The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse/Die Vier Apokalyptischen Reiter

by William Borroughs, Christof Kohlhofer (Illustrator)

bilingual German-English (back to back)

Genres: Nonfiction

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Mat]

This is basically a transcript of a speech that Burroughs gave at the Institute of Ecotechnics in 1980.
The four horsemen 'spurring' mankind on towards a seemingly inevitable apocalypse are: famine, plague, war and death.
Burroughs raises the alarm about how mankind is on a path to his own destruction.
As Burroughs sees it, "Western society is so constructed as to concentrate the greatest power in the worst possible hands".
All of these are theoretically avoidable but as Burroughs laments, people "cannot control themselves".
The scariest warning he sounds is of biological warfare and its potential for mass destruction.

[Rena]

Very interesting, especially about the viral warfare and genetically altering of the virus. Scary, actually.

[Nicolai]

More of the more theoretical writings. Quite interesting and at the time radical points about the state of the world coupled to his time/space theories that feel eerily prescient a few days after the explosion of the Musk space rocket in an increasingly uninhabitable world.

[Tim]

Beat generation author writes about the terrors of modern science. Yes, its kind of knee-jerker and not very scientifically backed. Read only for the purpose of learning a little more about Burroughs and his psyche.