Introduced by Jeff VanderMeer - 'a classic: stunning, dangerous, darkly beautiful' - welcome to the post-apocalyptic White Lotus: a luxury hotel at the end of the world in this lost 1967 dystopia ... Radiation levels produce regular warnings, and the residents are advised not to leave the grounds. The management of Termush shields the worst of what has happened in the rest of the world from the residents but, gradually, the real-life global disaster begins to creep into their lives. Did we believe that we would find a wooden table transformed into spongy pulp, the surface of a mirror into impalpable phosphorescent light? Did we imagine that the door-handle would crumble beneath our touch, or the glass window-panes collapse into a heap of burning silica, that cloth would become as rigid as steel plates and a bunch of fruit would splinter in our hands like china? Did we expect that the molecules of the air would be as sharp as crystals and that our own skin would turn into something dark and glazed, nothing to do with ourselves at all? While the management seeks to censor bleak news, the narrator tries to find out the truth along with a few others. As things escalate, all the residents will have to make big decisions. The protagonist reports odd occurrences and has strange dreams. What is causing these hallucinations?

But perhaps a good many of the guests at Termush are relieved to be spared the harrowing details. Living at Termush does not prove that one is more interested in the world outside than people are in general. What was important when we first enrolled was access to protected accommodation, a hotel with trained staff, stores and a motor yacht lying ready to transport the guests away from this country, should it later become uninhabitable. The group turns out to consist of a radiation expert, a doctor and a few volunteers, who, so far as I know, offered their services while we were still underground in the shelters. Quite naturally younger men have been preferred for this assignment. The world has been decimated by a nuclear explosion. A community lives in a remote hotel called Termush, a safe house from radiation. All of the guests applied and paid money to stay at the hotel in light of impending apocalypse. Despite weathering a nuclear apocalypse, their problems are only just beginning. Soon, the Management begins censoring news; disruptive guests are sedated; initial generosity towards Strangers ceases as fears of contamination and limited resources grow. But as the numbers - and desperation - of external survivors increase, admist this moral fallout, they must decide what it means to forge a new ethical code at the end (or beginning?) of the world ... We were called down to the lounge early in the morning. The message came over the hotel’s loudspeaker system, which evidently works so that it can broadcast this type of command even when the individual loudspeakers are switched off. When I use the word “command” I am not trying to suggest any feeling of opposition on my part, but I do find that this arrangement discriminates against the individual guest. And yet I have my doubts about this; the system may be essential for us all, it is merely the use of it in this instance that I object to.

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The arrival of a bedraggled stranger in poor condition from a nearby village begins to unsettle the residents as it compromises their future: 'we bought the commodity called survival'. The guest is offered a place and treated for malnutrition, thus stirring further cynicism: 'And suddenly the stranger appears and expects to share in our protection'.

I am so in love with this writing style, I can’t even describe it, it’s so poetic and stunning. The story and everything about this was captivating and perfect I adored it! I include myself in these observations, because I go about preoccupied with the coppery-green colour of the carpet, which annoys me, and the noise from the room next door which impinges on me against my will. The armchair is the only item of furniture in the room which gives me satisfaction. Even the mirror has a frame which makes it clash with the rest of the furnishings. He] maintained that it was in fact essential to conceal what could be concealed; indeed, an inspired lie could be preferred to a malignant truth” (24).Termush caters to every need of its wealthy patrons—first among them, a coveted spot at this exclusive seaside getaway, a resort designed for the end of the world. John Gray’s “The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism” will be published later this year by Allen Lane A fascinating and slightly disturbing novella about a group of wealthy guests sheltering from a nuclear disaster in a well equipped hotel (with underground bunker)

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. In rationalist philosophies the idea of apocalypse is dismissed as a fever dream, but if it is understood to mean the end of a local world or way of life it is a common human experience. The Aztec world was extinguished by the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, that of Tasmanian indigenous people by colonisation and genocide. Climate change and pandemic diseases destroyed the far-flung networks built by the Romans. The Akkadians in Mesopotamia and the Khmer empire in South-East Asia were wiped out by drought, overpopulation and resource wars. Uncounted other civilisations have disappeared in similar ways.We did not exchange many words, but we were aware in the same moment of a shared emotion when the sea suddenly appeared, stretched out before us on our right. Not because the sea was changed, but perhaps because in that moment the change in ourselves stood clearly revealed. A limitless, cooled-down desert filled with colourless gleams of sun. Only close inland by the cliffs could you follow the movement of the water—as if the speed and formation of the waves had been slowed down because of the height of the observation point above the beach. I am opposed to the management’s decision to suppress the news of the four dead bodies. By doing this the management has assumed the role of a superior authority to which it has no right. It is arguable that this time the encroachment is of no great significance, that the secrecy is unimportant and may even have been dictated by consideration, but I am against this line of reasoning.

As VanderMeer says in the introduction, it does feel like somewhere between other, cosier 20th century 'after the disaster' type dystopias and J.G. Ballard type dystopias in which people turn on each other and morality and capitalism are thrown into the spotlight. Termush doesn't let you forget that the narrator and the other residents are wealthy and paid to be survivors, and some of them care mostly about maintaining this status of privilege against other survivors who want to be let in. It is easy to see how this questions the mindset of the wealthy even without a presumably nuclear disaster, and how systems are designed to allow people to keep themselves privileged over others' need. Rather, Sven Holm (1940-2019) (SF Encyclopedia entry), a Danish author of mainstream literature, delves into the psyche of the survivors, their isolation and inability to grasp the immensity of the changes beyond their walls, and their internal transformation as the rituals of “civilization” are maintained while the “reality” of external world infringes upon their oasis. On another level, beyond the effects of nuclear war, Holm’s focus on the upper class is deliberate. Termush serves as a condemnation of the “materialistic” modern human willing to pay a fortune to perpetuate a masquerade of normalcy as the world writhes in agony outside their compounds.Once this route had been approved, we did all the usual tinkering of fonts, colours and iconography. None of us had expected that it would happen so painlessly. I mean that both literally and metaphorically. We had unconsciously thought in terms of something more drastic, a radical transformation, with every single object showing traces of what had occurred, the furniture and the walls changing character and the view outside our window revealing a totally different world.