Book of Revelations

The Book of Revelations is the foundational sacred text of the Apostles of Flame, a cult that has predicted for centuries that the world will be destroyed by fire from the Stars at the end of each two-thousand-and-forty-nine-year Year of Godliness. The book is presented as a divinely inspired warning, but the novel gradually reveals that it is actually a corrupted but essentially accurate chronicle of previous cycles of civilization-ending catastrophe, preserved and passed down by the cult through the ages.

Nature and Content of the Text

The Book of Revelations is a thin red-bound volume that the Apostles distribute to potential converts. Folimun 66, the cult's public-relations adjutant, gives a copy to the journalist Theremon 762 during their first interview, telling him he will find "much nourishment" in it. The book's central prophecy is that the six suns will enter the Cave of Darkness and disappear, the Stars will make themselves manifest, and all Kalgash will be set ablaze. Folimun quotes a key passage from the fifth chapter: "From the Stars there then reached down the Heavenly Flames, that was the bearer of the will of the gods; and where the flames touched, the cities of Kalgash were consumed even to utter destruction, so that of man and the works of man nothing whatever remained." The text describes the coming of the Stars as accompanied by a wondrous music, and it states that in that moment the souls of men depart from them and flee upward to the Stars, leaving their abandoned bodies to become like beasts prowling the darkened streets.

The Apostles' Use of the Book

The Apostles claim the Book of Revelations is the basis for their knowledge of the coming catastrophe. Folimun explains to Theremon that the organization is precataclysmic in origin, going back to prehistoric times, and that it is in possession of information giving highly specific details of the catastrophe because it is aware of what has happened many times before. The Book of Revelations is what they offer the world as evidence. Folimun also reveals that the Book of Revelations was supposedly translated from an old liturgical tongue, the language of the previous Year of Godliness. During the eclipse, Folimun himself recites from the Book of Revelations in a low singsong tone, and when Theremon and Sheerin listen, they hear him shift into the old language, which Sheerin identifies as the liturgical tongue the Book of Revelations was translated from.

The Book as Historical Record

The novel's scientists come to see the Book of Revelations not as mere myth but as a distorted historical document. Athor 77, the director of the Saro University Observatory, suspects that the Apostles have been handing down ancient astronomical records over the centuries, maybe even since before the last eclipse. He believes that some passages in the Book of Revelations are in an old forgotten language and may be actual prehistoric texts. The archaeologist Siferra 89 discovers that the Thombo Tablets, which she excavated from the Hill of Thombo, appear to be a prehistoric version of the Book of Revelations, providing an account of the destruction of a city by fire—the work of angry gods who periodically find it necessary to punish mankind for wickedness. Folimun later confirms this, explaining that the Thombo Tablets are straightforward historical accounts of two separate advents of the Stars thousands of years ago, and that the Book of Revelations is full of mysticism and metaphor adopted for propagandistic purposes, while the tablets are uncorrupted by centuries of textual alteration and error.

The Book's Role in the Post-Catastrophe World

After the eclipse and the ensuing chaos, the Book of Revelations becomes a tool for the Apostles to consolidate power. Folimun reveals that the cult plans to use the book's authority to establish a theocratic dictatorship, with the fictional Mondior 71 as its figurehead. Theremon, after a long conversation with Folimun, comes to believe that the Apostles' religious totalitarianism may be the only hope for pulling the world back from madness, even though he loathes the idea. The Book of Revelations, with its promise of divine punishment and its claim to a direct pipeline to the gods, gives the Apostles the authority to make the whole world kneel to them, providing a mechanism for control in a time of universal chaos.