"'Oh, God, the young, the poor young! Poul, my generation and yours have had it outrageously easy. All we ever had to do was be white Americans in reasonable health, and we got our place in the sun. But now history's returning to its normal climate here also, and the norm is an ice age... The tough and lucky will survive...'"
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), p. 6.
Now we are facing not ice but heat but otherwise he is right. But I don't like the part about being white Americans.
In the 1885 of his (different) timeline, Manse Everard reflects:
"...this was, on the whole, a marvelous era to live in, if you had money, enjoyed robust health, and could pass for an Anglo-Saxon Protestant."
-"The Year of the Ransom," p. 668.
But what percentage of the population had money, enjoyed robust health and could pass for WASPs? Some complacency seems to have crept in here.
6 comments:
Poul was noting both that life was good for *some* while acknowledging that life was terrible for others.
It's the people who don't recognize the latter who are the problem.
OK.
Kaor, Paul!
No, Manse Everard was not being complacent--he was simply making an observation of fact.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: Manse was being ironic, in fact.
Ironic? That does put a different spin on it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And Manse was being what I considered realistic. But ironic is also something I agree with.
Ad astra! Sean
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