Anyway, as I read the chapter, I was ticking off the boxes in my head and nodding, and I laughed when I reached the paragraph about increased audio book sales. The author describes Extreme Commuters as 'the transportation equivalent of speed readers', getting through War and Peace in twelve days. He's mostly referring to car drivers though, because we train folk can relax with the printed stuff as we coast along without having to worry about traffic lights. I also found an interesting rebuff to the knee jerk accusation that Americans are addicted to oil - "Are we?", said one Extreme Commuter, "Or are we just trying to get to work?" Hmmm.
As always, when I read anything about excessive traffic and moving populations I usually flashback to a particular book by the Danish science fiction writer Niels E Nielsen. But warning, that link won't do you much good if you can't read Danish because it's 'Fra Wikipedia, den frie encyklopædi'. I cannot believe there's no wiki page in English about Nielsen! Or that he isn't more widely known. Alas, a quick Google also revealed that very few of Nielsen's book have been translated into English. It's an absolute scandale. I just assumed he was out there and available for all the world to enjoy.
I read a lot of his work when I was living in Denmark, and his books all made quite an impression on me. There are many many images from his novels that are firmly lodged in my brain, some of them from Vagabondernes Planet (Planet of the Vagabonds, I suppose) published in 1970, which basically has everyone in the world just driving around and around on a grid built between the monocrop fields that feed them, I think - I reserve the right to possibly not be remembering it correctly.As the years pass, this hellish vision is looking less out there, and more right on our constantly moving doorsteps.
2 comments:
There was a show on the radio recently discussing how many inventions and new technologies have been previously predicted by sf writers.
I guess they could have done one also on how many dystopian stories are coming true.
I'm old enough to have been in the interesting position of reading the novel '1984' in 1965, about twenty years after it was written and around twenty years before its setting.
Exactly, because good SF is about the effects of that new technology on society. I guess it’s the old case of people having to learn for themselves the hard way. But wouldn’t it be nicer if we actually listened to the techno-philosophers, thought things through and made rational and sane choices about how to enjoy the fruits of our collective intelligence?
I swear, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve butted into a conversation about some modern ailment or current trend with the news that it’s not really news at all to some people because a certain SF person wrote a story warning about that exact same problem or social development thirty years ago but no-one listened, well, I’d have that castle in Ireland that I hanker for by now.
Post a Comment