# Technological Advances



## S1E9A8N5 (Sep 5, 2008)

Just had a simple question and was wondering if you could help me.  I was going to have my story take place around 2029 so that the technology wouldn't be to advanced.  But I really wanted it to take place around 2084 so that many years have passed (story wise)...  Do you think it matters?  Or should technology be somewhat realistic?

I want there to be a lot of pollution, destruction, sickness, disease (more so than now), and very little technological advances but by 2084, I'm sure the technology will have improved.  Solar power perhaps, less pollution, etc.


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## moderan (Sep 5, 2008)

That might depend on where you set the story. Some third world countries might just be approaching our current technological level by then. Otherwise you'd likely be forced to extrapolate a lot of tech in order to operate in that later timeframe.
There are alternatives-you could use the post WWIII or IV sort of setting, for example, or posit political changes that keep technology from advancing. The energy question could have been answered by going nuclear and you could have a 3 Mile Island or Chernobyl-type incident, or natural disasters.
Even by 2029 there'll likely be a lot of changes. You could go with the cyberpunkish model for that, or the dystopian model that predated the cyberpunks. Sounds interesting.


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## S1E9A8N5 (Sep 5, 2008)

Thanks for the advice *moderan*.


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## moderan (Sep 5, 2008)

You're welcome. There are quite a few decent novels dealing with that subject matter. I'd recommend John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up for an example of ecological nightmare in the reasonably near future. A book with that type of setting, where the disaster in unspecified, is Samuel Delany's Dhalgren.
It's a simple question but the answers, as you see, can be very complex.


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## S1E9A8N5 (Sep 5, 2008)

Thanks for the recommendations.  I'll definitely check to see if they have those at my library.


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## moderan (Sep 6, 2008)

Here are the wiki articles if you can't find them:
the sheep
dhalgren


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## S1E9A8N5 (Sep 6, 2008)

Thanks. :thumbl:

Do you know what year when _The Sheep Look Up_ takes place?


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## S1E9A8N5 (Sep 6, 2008)

Ana Kata said:


> I bet google does.


You popped your head in here just to say that?  Very informative.

I've actually been to a few sites including Amazon and Wiki and it doesn't give a direct date when the book takes place.


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## moderan (Sep 6, 2008)

Brunner never actually says what year it is. From internal detail it's clear that it's near-future. The book was written in '72, which would make the possible future right about now. And in a lot of ways, he's spot-on. His earlier novel Stand on Zanzibar and the later works the Shockwave Rider and the Jagged Orbit are similarly dystopian though they concentrate on extrapolating other social details. They're all directly pre-cyberpunk. Gibson mined them for the backgrounds to his early stories and novels. From Locus:"The 21st century is _weird_, man! I got there by the slow time machine, living my way to it. In a world like this, what constitutes the mundane? None of this is very mundane anymore, because it's all touched by this kind of multiplex weirdness. We're here, and it's weirder than anything I've ever read in science fiction, except Brunner's *The Sheep Look Up* and *Stand on Zanzibar*. That's the closest thing to a prediction of where we are that I can think of. Brunner found a way to have all the overlapping science fiction scenarios of a world like the world where we live in one book. (He borrowed the technique from Dos Passos, but that's good.) But if you had gone to a publisher in 1981 and pitched a science fiction novel where there's this disease called AIDS and there's global warming and this list of 20 other contemporary things, they would have called security!”


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## S1E9A8N5 (Sep 7, 2008)

Thanks for the info Moderan.


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## HarryG (Sep 11, 2008)

I'm not an expert by any means, but on the occasions I've dabbled with it, I've left out the future date.  Also, does the future have to be that bleak?  Does it have to be bleak at all?


 Robots should help us, medical advances should eradicate disease, global warming should be under control, wars should be eliminated with global education, the LHC experiment might have told us the truth at last.


 We could be spending our holidays on Mars, swallowing pills to make us live for however long we want to, and other pills to make us perpetually happy, and interesting books will be read to us from our iPods.   


 And surely, in the future, we will have found the answer to love, ensuring that we never fail in our partner search.


 Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to write of thunder and destruction after all?


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## Mike C (Sep 11, 2008)

The French have a saying, _plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose_ - the more things change, the more things stay the same (no, I know that's not a literal translation, francophiles).

As an example, China will be the world's largest economy, with America trailing third behind Europe, and, if growth in the sub-continent cam be better exploited, maybe even fourth behind India. America will probably adopt the position that Britain occupies now - a post-imperial nation in decline, trading on past glories.

