Is it normal for an 83 year-old to wake up every morning feeling that the world – or at least decent liberal society – is coming to an end? (I mean ‘liberal’ in the original broad sense of the term; not ‘neo-’.) Or is it simply my age; or my declining health; or my years of reading dystopian novels; or the events of today; or my present fascination with TV science documentaries chronicling the origin – and so by implication the destruction – of the entire universe?

I used to think that my early introduction to science fiction – specifically HG Wells and Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future (https://wordpress.com/post/bernardjporter.com/9678) – gave me a broader view of human events; a context for the narrow stretch of history I later came to write about professionally. And so it does. But now I’m beginning to regard it differently. What’s the point in my writing books for posterity, when the scientists tell us that posterity is going to hurtle into the sun eventually?

Not that I’m at all worried for my own work, or for me personally. The sun can frizzle us all up in a nano-second so far as I’m concerned. (Oblivion sounds quite attractive, the way I’m feeling now.) But what I will regret is some of the greatest artistic achievements of our current human civilisation being lost for ever: Mozart’s music, Leonardo’s paintings, Shakespeare’s Tragedies, the Elgin marbles, the great Gothic cathedrals of northern France – and their non-European equivalents; artefacts that to my mind justify our species, and in fact are the only things that do. To think that they might not last forever fills me with the deepest sorrow; especially in the wee small hours.

Of course there may be rescue on the way. Liberalism – real liberalism – might be more resistant to ‘populism’ than we fear. On the broader galactic front, maybe Mozart will survive the earth’s destruction, via the non-material internet. (Will our pdf files still be here when we’re gone?) Or those clever scientists might discover a way to bridge the universe and transport CDs, books and even buildings physically to distant and younger galaxies. Or are there other dimensions of reality – parallel universes – in which they might pop up again? (You can see the effect SciFi has had on me.) Of course we’ll never know; especially if oblivion is our next stage.

Religious people, I imagine, can cope with this. They don’t fear oblivion, but have a variety of alternative futures to look forward to: some of them horrific, true, but futures nonetheless. It’s almost worth joining a religion for the comfort of that. Angels with harps – playing Mozart? – sound nice and relaxing. 72 virgins rather less so. (Incidentally, do Moslem women get houris too?) Reincarnation seems chancy: suppose you are reborn as a beetle; or as yourself, but not remembering? (That’s my personal nightmare.) But at least religion gives one answers.

Sorry for this uncharacteristic diversion into the quasi-spiritual. It’s a long way from our more immediate worries, I admit; with Putin, Netanyahu, Trump and Farage currently in the ascendant, climate change threatening an Armageddon even earlier than the galactic one, and winter coming on. But for me these ‘big’ thoughts frame those more immediate concerns. They may not for other people. We’re programmed as a species to think only short-term; luckily, no doubt, for most of us.