APOCALYPSE PRETTY SOON CL

As the final countdown to the year 2000 begins, a funny and frightening look at millennial, utopian, and futuristic subcultures. Over a ten-year period, intrepid cultural traveler Alex Heard has been sojourning among America's most intensely religious and political believers-sometimes dark, sometimes joyful, usually bizarre, and very occasionally deadly groups who bring their own all-American spin to the Biblical idea of the apocalypse. Among the amazing cast of characters encountered: a UFO cult whose members look forward to the mass landing of Angelic Space Brothers in 2001; trembling New Age penitents who fear our polluted planet is bent on taking highly conscious revenge; a born-again Christian determined, on God's orders, to carry a twelve-foot cross across every nation on earth; life-extentionists convinced that if they can only live long enough science will make sure they'll live forever; and a rich smorgasbord of other of our most credulous, paranoid, and/or ecstatic countrymen. Alex Heard has been in their midst and, in Apocalypse Pretty Soon, he offers a compelling mix of history, reportage, humor, and sociology-a colorful group portrait of a uniquely weird moment in American life.