MarkB wrote:Ahhh I do miss Calvin and Hobbes, so I just reached back behind me and pulled out one of C&H books.
What is also wierd is that I just finish reading a sci-fi book that I haven't read for thirty years, George K Stewart"s, The Earth Abides.
A classic example of science fiction disease epidemiology. According to Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart (1895-1980) a disease comes out of nowhere, kills off all of the Earth's population save for a handful of survivors including, unfortunately, our hero, who is one of the most feckless characters ever to grace the pages of fantasy. Instead of rebuilding society or even setting up a halfway successful community, the tiny band of survivors get caught up in a collective fit of ennui and mope about for a generation or so while the cities collapse into the ground and their grandchildren end up on the cultural level of Cro-Magnons. Things get so bad that the inheritors of our civilisation regard coins as being nothing but handy metal for making arrowheads out of.
What is really scary and a heart stopper is that today we have coming out of nowhere it seems to most people of this planet, diseases like SAARS, Bird Flu, West Nile Virus, Ebola and HIV. Is our Earth trying to tell us something.
Calvin and Hobbes always made me stop and think.
Thanks for posting this.
MarkB
All the survivors have the feature that they've been bitten
by a rattlesnake, I believe.
My recollection is different--the leader, a geologist (who is
bitten by a rattlesnake while out in the Sierras, crawls
into a cabin, recovers, and comes out to find humanity
virtually gone), struggles to keep the community that
collects around him in the Berkeley Hills modern. He is a
scientist (faculty at UC-Berkeley). He boards the windows
of the university library to preserve the books, and his dream
is that his community will start up the generators
that powered the electricity in SF, and resume
modern life.
But, despite his best efforts, the community gradually
devolves into a Neolithic tribe--the children and grandchildren, especially
cannot relate to the old world and begin to think magically.
Finally, in despair, he goes to the library and smashes the
windows, then goes back and teaches the kids how to
make bows and arrows.
Bertrand Russell wrote the introduction of the
copy I read. Best