James Morrow - This Is The Way The World Ends

Went for a bit of a browse in the city library the other day (in the course of which, incidentally, I encountered a strange prevalence of novels with Bowie-referencing titles - three all told, which has to be some kind of statistical anomaly) and came up with this and a couple of others. It's one of those smart, thistly, rather weird sci-fi books with a strong satirical bent - it's kind of like Vonnegut crossed with Dr Strangelove. Everyman George Paxton signs an unusual contract in order to attain a body suit that's promised to protect his young daughter from the effects of a nuclear blast - it's free, but he has to acknowledge his complicity in the nuclear arms race by perpetuating the proliferation of the suits. A nuclear exchange and holocaust duly takes place on his way home to his family, killing everyone, and he is rescued by a strange submarine which turns out to be crewed by representatives of the 'unadmitted' - temporary avatars of those who would have lived were it not for the holocaust and who now intend to put Paxton and five others on trial for their crimes. It's stormy and strange and unsettling; I don't particularly like this kind of stuff but it's effective.