May 2020 *
I guess this post has to do with books more than anything else. Whatever.
There's an old Stephen Vincent Benet short story that I think many of us were forced to read in school, at some point. It goes by two different titles in different anthologies and collections, either By the Waters of Babylon, or In the Place of the Gods. It was written back in the 1930s, before nuclear weapons... that's important, for understanding the story.
Anyway, many of us were forced to read it against our will, and therefore hated it. But I personally actually always liked it. It was in an old science fiction anthology I had, which I would read by choice, so it never really had the feeling of drudgery or forced labor for me, to read the story.
It's about a young man in a primitive tribe of people, who wants to go explore some forbidden lands that are a week or two journey away from where his tribe lives. Gradually SPOILERS, just come back to this after you have read the story, if you want to read it... I can't believe I'm posting "spoilers" for a story that's over 80 years old... anyway, gradually you realize that the guy and his primitive tribe are living in the distant future, a long time after our civilization has fallen. Eventually the guy makes it tothe forbidden lands which are the ruins of some kind of large city. There are no people there anymore, just some wild dogs and pigeons. The guy seems especially leery about touching ancient pieces of metal, which made me wonder if the metal was supposed to be radioactive...? Not sure how that works, exactly, that was just my guess. Anyway, as he's trying to escape the wild dogs, the guy breaks into an old building, and climbs the stairs inside to a random old apartment. He explores a little, and sees a few 20th century things that readers might recognize. Eventually he comes upon a mummified old guy sitting in a chair, facing a window. The conditions in the enclosed apartment were supposed to be dry and stable enough to keep him mummified... just ride with it baby, don't question it too much.
The young guy has a dream, sort of a vision quest type of thing, where he sees the war that destroyed the city. He doesn't understand what he sees. It sounds like he's really not making it up, he just reports what his visions reveal, which is a sort of enhanced WWI type of scenario as seen through primitive eyes. That's World War ONE. He sees poisonous mists drifitng through the city at ground level, killing everyone they reach. He sees some kind of firey death spitting from the sky down at people on the streets... maybe from some kind of super-biplanes or proto-missiles... I'm not sure what the state of rocketry was in the late 1930s, for an author to derive horrific visions from it...
So, up until he had this vision, he had thought the old city had been built by gods, and the old mummified dude in the chair was probably a dead god himself. But, at some point he starts to realize the old guy was just a man, albeit a man with access to knowledge far in advance of what the primitive guy's tribe could understand.
He pictures the old guy's last moments, sitting in his armchair facing out the window, watching his great city fall. I was never clear on exactly what killed the old guy, by the way... a wisp of poison mist that got in somehow? Maybe a heart attack? I don't know. Anyway, it's just a great image, of this old guy who sat looking sadly out the window as his city was destroyed.
I have a terrace in my building (it's not MY terrace, but it's in my building) and it's on the tenth floor so I have a pretty good view. I can see up to about eight miles away, in some directions. I can see old radio towers, local church steeples, some of the highest hills in my area, and the highest skyscrapers in Boston. I went up there the other day and re-read parts of the story I'm talking about, and I felt a little like the old guy. Not completely, I don't think the coronavirus is the end of the world. But, I can definitely see that the world is different now than it was two or three months ago. There is far less traffic, and at night I can see the stars better. I also think that getting "back to normal" is worse than the virus, because THAT is what is killing off the whole biosphere, normality is killing it, the normality of everybody driving around all the time maintaining markets for worthless crap that destroys the world... aaaaaanywho, I just thought it was interesting that the real world made me think of that story. Wow this was a long post. Please treat yourself to a beer for reading this whole thing, hopefully I can pay you back somehow, someday.
There's an old Stephen Vincent Benet short story that I think many of us were forced to read in school, at some point. It goes by two different titles in different anthologies and collections, either By the Waters of Babylon, or In the Place of the Gods. It was written back in the 1930s, before nuclear weapons... that's important, for understanding the story.
Anyway, many of us were forced to read it against our will, and therefore hated it. But I personally actually always liked it. It was in an old science fiction anthology I had, which I would read by choice, so it never really had the feeling of drudgery or forced labor for me, to read the story.
It's about a young man in a primitive tribe of people, who wants to go explore some forbidden lands that are a week or two journey away from where his tribe lives. Gradually SPOILERS, just come back to this after you have read the story, if you want to read it... I can't believe I'm posting "spoilers" for a story that's over 80 years old... anyway, gradually you realize that the guy and his primitive tribe are living in the distant future, a long time after our civilization has fallen. Eventually the guy makes it tothe forbidden lands which are the ruins of some kind of large city. There are no people there anymore, just some wild dogs and pigeons. The guy seems especially leery about touching ancient pieces of metal, which made me wonder if the metal was supposed to be radioactive...? Not sure how that works, exactly, that was just my guess. Anyway, as he's trying to escape the wild dogs, the guy breaks into an old building, and climbs the stairs inside to a random old apartment. He explores a little, and sees a few 20th century things that readers might recognize. Eventually he comes upon a mummified old guy sitting in a chair, facing a window. The conditions in the enclosed apartment were supposed to be dry and stable enough to keep him mummified... just ride with it baby, don't question it too much.
The young guy has a dream, sort of a vision quest type of thing, where he sees the war that destroyed the city. He doesn't understand what he sees. It sounds like he's really not making it up, he just reports what his visions reveal, which is a sort of enhanced WWI type of scenario as seen through primitive eyes. That's World War ONE. He sees poisonous mists drifitng through the city at ground level, killing everyone they reach. He sees some kind of firey death spitting from the sky down at people on the streets... maybe from some kind of super-biplanes or proto-missiles... I'm not sure what the state of rocketry was in the late 1930s, for an author to derive horrific visions from it...
So, up until he had this vision, he had thought the old city had been built by gods, and the old mummified dude in the chair was probably a dead god himself. But, at some point he starts to realize the old guy was just a man, albeit a man with access to knowledge far in advance of what the primitive guy's tribe could understand.
He pictures the old guy's last moments, sitting in his armchair facing out the window, watching his great city fall. I was never clear on exactly what killed the old guy, by the way... a wisp of poison mist that got in somehow? Maybe a heart attack? I don't know. Anyway, it's just a great image, of this old guy who sat looking sadly out the window as his city was destroyed.
I have a terrace in my building (it's not MY terrace, but it's in my building) and it's on the tenth floor so I have a pretty good view. I can see up to about eight miles away, in some directions. I can see old radio towers, local church steeples, some of the highest hills in my area, and the highest skyscrapers in Boston. I went up there the other day and re-read parts of the story I'm talking about, and I felt a little like the old guy. Not completely, I don't think the coronavirus is the end of the world. But, I can definitely see that the world is different now than it was two or three months ago. There is far less traffic, and at night I can see the stars better. I also think that getting "back to normal" is worse than the virus, because THAT is what is killing off the whole biosphere, normality is killing it, the normality of everybody driving around all the time maintaining markets for worthless crap that destroys the world... aaaaaanywho, I just thought it was interesting that the real world made me think of that story. Wow this was a long post. Please treat yourself to a beer for reading this whole thing, hopefully I can pay you back somehow, someday.