[ExI] Huxley or Orwell - who got it right?

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark



 

>…Arthur C Clarke wrote a couple of novels that were supposed to depict dystopian societies (Against The Fall Of Night and The City And the Stars) in them everybody was happy, healthy, educated and rich. Oh and by the way they were immortal too.  As a kid I figured there must be something wrong with me because I didn't think that sounded so bad, and even now I feel it beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. At the end of the books the hero makes everything right and people are no longer happy or immortal but it's supposed to be better for society…John K Clark

 

 

Ja, Clarke was good at the more utopian novels.  I liked his stuff, even while reading the darker material.  I considered it more likely to pan out the Clarke way than the alternatives.  John is Sir Arthur a relative of you?

 

No one knew the answer to that Star Trek episode where they arrived to find there were no problems to solve.  It has been over 45 years since I saw it, so I don’t really know, but as I recall, that was the episode where they kept thinking something somewhere must be wrong with a place where there was nothing to do but play.  They never really did find it.

 

Cocoon is an example of an alien species which comes to earth from a place where the inhabitants were peaceful and immortal.  They take aged humans to their planet where they have the option of healthy immortality, but they choose to return to earth and perish.  Oy vey.  I liked the movies anyway, and consider them well done for the 1980s.  It was a fun what-if: a group of sick old people get access to the fountain of youth.

 

spike

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