Category Archives: post-apocalypse fiction

Jack’s Anti-Book Book Review

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In his weekly guest blog post, the normally mild-mannered Jack gets a bit exercised – –

When I started reading The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom I was fascinated. The book sets out the theory that human cultural groupings act as ‘super-organisms’ that transcend the notion of the individual need. My mind went back to long-ago classes in economics and educational motivation – maximizing utility and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs etc.

Bloom’s theories seem to go against all the accepted rules, but he argues that there is plenty of evidence throughout history that human groups will gather around what he describes as a ‘meme’ that will drive a particular group to dominance. The need to dominate is, in turn, driven by a desire that the group should have the greatest access to the ‘fruits of the earth’. He draws parallels with behavior in ant colonies, bee hives and families of apes and baboons, then introduces many instances of human activity to back his argument, such as the need for recognizable uniforms to distinguish ‘us and them’ as well as the value of having an enemy and the power of hatred.

When I started this book I was drawn into it by his many references to there being ‘a better way’ forward that could somehow avoid wars and the violent overthrow of existing hierarchies. As a Quaker I’m always keen to investigate anything that promotes a more peaceful world and this book seemed to be offering possibilities. However as I read on all I seemed to be reading about was the inevitability of this continual cyclical overthrow of existing dominant groups by the next kid on the block: Christians/Muslims, Capitalists/Communists, Democrats/Fascists, and so on.

Finally I reached his answer (drum roll, please)…..

America had to stay on top and learn how to remain there indefinitely.

Yes – really. Never mind anyone else; get on top and stay there, and that’s good enough.

Maybe Douglas Adams had a better answer – – – 42 makes more sense than “stay on top of the pyramid by keeping ‘lesser people’ on the bottom, and life will be grand– at least, for you.”

As Dorothy Parker says, “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

The Monday Book: PARALLEL UNIVERSES by Fred Alan Wolf

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Jack actually read this and kept tapping me in bed to share interesting bits, so I feel as though I’ve read it. Here is why Jack liked it:

The book is saying that Newtonian physics basically were accepted as the only way to see the universe until the early 1900s, but the trouble is that as it became possible to, if not observe, then imagine or understand the smallest particles that one finds even inside atoms, there were anomalies in the Newtonian system that couldn’t be explained by those rules. So a number of people independently started developing quantum physics. Although quantum did explain the anomalies within the Newtonian view, they provoked new anomalies within the quantum system!

Until….

Researchers working independently realized that the process of measuring and studying the particles actually effected the particles, changing their behavior. It’s that Schrodinger’s cat thing. So the act of measuring changes the measurement. And this has led to the theory of parallel universes. In other words, an infinite number of universes are probable, each with a slight change that takes it into an infinite number of different possibilities. (Think that original Star Trek episode where the transporter malfunctions and they wind up in a weird Enterprise that turns out to be in an alternate universe, aka where Spock has a beard. Or that movie Sliding Doors.)

Because you’re observing the universe that you’re in and only that universe, that becomes for you the one and only universe.

Unless…..

you are schizophrenic, or suffering from other behavioral disorders. The author suggests that what people in some conditions are experiencing is the actual observation or collision of that other universe. When people with “disorders” are seeing things other people don’t see or hearing voices or watching shadows or scared of something that hasn’t happened in history, they’re actually seeing for real what the rest of us can’t see.

Taking this a stage further, all these quantum theories suggest that there is a dimensional link between time and matter. This explains things like black holes and tesseracts and time bending. Thus in the same way that you can look back in time and see history, the future can also affect your present. You’re at a point on the continuum that has both ends all played out, but put that word predestination out of your mind, because both ends have infinite possibilities; you just can’t see the historical ones because you’re inside one of them. Got that?

So what you experience as the present is an immeasurable small piece of all the possibilities that have been and could be. And the future has an effect on the present, but we can’t see it inside the universe we’re currently riding inside.

Now keep in mind that this book was published in 1988, so there may be new stuff out there, but this book reads well. It’s a serious read, but it has lovely humor and references to pop culture and the guy writes well. So even if it’s not narrative, it flows well.