Disclaimer: since we have flumes, the act of using one must be fluming, correct?
There's no sci fi to write about today's Nucleonic Boomtown since it was already written in the Fifties and Sixties when America first came up with the clever idea of blowing up everyone in the world. Those of the Sci Fi Guild are almost certainly possessed of distinctly more bandwidth in their neural processors than Washington and, amazingly, they unanimously took a much more than dim view of any plan to get us all killed.
"Triumph" by Phillip Wylie is a particularly good example for fat cat readers since the starring Rich Man builds the bomb shelter of all possible bomb shelters. This thing is perfect, man. My friends and I can survive here for years underground. It was one outstanding setup as he was meticulous with detail and planning. It really seemed like it might work.
To no surprise, they were still fucked but the intrigue in the story was reading of how the nuclear poison would penetrate.
That book is relatively short and possibly should be required for part of the curriculum in high school and I do mean curriculum rather than reading list since, as we have observed, they don't appear to retain much from the reading list (e.g. "Lord of the Flies") and we see from the news they don't have a wisp of an understanding of a nuke war so I want a semester for Reality Class.
Note: yes, as to the TEGO phenomenon (i.e. Their Eyes Glaze Over) about "Lord of the Flies," that did piss me off. I would have greatly appreciated a Reality Class in my own time since I was aware of so many facts but they still didn't give a tiny idea of what was really happening. Acquiring all those facts is part of it but kids suck at integrating them. The integration synthesizes knowledge out of information so I want that damn Reality Class.
This is one of the rare cases in which it's true when some woeful writer proclaims, alas, anything worth writing has already been written. In the context of a nuclear holocaust, it may well be true.
In the latter day variety of nuclear sci fi, there's a huge helping of nuclear bullshit in "The Postman" where it appears the recovery from a nuke war is possibly twenty-forty years after it has happened. From the point of The Postman forward, it went maybe twenty more years and everything is right as rain.
Zen Yogi: that's such bloody rubbish it stinks like a sick sewer rat
Yah but the movie is still fun to watch plus Tom Petty is in it and he doesn't even ham it up that much. Highly cool.
How about this possibility since the nuclear defense works much like Wall Street in the context of buying / selling since computer systems are programmed to do it and we hear periodically about trading being halted because such systems got out of control and were crashing the market.
Once the launch signal is given through whatever Executive authority, it's all computerized buying but this time launching until it's over and there's no way to stop it once it starts.
There's been some dancing with the theme in the past but I don't recall any which weren't glamorized by the hero saving the day or some such. My own version would go much darker since the Commander would issue the launch signal as ordered but would realize immediately after he did it that he had made a colossal mistake but there's no way to stop it.
Ed: why is your view so damn dark all the time?
In the first place it isn't all the time but this context is the general being unable to stop it while the flip side is we still can. That's why they wrote all those books all those years back. No-one wants less than they to see any of them come true. Each one of them has been a call to action, mates. Stop the madness.
There's no sci fi to write about today's Nucleonic Boomtown since it was already written in the Fifties and Sixties when America first came up with the clever idea of blowing up everyone in the world. Those of the Sci Fi Guild are almost certainly possessed of distinctly more bandwidth in their neural processors than Washington and, amazingly, they unanimously took a much more than dim view of any plan to get us all killed.
"Triumph" by Phillip Wylie is a particularly good example for fat cat readers since the starring Rich Man builds the bomb shelter of all possible bomb shelters. This thing is perfect, man. My friends and I can survive here for years underground. It was one outstanding setup as he was meticulous with detail and planning. It really seemed like it might work.
To no surprise, they were still fucked but the intrigue in the story was reading of how the nuclear poison would penetrate.
That book is relatively short and possibly should be required for part of the curriculum in high school and I do mean curriculum rather than reading list since, as we have observed, they don't appear to retain much from the reading list (e.g. "Lord of the Flies") and we see from the news they don't have a wisp of an understanding of a nuke war so I want a semester for Reality Class.
Note: yes, as to the TEGO phenomenon (i.e. Their Eyes Glaze Over) about "Lord of the Flies," that did piss me off. I would have greatly appreciated a Reality Class in my own time since I was aware of so many facts but they still didn't give a tiny idea of what was really happening. Acquiring all those facts is part of it but kids suck at integrating them. The integration synthesizes knowledge out of information so I want that damn Reality Class.
This is one of the rare cases in which it's true when some woeful writer proclaims, alas, anything worth writing has already been written. In the context of a nuclear holocaust, it may well be true.
In the latter day variety of nuclear sci fi, there's a huge helping of nuclear bullshit in "The Postman" where it appears the recovery from a nuke war is possibly twenty-forty years after it has happened. From the point of The Postman forward, it went maybe twenty more years and everything is right as rain.
Zen Yogi: that's such bloody rubbish it stinks like a sick sewer rat
Yah but the movie is still fun to watch plus Tom Petty is in it and he doesn't even ham it up that much. Highly cool.
How about this possibility since the nuclear defense works much like Wall Street in the context of buying / selling since computer systems are programmed to do it and we hear periodically about trading being halted because such systems got out of control and were crashing the market.
Once the launch signal is given through whatever Executive authority, it's all computerized buying but this time launching until it's over and there's no way to stop it once it starts.
There's been some dancing with the theme in the past but I don't recall any which weren't glamorized by the hero saving the day or some such. My own version would go much darker since the Commander would issue the launch signal as ordered but would realize immediately after he did it that he had made a colossal mistake but there's no way to stop it.
Ed: why is your view so damn dark all the time?
In the first place it isn't all the time but this context is the general being unable to stop it while the flip side is we still can. That's why they wrote all those books all those years back. No-one wants less than they to see any of them come true. Each one of them has been a call to action, mates. Stop the madness.
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