the end of the world is coming...

Actually this isn't another blog post about cute animals, it's about dystopia in the arts.

Today I went to the book signing for Margaret Atwood's new novel - The Year of the Flood, which I highly recommend. But before you read that, you'll have to read Oryx and Crake, which is something of a precursor to The Year of the Flood.

As the book review in the first link indicates, both books are about a possible future in which climate change has had some of the more obvious outcomes (you know, the ones we hear most often - sea levels rising, droughts and desertification, etc.). Also the gaps between the social and economic classes have grown wider. The military has been privatized and permeated everyday life. The media is controlled by this military - but in a subtle way so that not everyone knows. Oh and there are the "secret burger" franchises in the future. These secret burgers are called that because the meat from which they are made is secret (meaning it could be any part of any animal - including human). Interestingly, there was an article in the NY Times today about hamburgers.

Some call this science fiction but Atwood calls it "speculative fiction." If you ask me, some of these things don't sound that out there. Anyway, I'm not doing the book justice because there a lot more themes than I'm recognizing here.

My point of this blog is that I'm fascinated by stories of these possible futures. I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy last year and that really started it. I couldn't put that book down! Well, except for one time when I was so scared I had to put it down for a minute. I won't tell any more about that book.

I've read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books, many of which are "speculative fiction." One of my favorites is Galapagos. In this tale the human race is wiped out by, what else, a disease that makes humans infertile and things are going to poop anyway with, you guessed it, food in short supply and the gap between the rich and the poor growing.

Recently I (finally) read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 - also about a possible future. I have the Ender's Game and a zombie book on my list next. Zombies are not really a possible future (I hope) but I find the various manifestations of zombies in books and movies fascinating. Not sure why...

And one other thing: