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The Disappearance

Author: Philip Wylie

The apocalypse here is kind of personal. The world's just fine to start with, but... From one moment to the next all the women disappear from the world of men—and all the men from the world of women—which in some instances would have made for interesting sitcoms. But The Disappearance is not about eliciting cheap laughs. In the aftermath of the disappearance, civilization in both worlds, the male and female, disintegrates: physically, spiritually, socially. Wylie focuses on one affected couple to perform a profound analysis of the fundamental and indispensable dependence of the sexes on each other, in the process revealing the absurd way in which almost all societies view male-female relationships; and highlighting how the two genders and their relationship lie at the heart of our humanity; at a level far more basic and fundamental than 'culture'. Why its on the list: The apocalyptic event affects every single person alive immediately. A bit like Day of the Triffids, where (almost) everybody suddenly goes blind. Except that here the event opens everybody's eyes to something they've been blind about before. We rarely see the obvious, since we're so habituated to it. This may be the most explicit story on this list involving the lifting of a cognitive veil. Ratings: Grimness: 2, Bizarreness: 2, Hope: 5, Fun-factor: 3.

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