Technology may change, but people don't. In 2084 people will still be starving, governments will still be killing people, big nations will bully small ones.


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## S1E9A8N5 (Sep 11, 2008)

HarryG said:


> I'm not an expert by any means, but on the occasions I've dabbled with it, I've left out the future date. Also, does the future have to be that bleak? Does it have to be bleak at all?


Not necessarily but for the type of story I'm going for, it needs to be bleak.


HarryG said:


> Robots should help us, medical advances should eradicate disease, global warming should be under control, wars should be eliminated with global education, the LHC experiment might have told us the truth at last.


Not without a heavy sum of money I would think.  Eradicating a disease altogether would shut down billion dollar corporations, drug companies etc.  All they care about is profit and shareholder value.  You can't make money off of healthy people. They want people sick and taking pills for the rest of their lives.  So unless that is dealt with, I can't really see a future where disease is no more.


Mike C said:


> Technology may change, but people don't. In 2084 people will still be starving, governments will still be killing people, big nations will bully small ones.


True.

Thanks for the advice and comments.


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## moderan (Sep 12, 2008)

HarryG said:


> We could be spending our holidays on Mars, swallowing pills to make us live for however long we want to, and other pills to make us perpetually happy, and interesting books will be read to us from our iPods.


That's become a sf cliche, which doesn't make it any less possible. Certainly the pharmaceutical lobby would like it that way.


S1E9A8N5 said:


> Not without a heavy sum of money I would think. Eradicating a disease altogether would shut down billion dollar corporations, drug companies etc. All they care about is profit and shareholder value. You can't make money off of healthy people. They want people sick and taking pills for the rest of their lives. So unless that is dealt with, I can't really see a future where disease is no more.


Not without a gigantic paradigm shift (see the above). Given the plethora of prescription drug commercials that are shoved down our throats, that shift doesn't appear to be on the horizon. The insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies have this country in a stranglehold. Physicians prescribe rather than treat in many cases, perpetuating that lock. Those are some of the subjects of my NaNo piece.
Perhaps with the possible Chinese-dominated future, Eastern medical practices will become predominate, or at least gain a larger degree of credibility. Something like The Man in The High Castle's setting, where the I Ching is used reflexively and acupuncture is more prevalent. Pills are more palatable than needles though, so that's problematical. Perhaps some sort of download in a cybernetic environment? Just some random thoughts.


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## S1E9A8N5 (May 25, 2010)

I decided to revive this thread because I'm still struggling with this topic.

I understand that I can use a post WW3 setting or I can have political changes that keep technology from advancing etc.  But I don't understand why these things affect/don't affect change for the setting I'm going for.  Obviously things are bad in a post WW3 scenario but why do these events (WW3 or political changes etc.) keep technology from advancing?  Do I have to get detailed about it or can I just write "this happened" and "this is the way it is now".   I'd like to understand why these things affect/don't affect change.  Does that make sense?  

Is there a post apocalyptic book for dummies? ](*,)


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## moderan (May 25, 2010)

Depending on how extensive the damage from warfare is, the populace can literally be thrust back into the stone age. Machinery can be damaged, the people that know how to run it or fix it can be dead, etc.
You can just say "this happened", but you'll need to think it out for yourself. Even if the actual stuff is offstage, you'll have to know what happened in order to accurately chronicle the events you're describing. In other words, the_ text_ doesn't have to be detailed, but you have to know the details.


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## Linton Robinson (May 25, 2010)

It's not like tech moves forward at a steady pace.  It moves in fits and starts.  We're overdue for a slowdown due to shortage of materials.

What I'm saying, you can pick your time and have whatever tech you want or need.  It's not like somebody can lay a sliderule up against and say you're off schedule.


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## MrSteve (May 26, 2010)

Not much to add actually, other than to suggest you do some research in to what happened (on a social and economic level) to Europe after the second world war?


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## ppsage (May 26, 2010)

Try _China Mountain Zhang_ / Maureen F. McHugh for a very nice updated version of the China Wins scenerio. In fiction, future _conditions _(tech included) are going to be shown in relation to the characters only. This can be done very generally, literal world building, as Robinson does in the _Mars_ trilogy, or it can be done very intimately and suggestively, as McHugh tends to do. You will need to decide how you want to do it. 

