the tangled web we weave
(and after the humans are gone?)
i'm really having trouble being optimistic about the future of human beings. october doesn't help, a cold wind blowing out of the east, fire season coming to a close. soon i'll be plunged into the world of traffic sounds, students, death, disease. in fact the ebola epidemic just spreading out of africa. o boy, lots to look forward to!
"drive one mile straight up for an hour and you leave the atmosphere" i read this somewhere awhile back and suddenly this put everything in perspective. we (i) exist under a very shallow envelope of oxygen and filters calming down the heat of the sun. think: driving sixty miles on the ground, it goes by in a flash. and if we're in outer-space, no breathing without a suit.
common knowledge, common knowledge, so sue me! i do wonder what will happen to humanity after i'm gone. will the survivors reach the other planets, settle down to lives under artificial domes, eat regenerated, 3d printed food? if we're lucky. and at this point that's be best i can hope for. humans multiply like rabbits, every increase leads to a war for territory, not to mention the effluvia thrown into the air. yes, i'm banging my head on the wall of the future, not even knowing what it will be.
until yesterday. i bought an e-book.
voila', this guy, helton, is way ahead of me, thinking about the re-population of earth by the diaspora into the solar system. what might the conditions be? how could the idiots who fled into space still not be idiots on returning to earth? his hero, an immune survivor, Gibbous Moon, decides he'll end his days walking out into the wilderness. for better or worse, he runs into the aliens, who are now returned homo-sapiens, especially the religious fanatics who decide the earth belongs to them.
if this sounds both adventurous and philosophical - Tokien meets Ray Bradbury - it is, and often the misunderstandings very funny.I'm kind of blown away, actually, thinking of the complexities and how he got them across. someone said nietzsche made ideas emotional, and I think all the characters impacted by them, in the midst of everything else. in a sense it's a philosophical novel, and certainly addresses the issues important to conservationists. there's a bit of warfare and sex, and very appealing characters from the moon, mars, and titan, among other celestial bodies. they make any ideas discussed come alive, and there is a victory of sorts...it cries out for a sequel. what happens to the wonderful folks he's created? i'm dying to know, left suspended in space like them.
of course, nobody's settled off our planet yet and at the rate we're exploiting the planet and each other, we may not. i like having what's to come have something in it for our ancestors. hope isn't exactly what i'm after, but i'd like to see the kids get a chance
