You gotta wonder what's wrong with our society...

[mousme]

You have wonder what's wrong with our society when so many people envision a brutal apocalypse as the only solution to our troubles. After Armaggedon, people seem to believe, we're going to settle into some sort of agrarian utopia (after we shoot all the zombies starving looters/suburbanites, that is) and live happily ever after in a world without yuppies, SUVs, or water shortages.

Have things become so bleak that we can't envision things getting any better without most of the world dying off?

Comments

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

Sharon and Crunchy are a lot of fun, and Sharon provides a sane-ish counterpoint to Rawles. I've been following along with Sharon's Apocalypse Book Club thing; skipped Moon is a Harsh Mistress because my tolerance for Heinlein has diminished over the years, but Lucifer's Hammer? What fun; I wish that somebody would do a movie version of it in all its full-on seventies period glory... I mean, this thing was written when pocket calculators and digital watches were still high-tech. It'd be hilarious.

She's right, of course, that it's rather sexist and racist and not exactly well-written, but wow; Niven going all big-picture and sciency makes for fun reads, and you can see how it influenced the rightwing survivalist loons (or maybe vice versa). Or maybe it's just both Niven/Pournelle and the loons following the same line of reasoning to the same logical conclusions.

Crunchy? Well, I'm not quite sure that she gets it yet. We shall see.

So there's more to MacGyver than just a new Swiss Army knife-based stunt of the week? Wow. Who'da thunk :)?

You should probably do a post on that middle path notion of yours...

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Oh, dude, Moon is a Harsh Mistress is not only made of win, but has exactly the kind of characters you would relate to. I highly recommend it for you. Haven't read any other Heinlein, but thoroughly enjoyed that one. :D

Crunchy seems to have more immediate problems on her hands (husband has cancer, I believe), so I can understand that she might not "get it" yet. :)

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

Heinlein characters that I'd relate to? Shoot me now, please :). I burned out on Heinlein a while back; he just plain annoys me now.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Moon is a Harsh Mistress is *the* *only* Heinlein I've ever managed to read. I like it a lot and I've read it more than once. Every other Heinlein I've ever tried to read has made me want to throw it across the room. Hard.

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

I used to like Heinlein. Then I stopped being an adolescent boy.