotten.

[Boris]

I read this as a teenager some 45 years ago. I remember nothing of the plot, but it did make an impression on me. One element in the story was that corporations were polluting the air so badly, that people would have to depend on filtered respirators to be outside. Those respirators were sold by the very same corporations that were making all the pollution. Looking back on that now, this has the same ring as some of the conspiracy theories current these days... e.g. that the COVID-19 virus has its origins in a lab in Wuhan, or that something is wrong with the HIV causing AIDS theory, but this has nevertheless created a market into which a lot of profitable pharmaceuticals can be sold. Maybe the book was prescient!
(spoiler follows!)
I also remember the very strange ending, where the protagonists in the story manage to escape the final eco-death of their world, by figuring out a way to travel into the future in some kind of room or structure that acts like a high tech lifeboat. What was that for, to squeeze in a happy ending? Did the publisher ask for that? The book would have been better, if everyone had simply perished! (Like in On The Beach)