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Seven Stories Press

Works of Radical Imagination

Book cover for Apocalypse Then
Book cover for Apocalypse ThenBook cover for Apocalypse Then

Despite the world's insecurities, the most common drama of all is not of apocalypse now, but of apocalypse deferred; the pain of living is having to wait it out.

In Apocalypse Then, Rick DeMarinis's characters try alcohol, they try travel, and (most of all) they try off-limits love. They find themselves in harm’s way, or put themselves there—but in life, as the title story states, "sometimes the worst doesn't happen."

In "The Missile Gypsies," a nuclear engineer’s casual faith in a universal safety mechanism is derailed by a surprise liaison with a coworker, an affair he is clumsily unable to hide from his wife. "Moss spent the rest of the night in his truck telling himself he was a good man with poor judgment. He had no personal trigger-lock." In "Birds of the Mountain West," a man who goes to comfort his friend, a suicidal alcoholic, recalls seeing birds intoxicated on fermented berries. "Then, at sunset, the mob of wasted waxwings settled in a single tree and faced the setting sun, trilling long plaintive notes for the dying of the light—a fine feathered choir of happily pious drunks … "

Book cover for Apocalypse Then
Book cover for Apocalypse ThenBook cover for Apocalypse Then

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“The power of DeMarinis' deliciously disconcerting short stories is generated by his card-shark ability to transform the realistic into the bizarre. Loaded with startlingly vivid details, unusually skewed psychological insights, and ravishingly poetic apocalyptic intimations, DeMarinis' cunning, cuttingly funny short stories track the psychic damage done by war and the chilling shadow of nuclear weapons even as they celebrate our rising, however unsteadily, from the ashes.”

“However similar the existential suffering of his characters, DeMarinis expertly probes the contours of their condition.You simply can't move your eyes from the page.”

Rick DeMarinis

RICK DEMARINIS was the highly acclaimed author of ten novels, including Mama's Boy and The Year of the Zinc Penny, a New York Times Notable book, as well as six short story col­lections, including Apocalypse Then and Borrowed Hearts. In 1990, he received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Each year, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, awards a short story prize in his name. Rick passed away on June 12, 2019.