. Included in the collection is a story written in the late '70s by F. Paul Wilson entitled "Lipidleggin'", in which a dystopian future America has national health care and has banned cholesterol from food; the the story's protagonist is an antique dealer who is now running a profitable sideline in bootleg butter and eggs.Now I'm living in a future America with national health care, where cities have banned trans-fats, it's against the law for me to throw electronics in the garbage, and people are discussing hoarding and smuggling 100-watt light bulbs.
What a total ripoff. I wanted the future with the flying cars, not the one with telescreens and Room 101.
You want flying cars? Are you INSANE? Have you SEEN the way people drive?
ReplyDeleteI was hoping for the future with 20 foot flying predators. Much safer than the future where anencephalic high school dropouts chugging back a 40 and sucking on a spliff can fly their primer grey ricer over your HOUSE. And more amusing.
Unless, of course, we could combine the two. I bet you could take out a ricer with a 22 tracer to a fuel tank.
og beat me to it.
ReplyDeleteYou don't want people texting and flying cars, so the government has hidden the technology away in Area 51.
Regarding America: We got what we allowed to happen. With "progressives" controlling the media and education, did you really think the result would be any different? 3 successive generations being spoon-fed the same leftist oatmeal and Ex-Lax had only one possible result. -The working, thinking remainder is forever stuck with wiping a never-ending flow of undigested fiber from the once-free world's sphincter.
It's like I said last year.
ReplyDeleteI made it to 2010 and all I got from the SF books of my youth was the lousy dystopian government.
Only now they've turned it up to '11.
I remember that collection very well. Pournelle did the world a big favour when brought all those stories together in one place.
ReplyDelete@Buzz: I'd buy that for a quarter!
ReplyDelete@perlhaqr:
ReplyDeleteNice! I think that might have to go on a shirt.
Lipidleggin' can be found, in it's entirety at the link below, among several other freedom related writings:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.billstclair.com/DoingFreedom/df.authorindex.html
'Lipidleggin'is available on the web.
ReplyDeletehttp://billstclair.com/DoingFreedom/000623/df.0600.fa.lipidleggin.html
One of my all time favorites, along with RAH's 'On the Slopes of Vesuvius'.
Flying car? I want a nuclear-powered SUV.
ReplyDeleteWe have met the future and it is us.
ReplyDeleteIf there are those who'd say you were paranoid about what's clearly, you know, happening in the real world, I'd be sure to point out that you are awake, rather than being asleep at the wheel.
ReplyDeleteThe only difference between preparation and paranoia is whether or not you are (were) correct.
ReplyDeleteBuzz: http://www.cafepress.com/perlhaqr.425419704#
ReplyDeleteOr yoink the idea and make your own, I don't really care. :)
Look on the bright side.
ReplyDeleteYou know when you were a kid, and saw the "plucky rebels shooting at the Empire" story?
Yeah, well.....
I dug my old copy out of the bookshelf in the computer room to see if Pournelle had written an introduction to it...nope, he simply quoted Mill's "On Liberty" as a preface.
ReplyDeleteDunno about yours, but my copy is yellowed and in the first stages of disintegration from the high-acid paper. I must have bought it after the Great Fire of '83 (in which I lost all my books), but it's dated 1981. Sad to think that SF-readers have been looking at the losses of our freedoms for thirty years, while the non-readers are only now just starting to catch on..if they really are.
At least we didn't get the future in which nuclear-winter, the incipient Ice Age, resource shortages, the devolution of the human race, and the heat death of the universe were going to wipe out Civilization as We Know It.
ReplyDeleteOf course, in this universe we have robotic vaccum cleaners, a computer as chess grandmaster, dental implants (teeth bonded to the bone were only seen in Isaac Asimov's science fiction a few decades ago), and even a Red Sox World Series victory.
Joseph,
ReplyDelete"At least we didn't get the future in which nuclear-winter, the incipient Ice Age, resource shortages, the devolution of the human race, and the heat death of the universe were going to wipe out Civilization as We Know It."
Give it a minute, willya?
I disagree, Joseph.
ReplyDeleteWe've embraced devolution (WWE, reality shows, the poorest/dumbest procreating faster than the richest/smartest, celebrity government leaders) and there are many resources not far from depletion. (human intelligence being up near the top of list)
"...while the non-readers are only now just starting to catch on...if they really are..."
ReplyDeleteDon't hold your breath.
IQs keep rising anyway.
ReplyDeleteThis may be due to underpaid grad students picking up extra money by donating sperm.
"IQs keep rising anyway."
ReplyDeleteWhich factoid mostly serves to call into question the validity of IQ tests as a measurement of anything meaningful...
DOUBLETHINK... The future is double bad...
ReplyDelete