meals are tasty

Meals are tasty… when you can get them. In the good years. In bad years, there’s nothing, people die.

Without medical care, there’s one-third child mortality and childbirth itself is barely safer than Russian roulette. Minor sniffles and injuries turn into life-threatening conditions. People die.

The primitive life is nasty, brutish and short.

Generating electricity and fuel is simple technology that at this point almost anyone could figure out how to do. It’s not like when society collapses, that information disappears.

I just finished “The Place Called Attar” and I had the same problems with the scenario. There’s no way it would take those farmers 5 years to get a wind generator running, or methane generators.

sarah

I’ve also read my share of techno-optimistic visions. They haven’t come true either, but some of them have come closer to the mark than the doomsayers.

Ten years from now, we may be using gasoline created from biomass by genetically engineered bacteria, and “peak oil” will be a memory. Twenty years from now, we could be enterting the Diamond Age, in which nanomachines build everything we need from carbon.

The characters are two-dimensional, often in the extreme. The plot, such as it is, is trite and unimaginative, and there’s far too much deus ex machina going on for my taste, as well as way too damn much coincidence. What are the odds that a dead coyote in your water system for a year produced no disease? Or that, in a lawless time, the band of wanderers that happens into town just happens to also have several members who were soldiers and remain talented gunslingers? Yeah.

All that said, the picture JHK paints of the post-oil future is interesting. As long as you’re reading for that, fine. But don’t expect literature that rises to even a middling level.

IMO, of course.

And it’s naive think that reverting to an agricultural society is going to improve people’s lives…those times had problems of their own.

I’ve read a number of books along these lines, and they all imagine a world in which somehow, along with electricity, basic knowledge disappears. It’s simplistic and, frankly, a bit insulting.

Best,

Lanval

There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
you got it, you got it

We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
we got it, we got it

There was a shopping mall
Now it’s all covered with flowers
you’ve got it, you’ve got it

If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
you’ve got it, you’ve got it

Years ago
I was an angry young man
I’d pretend that I was a billboard
Standing tall by the side of the road
I fell in love with a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it’s only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
The highways and cars were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we’d start over
But I guess I was wrong

Once there were parking lots
Now it’s a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it

This was a Pizza Hut
Now it’s all covered with daisies
you got it, you got it

I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
you got it, you got it

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
you got it, you got it

I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
you got it, you got it

We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
you got it, you got it

This was a discount store,
Now it’s turned into a cornfield
you got it, you got it

Don’t leave me stranded here
I can’t get used to this lifestyle

dec·i·mate /ˈdɛsəˌmeɪt/
–verb (used with object), -mat·ed, -mat·ing.

1. to destroy a great number or proportion of: The population was decimated by a plague.

2. to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.

3. Obsolete. to take a tenth of or from.

I like the origin of the word too but nobody uses it that way anymore. The context is totally fine here.

I just read somewhere that someone once said that in a nuclear war between USA and USSR, the USSR would win, because the all the guns available in the US would lead to a bloodbath, and people shooting each other over food and resources.

WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones. –Einstein

How about a non-dystopic novel where the dumb and aggressive male trash is gone, and where people have
200 plus IQ’s and spend their time in the pursuit of pure math or science or art? A world no longer dominated by the dumb–or by the brainwashing done to semimorons by the big companies. How about a world where nobody cares that much about owning fancy stuff or dominating others–but does care a great deal about understanding the structure of the prime numbers?

Of course, that kind of science fiction will NEVER appeal to the semi-intelligent gearhead males
who feel disempowered and have fantasies about
how their “superior minds” will give them an edge
in a “Mad Max” world–living as happy farmers, where they are faced with a level of 18th century technology that they think they could master.

The real future will be dominated by superintelligent gene engineered people with
nanotech links to computers—and it will totally different from what people today can imagine–we are just too dumb.

Hopefully, they will induce sterility in dumb and aggressive people–so that the world will no longer carry that burden. Similarly, there will be no need for males. Maybe they will have them, but likely not.

So, it will be a world full of brilliant girly people–not a world full of aggressive male street gang bikers and male chauvinist semibright farmers. No Mad Max but lots of pretty clothes and
lovely math theorems and advanced physics.

A population drop of 10% would likely be noticed, but would that be dramatic enough?

The story is filled with details that make it come alive, from what people eat, to the music they listen to, and how they remember the past with a mix of nostalgia and bitterness.

Some readers might find Kunstler’s world a little too idyllic or even sexist. If you’ve read Kunstler’s blog you know that he shows no mercy in his contempt for the current urban landscape of big-box stores and mcmansion homes. He doesn’t hold back from kicking the rotting corpse of future suburbia.

If you like this book, check out Dmitry Orlov’s “Reinventing Collapse” and Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” as well.

http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook49010.htm

http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_06122/yellowcard.shtml

Also, there is a post-apocalyptic short about computer systems administrators by some guy. Casey Doctorman or something.

Go read Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling. I just finished it and it’s exactly what you’re craving for (including “pretty clothes and advanced physics”). Well, there still are a few people wanting to dominate others, but that’s just (post)human nature, I guess…

Anyway, it became my favourite book of all time and I can only recommend it, especially to people like you.

The only reason they’re “good” is because they’re DONE.

http://thehappyheretic.com/04-98.htm