Australia and New Zealand are fully modernized:
robotic industries;
residential communities;
recreational parks;
nature reserves.
In North America, and above the thirty-fifth parallel, the polity of Vernal is a Republic some of whose citizens, called Foresters, live in small settlements or isolated houses scattered throughout spacious woodlands. Fenn visits old family friends, Lars and Rachel, in their wooden house in the village of Thistledew whose emblem is a carven moose. Rachel is an elected mayor and magistrate. Lars cultivates a patch of land, fishes, hunts and guides occasional tourists or sportsmen. Foresters preserve ancient folkways. Forests are preserved for ecological and climatic reasons. Dwellers who did not maintain them would be replaced by robots and sophotects.
Yukonia has a scenic grandeur that the woodlands, stretching from the Rockies to the Alleghenies, lack although both are spacious, with a "...sense of freedom and life..." (p. 199)
Cash, in a currency of ucus, still circulates so that individuals who do not draw their citizen's credit can remain undetected. Fenn does detective work to track down a fugitive which is his sole reason for going to Vernal. This one sub-plot is resolved in a short fight scene.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
What it looks like to me is that many of these people are deliberately living at a somewhat lower standard of living in order to have something better to do than just live on citizen's credit. Shade of "Quixote and the Windmill' and "The Critique of Impure Reason"!
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment