APOCALYPSE CULTURE (1987) BEFORE THE INTERNET, THERE WERE BOOKS LIKE THIS

“This is an extraordinary collection unlike anything I have ever encountered – a remarkable compilation of powerfully disturbing statements. These are the terminal documents of the twentieth century.” – J.G. Ballard 

APOCALYPSE CULTURE (1987) – Call me a purist, but the only Apocalypse Culture book I like is the very first one from 1987, not the later editions nor the sequel from the year 2000. By 2000 the book was pointless and unnecessary since the internet was already replacing such publications as Apocalypse Culture, Answer Me! and much of the Loompanics catalogue. 

The late Adam Palfrey edited this book, collecting the kind of transgressive, fringe, daring, paranoid, insane and sometimes just plain sophomorically shocking writings that when taken as a whole reinforce the importance of freedom of expression against both left-wing AND right-wing censorship.

Apocalypse Culture seems almost wimpy here in 2025 but it’s an interesting reminder to those of us who remember the pre-internet days, when you had to devote a lot of energy to finding such wild reading material.

WARNING! The subjects and opinions covered in Apocalypse Culture are not for people who are easily (or not so easily) offended or who cannot tolerate reading viewpoints contrary to their own. What follows is similar to the fringe horror movies I sometimes review. Mature minds only. 

Apocalypse Culture is impervious to any sort of review. Like the entire concept of Free Speech it just IS and within it can be found what some could call ingenious, provocative, envelope-pushing, childish, heretical, sexually perverse, you name it.

In recognition of the futility of reviewing the material contained in this 1987 cultural relic I’ll simply offer a rundown of several section and chapter titles. This first section has a definite Cenobites feel.   

APOCALYPSE THEOLOGIES

Latter-Day Lycanthropy

The Unrepentant Necrophile: An interview with Karen Greenlee

The Time of the End is Now: Texts from the Process Church

The Last Defense of LSD

Infernal Texts

Opiates, Brainwashing and Fasting: A Physiological Understanding of the Oracular Process

The Disciples of Flesh

Instructions for the Kali Yuga

APOCALYPSE ART

Schizophrenic Responses to a Mad World (Outsider Art)

A Metaphysics of Disaster: The Spurt of Blood as Revelation

Art in the Dark

Body Play

Aesthetic Terrorism

Interview with Peter Sotos of Pure Magazine

The Case Against Art 

APOCALYPSE SCIENCE

Every Science is a Mutilated Octopus

From Orgasm to UFOs

The Cosmic Pulse of Life

Nature as Slave

Man a Machine

Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Toward a Body Without Organs

Quantum Mechanics and Chaos Theory

APOCALYPSE POLITICS

Vagaries of Negation: Data on the Decomposition of Society

Let’s Do Justice for Our Comrade P-38

The Theology of Nuclear War

From the Mark of the Beast to the Black Messiah Phenomenon

Society for the Eradication of Television

Alchemical Conspiracy and the Death of the West

King-Kill 33°