History Literature / TheWorldAtTheEndOfTime

* TimeAbyss: The final part [[spoiler: takes place in the ''very'' far future (''10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years'' from now; not kidding, read the book), when all the stars of the Universe -except the ones ejected off the Milky Way by Five- have died and the unique energy source available to Wan-To is that provided by proton decay.]]

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: The Viktor Sorricaine part is 5 -no MinovskyPhysics or AppliedPhlebotinum to speak o.. The Wan-To part, however, falls to 3 due to hypothetical stuff such as tachyons and other {{FTL}} phenomena (with no explanation for the lack of concomitant TimeTravel into the past) and different particles whose existence is also more or less theoretical.

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: Wan-To's home galaxy (Maffei 2) is described as located behind the center of the Milky Way (thus almost unobservable in visible light from its location). [[RealLife Real]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffei_2 Maffei 2]] is located in quite an opposite direction (but it's not less hard to study.)

* EldritchAbomination: Matter Copy Number Five. Or perhaps StarfishAlien (its aspect is not described at all). Certainly for poor [[=Luo-Fah=]], it would look like the former.

''The World At The End Of Time'' is a ScienceFiction novel written by Creator/FrederikPohl in 1991.

!!''The World At The End Of Time'' provides examples of:

* AGodAmI: The narrator comments that Wan-To created ''two galaxies'' [[spoiler: when the others began to fade away]] and that sees itself as the most powerful entity of the Universe.

* EarthThatWas: Earth is this for the colonists of Newmanhome four hundred years in the future, with some saying it's in that bright starlike object known as the Universe [[spoiler:Of course they cannot know it's ''very'' far away in the past and that it succumbed in the star-zapping by Wan-To and its kind.]]

* MeaningfulName: The two colony ships sent are named ''New Ark'' (later simply ''Ark''') and ''New Mayflower'' (shortened to ''Mayflower''). There's a third one, ''the New Argosy'' [[spoiler: that never reachs its destination because it outruns her]].
* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: The Viktor Sorricaine part is 5 -no MinovskyPhysics or AppliedPhlebotinum to speak of-. The Wan-To part, however, falls to 3 due to hypotethical stuff such as tachyons and other {{FTL}} phenomena (with no explanation for the lack of concomitant TimeTravel into the past) and different particles whose existence is also more or less theoretical.

* AlienSky: Newmanhome's skies through the novel. At first, its skies are quite Earth-like except for the lack of a moon and the presence of bright, red brown dwarf Nergal. When their stars begin to accelerate away, relativistic effects cause, except for those going with Newmanhome's star (these fade instead), the ones in front of them to become blue and the ones behind to go red. In [[spoiler:the world where Viktor and Reesa awake for the third time]], said relativistic effects have caused the Universe to look like an incredibly bright star Finally, at the end [[spoiler:Newmanhome's skies are pitch black and starless except for the couple of stars that went with them]]

** While Wan-To feats seem to fall into this cathegory one must remember it's ''something'' almost immortal, who has almost no worries about time, can clone itself, and has at its disposition the power of entire stars.

* ColdSleepColdFuture: Happens to the protagonist. After the failed attempt to find what's happening on the planet Nebo, he and his wife are put on suspended animation to be thawed out 400 years later in a very different -and [[CrapsackWorld far more hostile]]- world than that they knew.

* NaturalEndOfTime: Wan-To cromes from this era, so far into the future that most protons have decayed. The point is reachable by the human protagonists through extreme TimeDilation.

* SpaceAgeStasis: Sort of it in the human society described in the last part of the novel, that continue using four thousand years into the future chemical-powered rockets, even if the colony ships were powered by anti-matter drives. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that by that time said ships do not exist, and that their users may find said technology BoringButPactical, thus with no desires to develop something better.

* FromBadToWorse: [[spoiler: Wan-To when is planning to leave the dead star where it's living when its supply of decaying protons ends and move to a black hole knowing [[FateWorseThanDeath he'll have even far less energy available]], even if it will last far more time]]

* AlternativeCalendar: Newmanhome's year is around half that of Earth, meaning [[CaptainObvious that one year in the colonists' calendar equals to roughly six Earth months]].