I hope that you will read it and pass it along.
Your novel "Foreign Enemies and Traitors" is a great read and relevant to what is happening. BTW, it made a list of "Top 10 Dystopian Novels" (ink below, November 2013 blog)
Well done. Definite food for thought.I will pass it along.
Excellent short story. It has a number of great quotes such as: “. . . it is much harder to build and sustain a stable and functioning civilization (even an admittedly imperfect one) than it is to destroy a pretty damn good civilization in the name of establishing utopian perfection by government degree.”
Bkmk for later.
Thank you for writing and posting this. I just read Alas Babylon again for the second time since high school. Still a pretty good read.
I was hooked in the first sentence and read on ‘til the end. Excellent work.
BTW, when my niece and nephew are ready, I will provide them this story...
For the time being they will be getting a new Kindle device with all the good stuff including your novels...I think they can handle it, and will eventually want more...This will be the next installment...
Theyh are going to have a great Christmas...I know I shouldn’t wait, but I figure its only a little over a month from now, and I think they’ll be ok, till then...
They have their favorite uncle to lean on, for now...
Somehow, a part of me wished this country really wasn’t so screwed up, as it is with these liberal/socialist people at the helm...
Ping for later re-read and thanks again
Bump for later reading.
Have read two of your books so far and they are excellent.
Merry Christmas, Matt!
PFLR
Bookmark.
Seems a clever take from “Dies the Fire” by S. M. Sterling.
In that series, all modern technology quits by magic, and magic itself seems to make a comeback, with multiple gods.
In that series, it is liberals who survive,while conservatives die off because they will not “cooperate”.
99%+ die off.
It is popular among liberals, I understand. I like your take better, because technology still works, it is just not being used.
Too hard for me to suspend disbelief, though. May you attract many of the readers of Sterling’s series.
BTTT
bookmark
Thanks.
New Bracken, a must read!
Matt, just read this again after a lapse of a year.
Still a great read.
BTTT.
M4L Bracken
bump for later
It reads like a prose version of Rudyard Kipling’s masterpiece with which you are no doubt very familiar, the last lines of which I am pasting below;
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Of course, Kipling published this almost a century before the current date, he apparently saw the seeds of the current harvest being planted. I knew of the poem for a long, long time before I ever even had any idea what was meant by copybook headings. Now I return to it regularly and marvel at the greatness of Rudyard Kipling.
bttt