Tech changes are only part of the future history that connects your world to some point in our general experience (the present presumably, in this case.) How plausible your future history needs to be is dependent on the style and tone and maybe genre you choose. Excellent *stories* have been written using very implausible and sketchy future histories to get them started. Maybe PKDick's _The days of perky Pat,_ for instance. Or maybe _Moving with the herd, _in Geoffrey Maloney's collection, _TALES FROM THE CRYPTO-SYSTEM, _for something more modern. Novels maybe require a somewhat firmer foundation.

Part of the deal here, is you make up the scenrio and it's logic. Why would WW3 derail tech advance? Maybe it would maybe it wouldn't. Lots of possibilities. In SF, how history got there is part of the author's communicated vision. It's what the genre is about and why I like it. pp


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## S1E9A8N5 (May 26, 2010)

Thanks for the help *Moderan*, *Lin*, and *MrSteve*.  Appreciate the advice.

And *Ppsage*, thanks for the examples. I'll have to look those books up.

Appreciate the help.


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## garza (May 26, 2010)

Mike C - Please do not say 'America' when you mean the 'United States of America'. The U.S. is only one small part of America. I live in America, Central America, and by the year 2029 we expect to see radical changes in the relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the world, especially that part of the world despairingly called 'developing', or, worse, 'third world'. 

A good theme, in fact, for a novel set 30 years in the future would be the changed political landscape, with nations like Brazil and India becoming dominant economic powers. 

A work built around themes of social, economic, and political changes would be, I should think, far more interesting than one that concentrated on technological development itself. The impact of technology on culture we see today will intensify, and that is far more important than the details of the inner workings of the technology.


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## Ilasir Maroa (May 26, 2010)

garza said:


> Mike C - Please do not say 'America' when you mean the 'United States of America'. The U.S. is only one small part of America. I live in America, Central America, and by the year 2029 we expect to see radical changes in the relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the world, especially that part of the world despairingly called 'developing', or, worse, 'third world'.
> 
> A good theme, in fact, for a novel set 30 years in the future would be the changed political landscape, with nations like Brazil and India becoming dominant economic powers.
> 
> A work built around themes of social, economic, and political changes would be, I should think, far more interesting than one that concentrated on technological development itself. The impact of technology on culture we see today will intensify, and that is far more important than the details of the inner workings of the technology.




To be honest, "united states of america" suggests pretty much the same thing as "America", even though there's an official distinction.


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## garza (May 26, 2010)

So the rest of us don't count. Brazil and Belize and El Salvador and Canada are just 'technically' independent nations, an 'official distinction' without meaning.

That is exactly and precisely the attitude that....

Never mind. This is not the place for this discussion.


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## Linton Robinson (May 26, 2010)

Yes.  Just as "The United States of Mexico" is referred to as "Mexico".


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## garza (May 26, 2010)

There is no 'United States of Mexico'. It's Estados Unidos Mexicanos in Spanish which translates as United Mexican States in English.

The generic name 'America' applies to all the Western Hemisphere. Thus there is North America, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, all counted part of the larger area known collectively and correctly as 'America'. To call one of the nations of that area by the generic name is to deny the independent status of all the other nations, including the United Mexican States. The name 'Mexico' has never been applied as a generic name to designate all the Western Hemisphere.

I was severely reprimanded for using the word 'America' to mean the U.S. when I was12 years old, and I have never forgotten the anger in the voice of the Canadian who delivered the lecture. 

To put the discussion back where it belongs, suppose that by the year 2029 the U.S. really had taken over all of the Western Hemisphere, progressing from Haiti and Puerto Rico through the rest of the Caribbean, then down through Mexico using the drug cartels as an excuse for another Mexican War, and moving on through Guatemala, El Salvador, on through the rest of Central America and Panamá to Colombia trying to track the drugs back to their source, and finally dominating everything on this side of the Atlantic except Canada (no excuse to go there, Cuba (they just won't give up), and Belize  (too small to worry about).

Now, assuming the technology, though moving in jumps as has been pointed out, permits, what? What kind of technology might be developed around but separate from the mainstream that would allow an obscure village to become the centre of a rebellion that would build in momentum and force the withdrawal of occupying forces. 

What kind of technology would be needed? Would it by necessity be a super weapon, or something more subtle?

I don't have the talent needed to develop such a story, but there are a couple of people here who probably do.


