Spengler's future: An outline of the next seven centuries of western history, as suggested by comparison with the life cycles of four other civilizations

by John J. Reilly

Genres: Nonfiction

198 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[2fel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The text claims to be a report on the output of a computer program called Dr. Spengler's Temporal Analogizer, which attempts to "predict" the future of the West by laying out in parallel timelines events from the Roman, the Islamic and the Chinese civilizations.
It starts out with a fairly factual introduction discussing the merits of Spengler's theories and philosophy of history. Despite the witty tone I expected a somewhat earnest if cranky work but it continually began to reveal itself as a sort of "Pale Fire"-esque sci-fi project when the commentary provided to the program's output started to discuss the fate of the Western civilization in the past tense, talking about the disastrous project of colonizing the mars, the "New Eugenics" party etc. in the same matter-of-factual way it conducted its Spenglerian analysis of the other past civilizations.
Not sure how to feel about this, but I couldn't stop reading.