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 Interesting Fiction
frozenny  [Team Member]
3/21/2010 9:05:09 PM
Hiya Guys....

In all fairness this post is only peripherially SF related. My family consists of several voracious readers. For example, my father gave my daughter the latest Harry Potter novel last summer for her 12th birthady. She read all 700+ pages, cover to cover between 2pm on a Sunday afternoon and 11am Tuesday morning. Its fair to say we go through a LOT of books. do like to read post-apocalyptic novels. One author, S. M. Sterling has a series out there starting with "dies the fire". Interesting. Is it really survival oriented? No. Not really. However, these books are sometime useful as tools for examining our own vulernabilities and mindsets.

I've just started something very intriguing. Its a science fiction novel titled "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi. I'm only mid way throught the novel. The setting is Thailand, some generations into the future. The author really does a pretty good job of constructing a new world within this book.

The future, as per Bacigalupi:

Sea levels have risen dramatically. Many coastal cities are under water (or surrounded by dikes).
Climate has warmed up tremendously. Police and various government agencies collect carbon taxes.
Food is in very short supply. The new currency is calories.
Petroleum stocks are exhausted. Lack of energy has caused 'the Contraction". World is now smaller since global shipping and transport is very difficult
Energy shortages are rampant. More manual labor. Most workers are laborers (cheap power).
Genetic engineering is huge. Bioterrorists and simple mistakes have created various plagues and numerous plant diseases. Most food sources are extinct.
"Calorie companies" much like today's Monsanto and the like sell genetically engneered foods: plague resistant wheats, etc
Most countries are at war, fighting over coal and other resources
Transportation consists of sailing vessels, human powered dirigbles, and the like.
"Green Headbands" (presumably Islamic Fundamentalists) have gone of rampages and ethnically cleansed areas like Malaysia
Due to plagues, bioterrorism, and the like countries are very isolationist.
The absolute most valuable commodity in the world are seed banks, providing genetic information with potential for disease-resistant foodstuffs.
Due to energy constraints and issues with chemical processes weapons are either spring powered/compressed air weapons or genetically engineered toxins
Genetically engineered humans, raised in creches, are used as soldiers/servants in low -birthrate countries like Japan.

I've seen one or two of these general ideas or topics in a novel. Never have I encountered all of them in a single coherent world within one novel. This ISN'T a Mack Bolan Shoot-em-up here come the zombies book. It isn't a survival novel. It does paint a very different picture of what our world might become. Interesting food for thought ...

Sometimes these novels serve a serious purpose. They pose thorny questions and hypothetical situations. And it causes me, at least, to think " gee, how would I deal with that".



douglasmorris99  [Team Member]
3/22/2010 6:47:02 AM
sounds like the Al Gore's and the Green Progressive's perfect world..
will check it out, thanks
tc556guy  [Team Member]
3/22/2010 8:06:28 PM
Originally Posted By frozenny:
This ISN'T a Mack Bolan Shoot-em-up here come the zombies book. It isn't a survival novel. It does paint a very different picture of what our world might become. Interesting food for thought ...

Sometimes these novels serve a serious purpose. They pose thorny questions and hypothetical situations. And it causes me, at least, to think " gee, how would I deal with that".


The Mack Bolan books/ Deathlands series, etc are among the worst of SHTF literature, although I've read many of them over the years when I've had nothing else to read.

There are a lot of quality post-disaster books available out there, although many of them are now out of print and have to be searched out.