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## Linton Robinson (May 26, 2010)

Please.  I'm actually pretty aware of the name of the country I've lived in for decades, and of the various ways to put it English.   It's the same thing.  You see USA or EEUU translated at Estados Unidos Americanos and in other ways.

 In point of fact the entire two continents are almost NEVER referred to as "American" by anybody.   The term "the Americas" is common...and there are lots of places in Mexico and other countries called "Plaza de Las Americas" or some such.

Lots of people get reprimanded about that don't use "American" even though everybody knows what it means crap, but most don't pay any attention to it.  I sure don't, as you've seen.    It's just not a legitimate thing to bitch about,  like Puerto Ricans always coming off about independence when it's the last thing they want.  You learn to shake it off.

And screw Canadians who presume to tell others how to call their own country.  You really want to see a Canuck get angry, call them an American and see if they pick up on in the spirit of hemispheric solidarity.


Most Canucks I know call the US the "Excited States", anyway.


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## ppsage (May 26, 2010)

Oddly, all the SF/altHist stories which come to mind have things progressing in the other direction; have the US splintering. I can't think of one where it creates Western Hemisphere hegemony. Maybe that's just me. BTW, I have no problem writing I'm a US citizen who lives in the US. I do slip up sometimes in my speech but not often anymore. In my childhood I was programmed to think of myself as an American, which I also still do, but now in the hemispheric sense. I don't even see any reason to argue for the archaic designations. What can be gained? pp


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## garza (May 26, 2010)

I can't guess at what someone may know or not know. I can only know what they write.

ppsage - There's little science fiction or alternative history that I've read for a long time. I enjoyed some science fiction in the late '40's, early '50's, but got away from it entirely in high school. 

But it's interesting that writers would see the U.S. coming apart rather than pursuing a path to hemispheric domination. Maybe there's a balance, the forces that would divide the country are offset by those who want to expand U.S. influence. 

By the way, didja know that the biggest, in physical size, U.S. Embassy in the world is in Belize? I've been in and out of there a number of times, and once you're through the gate there's a feeling of absolute security, like, no one could ever get to me here. I'm wondering if this might be a prototype for future U.S. embassies?

Now suppose that the technology needed to defeat any superpower were not new, but old? This was, as I recall, a much-used idea in the science fiction of the '30's and '40's. I don't know about today. But suppose some super advanced technology is discovered buried in a small, previously unexplored Mayan ruin deep in the Toledo District of Belize? 

Forget it. I'm going back to my project on organic gardening.


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## Linton Robinson (May 26, 2010)

That's really interesting, ppsage.  I just read a bestseller by a friend in which he's got a Muslim victory, and sure nuff, the US is all hacked up into little sections.  Nobody seems to want to hegemonize.

My guess would be that it makes for more interesting stories and writing, the new confederacies or fifth reich holdings and whatnot being like colorful characters, whereas everything being merged would be boring.






> But suppose some super advanced technology is discovered buried in asmall, previously unexplored Mayan ruin deep in the Toledo District ofBelize?




Yeah, good one.  And less far-fetched than some of the futuristic scenarios.
I'd start thinking from the Yucatan, with shades of the old Cristeros uprising, talking crosses appearing in remote mayan villages and cenotes.


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## Ilasir Maroa (May 26, 2010)

lin said:


> That's really interesting, ppsage. I just read a bestseller by a friend in which he's got a Muslim victory, and sure nuff, the US is all hacked up into little sections. Nobody seems to want to hegemonize.
> 
> My guess would be that it makes for more interesting stories and writing, the new confederacies or fifth reich holdings and whatnot being like colorful characters, whereas everything being merged would be boring.
> 
> ...



Just because there's official hegemony, it doesn't mean that everything has to be happy-go-lucky.  Look at the situation in the UK.


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## Linton Robinson (May 26, 2010)

Like I said, boring.


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## Ilasir Maroa (May 26, 2010)

Terrorism, nationalist movements, racism, ethno-centrism, political intrigue, secession, independence movements, civil war.  Sounds pretty exciting to me.


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## Linton Robinson (May 26, 2010)

Yeah, but it's all happening to a bunch of foreigners, so who cares?


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## moderan (May 26, 2010)

garza said:


> I can't guess at what someone may know or not know. I can only know what they write.
> 
> ppsage - There's little science fiction or alternative history that I've read for a long time. I enjoyed some science fiction in the late '40's, early '50's, but got away from it entirely in high school.
> 
> But it's interesting that writers would see the U.S. coming apart rather than pursuing a path to hemispheric domination. Maybe there's a balance, the forces that would divide the country are offset by those who want to expand U.S. influence.


