Millennium Matters

Q. Surely literary types are above cashing-in on the millennium?

A. Not at all. The millennium, with its overtones of apocalypse, mad millenarian cults and general unease, throws up an instant plotline for even the worst type of pulp-mongers and the rush to bring out a book to tie with the events of the end of the year is now in full frenzy mode.

The biggest seller at the moment is anything with the term "Y2K" in its title, as people finally realise the enormity of this man-made problem. The winner of the best title in this category must go to Jason Kelly's Y2K: It's Already Too Late. Back in the fiction world, the main players include new Labour lover Ken Follett whose The Hammer Of Eden (Macmillan, £16.99) contains a classic millennium plot line. It's about a group of disaffected Californian hippies who plan to cause global chaos by triggering a series of earthquakes courtesy of a strange seismic device they have in their possession. Enter the FBI and let the battle commence. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (M Joseph, £16.99) also includes a millennium plot in which a crack group of green extremists plan to poison the air-conditioning at next year's Sydney Olympics, thus unleashing a virus which will eventually kill everyone on the planet. Stranger still, perhaps, is Allan Folsom's Day Of Confession (Little Brown, £16.99) wherein an evil cardinal in the Vatican plans to usurp power and create a 21st Century Holy Roman Empire in China.

Not so far removed is Reg Gadney's Mother, Son and Holy Ghost (Faber £9.99), which features a millennial cult called Trinity whose Messiah is resurrected in Trafalgar Square on December 31st, 1999.

Elsewhere, there's plenty of post-teenage kicks in Disco 2000 (Sceptre £6.99), a collection of short stories with all the action taking place on December 31st this year. Crazy scientists, nomadic DJs, conspiracy theorists, killer ants, graffiti artists and Netheads all feature in a very readable compendium.

It does help that the writers featured include Douglas Coupland, Poppy Z. Brite, Bull Drummond (from the KLF) and Robert Anton Wilson. Funnily enough, J.G. Ballard was asked to contribute a story but said the only plans he had were "to run for the hills or at least in the opposite direction". It wouldn't be the millennium, though, without all sort of dire warnings of apocalypse now. Over 100 of the world's "most unnervingly accurate prophets and seers" predict "what's in store for humankind in the year 2000" in John Hogue's The Millennium Book Of Prophecy (available at $11.20 on-line at www. amazon.com). Including contributions from Gurdjieff and Madame Blavatsky, this is very much an ultimate resource guide for millennium doom-mongers.

However, the person generating most interest in the book world this year is good ol' Nostradamus, who's very much in vogue again: Nostradamus: Prophecies Fulfilled And Predictions For The Millennium (by Stephen Skinner, $12 from www.amazon.com). It looks at which of the man's predictions have already been "confirmed" (these are accompanied by more than 250 photographs, bizarrely enough) and then focuses in on what the old French astrologist predicted for the next century. Meanwhile, Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies (by John Hogue, $19.99 from www.amazon.com) includes "examinations" of the "prophet's" work including interpretations based on a computer analysis of all of the 36,000 words of the original "predictions".

If you want something a bit more hardcore though, have a look at Nostradamus 1999: Who Will Survive? (by Stefan Paulus, $11.99 from www.amazon.com) in which Paulus "goes out on a limb" by making specific predictions in an area "where other authors are more guarded with their interpretations". Which is putting it politely.