Up until this week, I hadn’t been in a bookstore for a while. I’m trying to save money, I have a backlogue of interesting books to read (and blog about), and I was expecting to get a number of books as Christmas gifts (which I did: thanks, all!). I did get a Barnes & Noble gift card, though, and stopped to pick up a few things the other day.
I was appalled to see no less than three books prominently displayed at the front of the store discussing the year 2012. Why was I appalled, you ask? Because the date has achieved special significance amongst new age types as a date which represents the end of the world. This belief originally comes, apparently, from the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, used by the ancient Maya. 2012 (in Mayan, anyway) represents the end of the ‘fourth age’ of creation in which men were created.
It shouldn’t take much effort to realize how absurd it is to believe in prophecy, let alone prophecy made by a civilization that couldn’t foresee its own collapse. Nevertheless, the idea has gotten a lot of traction and will even be the focus of a disaster movie due out this year, ‘directed’ by Roland Emmerich.
There’s plenty to find annoying about spreading apocalypse propaganda, the worst of which is that such fear-mongering kills.
For my particular rant, however, I’d like to pick apart the blurbs on the back cover of one particular 2012 book, which illustrates the sloppy thinking and misleading statements made in apocalypse fantasies.
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The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. 
