I bought this for 9 quid (that’s unusual for me, btw) in November 2024, almost certainly at Skoob.

I intended to read it closely and blog it in 2025. And here we are – it’s my next daily project, to sit alongside the rest of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (there’s a link there – playthings of the gods, hubris and nemesis, torments).

The Doomsday Fun Book, if you’re still with me, is a collection (of 39) editorials to The Ecologist Magazine, which had launched its first issue in July 1970. Most of the editorials are written by Edward Goldsmith – at least the ones selected here.

The Fun Book came out in December 1977 and seems to have attracted no mainstream press interest at all (not a surprise!).

I intend to read it, a day at a time, blogging as I go. I will read it in chronological order, rather than that presented in the book itself.

So, the rough order for me will be

The blogs will have a very rigid format –

The Doomsday Fun Book, 0x/39: “xx”

This is part of a series of blog posts commenting on/updating The Ecologist’s “The Doomsday Fun Book”, which was published in December 1977.  You can see my rationale for doing it – and my success criteria – here.  I am doing them chronologically rather than in the order they appear in the book itself. Fwiw, I think that this period, the early 1970s, was more or less the beginning of the Fafocene.

You can see The Ecologist here.

You can see my All Our Yesterdays site here.

The author of this editorial was xxxx LINK. 

First paragraph: xx

What was going on at the time: xx

The basic argument (in a quatrain, haiku, etc): xx

The cartoon: Richard Willson’s cartoon is xxx

What we learn/why we should care: xx

What happened next: ss

What I still don’t know: xx

What do you think? What have I got wrong? What have I missed?  What else do you know about this issue that should be added to the post?