Tuesday, 9 October 2018

Future And Past

Writers and readers of fiction can look to the future or to the past to find characters coping with crises:

Poul Anderson's Mirkheim recounts the first civil war in the Polesotechnic League;

Anderson's The Stars Are Also Fire mentions, although it also skips past, the global conflict and collapse that cause the World Federation, based in Hiroshima, to replace the UN, based in North America;

John Grisham's Gray Mountain begins fourteen days after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.

It is all fiction and it is all true, even the events that have not happened yet and will not happen - true to life, that is.

(I am doing my late night reading and trying to get off the lap top until tomorrow. Good night. Put not thy trust in princes or bankers.)

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would say rather that the Mirkheim/Babur crisis of MIRKHEIM was the first civil war withing TECHNIC civilization, not just the Polesotechnic League. We see states like the Imperial Band of Babur and the Solar Commonwealth taking aggressive and far ranging action, after all.

While I agree with the view taken from the Psalms about not putting one's trust in princes or bankers, I still would put slightly more trust in bankers than in politicians!

Sean