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Post by Carl LaFong on Feb 12, 2020 17:08:52 GMT
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Post by darknessfish on Mar 11, 2020 10:08:38 GMT
Interesting that they mention JG Ballard's prescience by including The Drowned World, but fail to mention that he had all bases covered by also later writing The Drought.
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driftin
Sophomore
@driftin
Posts: 144
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Post by driftin on Mar 11, 2020 10:43:37 GMT
I've read the Steinbeck, Le Guin, Ballard, and McCarthy and like them all very much.
Since this listicle is all about dystopian novels which focus on nature I would place George R. Stewart's Earth Abides on it. It's about how the earth's fauna and flora adapts and carries on growing after the majority of humans have died off from a mysterious plague, how a very small population revert back to hunting and gathering, how all the information and skills we've gathered for thousands of years quickly becomes useless, and most importantly how all of this is okay. Even as its main character emotionally ponders on the past the novel posits that for all of our achievements and our self-awareness in the universe, our time was always going to be as fragile and short as any other species.
I'd say it's an excellent philosophical lesson for contemporary times where politicians and careerists try desperately to maintain the status quo and hold on to relevancy and power as nature (prompted by human folly) threatens everyone.
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Post by OldSamVimes on Mar 11, 2020 12:53:30 GMT
I never read 'The Road' but I did watch the movie in the theater.
Bleak, depressing, humorless. Even the Nick Cave Warren Ellis soundtrack couldn't save it.
I could have watched 'Fantastic Mr Fox' on the big screen instead.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Mar 11, 2020 12:59:55 GMT
Brian Aldiss' Hothouse was recently dramatised on the radio here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mbvzcMillions of years in the future, a colossal banyan tree covers much of the Earth. In its boughs, the last remnants of humanity are fighting for survival, terrorised by carnivorous plants and grotesque insect life. The Earth has stopped rotating and the Sun's output has increased. Plants are engaged in a constant tropical forest-style frenzy of growth driving other life forms to extinction... Brian Aldiss's 1962 sci-fi fantasy read by Gareth "Blake from Blake's 7" Thomas. |
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Post by Carl LaFong on Mar 11, 2020 14:17:20 GMT
I never read 'The Road' but I did watch the movie in the theater. Bleak, depressing, humorless. Even the Nick Cave Warren Ellis soundtrack couldn't save it. I could have watched 'Fantastic Mr Fox' on the big screen instead. Yup, that movie sucked. Could hardly see what was going on half of the time.
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gw
Junior Member
@gw
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Post by gw on Mar 13, 2020 4:08:30 GMT
I am not widely read and I've only watched the movie of The Road but there is a section of the translated Lem work Imaginary Magnitude which is called Golem IV where a superintelligent AI gives an unusual perspective of life on Earth as a whole and how it would ideally be. I suspect that many people here would have similar views to this machine's long monologue. Also, for those who are interested in Lem of sci-fi in general there's my thread on something real but sounds like it comes out of a sci fi novel where they made every simple melody in one musical octave: imdb2.freeforums.net/thread/210118/melody-octave-span-created |
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