SOURCE: Maddox, John. “The Doomsday Men.” Encounter 36 (January 1971): 64-5.

In the following excerpt, Maddox categorizes Future Shock as a work of “Doomsday literature,” which, he observes, fails to address several serious questions about the future.

The men who used to parade in Oxford Street with sandwich boards announcing that The End of the World is at Hand! have long since been snatched away by the demands of full or relatively full employment. There are times when their place seems to have been taken by a group of writers and talkers who proclaim that the cataclysm round the corner will be brought about by the consequences of modern technology. Some think that DDT and other chemicals now widely used will bring about disaster. Some put their money on the paradoxical way in which the fertilisers which help to grow more food may also accelerate the natural processes by means...