This Is the Way the World Ends

Nebula Award nominee 1986. John W. Campbell Award nominee 1987.

In 1995, George Paxton is an ordinary American living an ordinary life in an ordinary town. Content as a tombstone carver and family man, George lacks only one thing: a fashionable "scopas" survival suit – complete with sanitary facilities and a Colt.45 – to protect his daughter in the event of nuclear war. Then, through a twist of fate, George secures the coveted suit, a deluxe golden model, for the price of a mere signature. Unfortunately, what he signs proves to be a diabolical pact affirming his complicity in the escalating arms race, and as the war that could never happen happens, George is whisked into the past and the future to face the consequences of his actions.