ABSTRACT
Kermode makes the fairly straightforward point that there are two main ways narrative conceptualizes chronology: "rectilinear" and "cyclical", and that "broadly speaking, apocalyptic thought belongs to rectilinear rather than cyclical views of the world" though, he adds, "this is not a sharp distinction". For instance, my Yellow Blue Tibia is an apocalyptic narrative in which the end of the world is figured precisely as the irruptions of the written Set Fantastic (SF) into our reality. Both The Snow and Yellow Blue Tibia are books that, although the author didn't realize it at the time, set themselves against the apocalyptic irruption of the alphabetical. Apocalyptic writing does in a more intense form what SF achieves as a whole, namely, it articulates the relationship between the chronos of the linear alphabet and the kairos of the poetic textual moment. We need the apocalypse and zpocalypse, and all the apocalypses in between.
