I’d love to get back to reading good old-fashioned fiction. The only book I’ve read lately that wasn’t news related was post-apocalyptic in nature yet had a certain relevancy to it. If you’ve never read it and are looking for something thought provoking, consider A Canticle for Leibovitz by Miller. It was released in 1959 and has never been out of print since. It’s considered a sci-fi novel, but it still feels relevant. In fact, too much of it sounded vaguely familiar. Told in three sections, part 1 refers to the Simiplification - following a nuclear war that destroyed much of the world either due to the bombs or the fall-out, those who survived developed an extreme fear of all things technological and of all people who were perceived to be responsible — the scientists, the technology experts, and ultimately anyone with any sort of learning. As a result, all books were burned and the scholars, scientists and teachers were all murdered to prevent any scientific advancements that might allow technology to get us to the point of mass destruction again. There are days when I feel we are headed in that direction (both the mass destruction and the decision to destroy all of the advancements made by mankind in the pursuit of knowledge that would improve our lives). The problem was that once you restored the world to a time of total ignorance, mankind no longer had any knowledge of history, morality, or the technology that had improved our lives. People lost all sense of humanity and reverted to animalistic tendencies. I’ll stop here since I don’t want to accidentally include spoilers and Matt will probably consider this off topic anyhow. But it was nice to find something to read that wasn’t online, wasn’t related to the current government mess, and which didn’t have the name Trump associated with it. I’d recommend it highly.
