Mark Clipsham

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In general quite welcome - at times it gets long in tooth on the syrup or they miss the bigger point - I'd rather more important subjects would be covered - only DN could cover the direct relationship between the growth economy and the environment. Strong economy (consumption based) degrading environment - and the attendant price we pay for this growth on everything that is important - family, community, mental health, involvement in politics/policy etc. Yesterday there was a story about Bloomberg's response to Sanders - "I'm not throwing capitalism out the window to become socialist." Sanders realizes we don't have capitalism which would be great - we have corporate welfare/socialism and an uneven playing filed and he wants to fix that. If that is socialism and threatening to billionaires please bring it on - I'm warming up to Sanders in a big way. Trump - "The most indignant people are those caught in their own lies." Listen to - "Your Mind is on Vacation," by Mose Allison. Thank you for being there.

Like virtually all sci-fi the book is a metaphor for our condition and likely future/end should we continue as we are. In this case the coddled consumer vs the self-sustaining. It reminds me of many sayings: The hard way is the easy way...it begins as a blessing, but ends as a curse, making life easy, but making it worse...a velvet lined golden cage...all one can hope for in life is hard, challenging, rewarding work. The book addresses the fallacy of the allure of the easy life (driven by the growth economy/consumer paradigm)....and the healthy need for balance as a path to enjoyment as basic philosophy to live by. Parts of the book are fantastical - until juxtaposed with things like AI (worm holes/mass accelerators etc) - which the book addressees far before it became an issue like good sci-fi does - truly visionary and prophetic. It moves very fast as does most "juvenile literature" and would make great movie with the right director.