In a lot of cases, US American hegemony is seen as a springboard to rapid advancement, and cultural exportation via ftl ship. Really good (early) examples of that would be Eric Frank Russell's Great Explosion and James Blish's Cities in Flight, with two very different methods of propulsion. That's become an accepted trope over the years. The only novel I can think of where there was a sort of US American hegemony was Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee, in which the south won the Civil War, and technology stayed at a quasi-Victorian level. Otherwise there's the postnuclear scenario, which does bring a sort of hegemony (Edgar Pangborn's Davy, Dick's Dr. Bloodmoney, Zelazny's Damnation Alley).
Cyberpunk novels often have the Sprawl or similar gigantic citystates in their corporation-dominated scenarios-the culmination of that is Bruce Sterling's Shaper/Mechanist society, which was based on US American hegemony but has moved far into the future.


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## garza (May 26, 2010)

I have a Yucatecan friend from San Antonio Village in the Cayo District who is a nephew of Don Elijio Panti, regarded as the greatest shaman of his time, who died some years ago at the age of 103 or 104 or 105, depending on who you ask. Most of the Maya in Cayo are Yucatec and some claim to be descended from people who never left the area and were never conquered by the Spanish or by anybody else. In reality they are descended from people who moved south during the Caste Wars farther up the Yucatan Peninsula. 

There are haunted, or spirit inhabited, however you want to look at it, cenotes all over. One is, interestingly enough, in the middle of a luxury resort in Cayo and is a feature of interest for the tourists.

In the bush in all parts of Belize you will find traditional altars, not left over from ancient times but altars in steady use today. One young fellow who chopped my yard for several years came to trust me well enough to confide in me that his family has gone to Mass faithfully for over four hundred years, and they've never believed a word of it. They have adapted some elements of Christianity for their own use, adding, as it were, the Christian god and saints to the ones they already have, and adding the cross as another useful symbol, but never accepting the message that the church is in any way the one true religion. 

Many Garifuna are the same way, mixing traditional African and Christian symbols and beliefs.

Now take that mix, with the voice speaking from the cenote, directing the Harrison Ford character to the lost pyramid...

But set it in 2029, as in the original idea, with a mix of advanced western technology and 5,000 year old, pre-pre-pre classic, secrets. And write the history of 2029 from the vantage point of the end of the 21st Century, with perhaps a technology that has developed in a direction totally unforseen today.


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## Linton Robinson (May 26, 2010)

Trouble is, it's all over in 2012


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## ppsage (May 26, 2010)

The way to beat a super power is quite simple. Just keep fighting. It's how the US beat Britian (or whatever that empire was called?) It becomes a matter of economics. How much is the west (US, basically) spending now, relative to the enemy(ies)? A hundred to one? A thousand to one? If the insurrectionists can keep some military challenge in the field, and given the global media nowadays, even sporatic terrorist strikes are sufficient, and can keep some political ideological organs operational, also more and more of a cinch, eventually, water wears away stone. As near as my readings of history show, it's never failed. So maybe not secret technology, maybe social organization. pp


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## Ilasir Maroa (May 26, 2010)

lin said:


> Yeah, but it's all happening to a bunch of foreigners, so who cares?



Not necessarily.  There's still the US in all this hegemony, and maybe _they_ want out.  It's not the idea that matters, it's what you do with it.


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## Linton Robinson (May 26, 2010)

> There's still the US in all this hegemony, and maybe _they_ want out.  It's not the idea that matters, it's what you do with it.



I'm going to just pretend any of that made any sense at all and move on.


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## moderan (May 26, 2010)

:scratch:


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## Linton Robinson (May 26, 2010)

Abstract Literalism?


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## moderan (May 26, 2010)

*shrugs* There was an OP back there somewhere...I'm still looking for the postapocalyptic handbook. That'd be a handy lil thing to have.  Leibowitz and Farnham probably have it. Blood probably pissed on it (the dog, not the poster? :scratch . Arch Oboler probably wrote it.
List of postapocalyptic fiction.


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## garza (May 26, 2010)

Lin - isn't 'abstract literalism' the philosophical foundation on which all major religions are founded? It's also at the heart of government policy. Any government.

Leibowitz! I had forgotten about Leibowitz. Of course. There's your template.


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