The signs were there for all to read in 1996. Deepak Chopra, James Redfield, Third Helpings of Chicken Soup for the Soul "� it all added up to one fact: the millennium is coming. 1997 will have far more to offer, what with sequels to the sequels to The Celestine Prophecy and Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
But the year publishers are really looking forward to is 1999. No less than three US and four UK book houses are coming out with books that promise to help you spend a lot of money come 11:59 pm on December 31, 1999. Some options are already exhausted, though: Maxim's and Lutece's have been booked, Vogue and George have already sent out most of their invitations, so if you're not on the guest list, forget it.
Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists have drawn up special (and separate) publishing programmes devoted to getting as many new members to see the face of God by joining either of these faiths before the end of the world gets too nigh. Ah, everything you wanted to know about sects but didn't know whom to ask.
For those of you who've struggled year after year with the problem of resolutions that last as long as the last glass of punch at a New Year's Eve bash, help is on the way in the form of How to Say No to New Year Resolutions, authored by John Cleese of Monty Python fame. Unfortunately, it isn't going to be out in bookstores till late 1997 "� just in time to send a copy to the Chinese government headquarters in Hong Kong.
And in what looks like the revenge of the computer nerds, the market is snapping up books that promise to help you deal with the Great Computer Problem. You know, the one caused by some pessimist-sadist nerd in the old days of binary machines who decided that he wasn't going to be around in 2000 AD anyway, so did it matter if everyone else's machine reverted back to 1900 AD?
This is a seriously high-growth area "� this year's Frankfurt Book Fair saw several small-scale publishers whose entire stock consisted of books devoted to Rebooting in 2000, Successfully, as one title put it. Some of these efforts are slightly off-the-wall, like the demagogic flights of the author of a pamphlet called `Let's Take Back the World': This is God's warning, in the next century you will not meddle with His works and computers is His works. He wants us to go back to Original Eden and turn our faces from Original Sin as in computers. Ever since Satan whispered to Eddison (sic) and his brethren his foul evilness we have been trapped... You get the drift.
And then there are the authors who cater to a small but discerning minority. Here, just a sample of forthcoming titles taken from various publishers should do: Baby Names for the Next Century, Spock on the Millennium, 2000 Recipes to Celebrate the Century, The Curse of 2000 and How to Protect Your Pet (I kid you not), Tutankhamen Will Return.
I must confess that my personal reading list for the millennium has just three titles on it so far, and I don't see it expanding as the countdown intensifies. The first one is The Book of Daniel, probably the most satisfying piece of millennial literature I've read. The second is The Second Book of Esdras, chosen not because it deals with revelations (it does) but because I've always wondered what happened to the First Book.
And the third is Arthur C Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just to remind me that the true millennium cometh a full year after January 1, AD 2000.
