000			01684n m a2200241 a 4500
001			014025
005			20231009192211.0
008			091805t19971997--------------000-u-eng-u
020			_a9780375400063
082	0		_aFIC UPD
100	1		_aUpdike, John _d(1932-2009)
245	1	0	_aToward the end of time _c/ John Updike
260			_aNew York _b: Alfred A. Knopf _c, c1997.
300			_a334 p. _c; 21 cm.
520			_aBen Turnbull, the hero of John Updike's eighteenth novel, is a sixty-six-year-old retired investment counselor living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. The dollar has been locally replaced by Massachusetts scrip; instead of taxes, one pays protection money to competing racketeers. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of a year, retains many of its accustomed comforts, as supervised by his vibrant wife, Gloria. He plays golf; he pays visits to his five children and ten grandchildren. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions and vagaries of the "many-worlds hypothesis derived from the indeterminacy of quantum theory. His identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-enshrouded existence move toward the end of time.
650			_aFamily _z-Massachusetts _v--Fiction
650		4	_aTwenty-first century _v--Fiction
650		4	_aQuantum theory _v--Ficiton
651		4	_aMassachusetts _x--Fiction
655			_aDomestic fiction
655		7	_aScience fiction
942			_cMO
999			_c232355 _d232355