In North America, we have stories about big foot and moth man. The jersey devil and skunk ape. In Mongolia, they'll tell you about Mongolian Death Worm.
Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_Death_Worm
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The scary thing about Brave New World.
I recently joined a class called Science Fiction reading and writing. An enjoyable class helped by the fact that almost one hundred percent of the class wants to be there. The atmosphere is energetic on the slowest days and the subject often promotes some pretty deep thinking. For example, we're reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
Brave New World is a terrific read, a story about the world of tomorrow and the bizarre things that are considered normal in the year 632 A.F. And Aldous Huxley has an incredible knack for predicting what the world of tomorrow would look like. This is no Jules Verne and his submarine. This is no Isaac Asimov and his robots. This is Aldous Huxley and his baby factory. Believe it. Imagine a world where children are not born, but nurtured to maturity by a tandem team of machines and workers. Grown in containers and even altered before birth to fit a rigid caste system. The craziest thing about this world of test tube babies, palovian conditioning, and state sponsored drug use?
Aldous Huxley created this world in 1932.
This was before television, before internet, before World War II, and this man is talking about growing children in glass jars of blood surrogate? Along with the morally dubious form of baby making. Huxley also writes of a contraceptive pill. And a landscape where the family unit is broken down in favor of a less stressful "free for all" atmosphere: "Everyone belongs to everybody", as they put it in the novel.
Brave New World is an impressive literary feat in that the picture it paints is so alien, but also very familiar. And Aldous Huxley does wonders with taking a familiar idea and turning it on it's head. Assembly lines? We have those. Baby assembly lines? No. Recreational drugs? Sure. Drugs served legally in establishments inside your ice cream? Don't think so.
The mind reels at the idea that we are very close to developing some of the ideas put forth in a book written over seventy years ago.
I highly recommend this book to anyway who is a fan of science fiction or philosophy, it will get your gears turning.
Brave New World is a terrific read, a story about the world of tomorrow and the bizarre things that are considered normal in the year 632 A.F. And Aldous Huxley has an incredible knack for predicting what the world of tomorrow would look like. This is no Jules Verne and his submarine. This is no Isaac Asimov and his robots. This is Aldous Huxley and his baby factory. Believe it. Imagine a world where children are not born, but nurtured to maturity by a tandem team of machines and workers. Grown in containers and even altered before birth to fit a rigid caste system. The craziest thing about this world of test tube babies, palovian conditioning, and state sponsored drug use?
Aldous Huxley created this world in 1932.
This was before television, before internet, before World War II, and this man is talking about growing children in glass jars of blood surrogate? Along with the morally dubious form of baby making. Huxley also writes of a contraceptive pill. And a landscape where the family unit is broken down in favor of a less stressful "free for all" atmosphere: "Everyone belongs to everybody", as they put it in the novel.
Brave New World is an impressive literary feat in that the picture it paints is so alien, but also very familiar. And Aldous Huxley does wonders with taking a familiar idea and turning it on it's head. Assembly lines? We have those. Baby assembly lines? No. Recreational drugs? Sure. Drugs served legally in establishments inside your ice cream? Don't think so.
The mind reels at the idea that we are very close to developing some of the ideas put forth in a book written over seventy years ago.
I highly recommend this book to anyway who is a fan of science fiction or philosophy, it will get your gears turning.
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