The Sheep are us Pogo

It is really fun to have lived so long. I find that I have so many reference points when I need to think about something that the thinking itself, even though it keeps me awake at night, is really enjoyable. And as I have mentioned before, I firmly believe in my mind's ability to find serendipity. So I'm re-reading the Sheep Look Up and I see now how depressing the outcome of that novel is. But luckily I happened to also be reading Micheal Crichton's State of Fear.

And then I read . . .

The Sheep Look Up by the same author. You have to understand that I was reading this during the period of time when the environmental revolution was just about to begin. And here comes this near future science fiction that poses in its story some of the worst case scenarios that we were all beginning to fear. But this is now and I am sick of living in a world that is dominated by fear. I've been around long enough now to see just how many of those dire predictions have actually occurred.

My stand

when I read this book the first time around was that we were in the middle of the Vietnam War and everyone I knew and respected agreed to one thing-- We had to end it. When I read it the first time I was still very unschooled in the real ways of the world. I believed that there actually was such a thing as victory in stopping a war. And I actually thought that this wonderful story was science fiction.

Stand on Zanzibar

I read this book back in 1970, a couple of years after it had been published. At the time I was learning about science fiction as a genre even as I was teaching it to my high school students in a class called "Science Fiction as Literature". I remember my amazement at the beginning of this story because the author, John Brunner, did not attempt in anyway to prepare me for the style in which the story, one of political intrigue and scientific invention, that simply grew its own sort of reality, began. It was as though a tv screen began blinking, then flashing images, announcements, news of a world going on right outside my door. And once I got into the rhythm of it, the world, his world, supposedly our world in 2010 was no longer outside my door but very much in the room.

I've been reading . . .

Peter Abrahams, David Liss, William Lashner, Lee Child, and , of course, John D. McDonald.