Hoarding is exactly what the government is doing right now by filling the SPR, and frankly it's the best thing that could happen. It drives prices up. High prices encourage demand destruction. They also finance new well development. The hoarded oil gives us a buffer to fall back on once shortages become more prevalent. High prices are what we need in order to adapt to what's coming, and the sooner they happen, the better.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 1188 Location: Zoorope
Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 6:50 am Post subject: [Peak Oil... novels]
I always enjoyed reading Science Fiction, and I think it would be great to post here some novels about a post-apocalypse world and survival. Good books of course!
There are the first which came to my mind:
- Philip Dick, "Doctor Bloodmoney. Or How We Got Along After The Bomb", a post industrial society after nukes.
- Stephen King, "The stand", how people and society cope with a sudden worldwide collapse (a plague in this case).
Any further suggestion? _________________ **no english mothertongue**
--------
Objects in the rear view mirror
are closer than they appear.
Joined: May 16, 2004 Posts: 162 Location: Rural, Indiana.
Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 9:38 am Post subject:
there is also an older book..."Warday" I believe by Streiber. (sorry, I like to read and get into "end of times" type books) The Stand is by far the best....especially the unabridged edtion.
Joined: Dec 18, 2004 Posts: 3857 Location: One Mile From the Columbia River
Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2005 1:44 pm Post subject:
How I ever got to be my age without ever hearing of, "Lucifer's Hammer', I'll never know.
But I want to thank you JR for mentioning this amazing and refreshingly relevant book. I have about 75 pages more to read and I absolutely love it!!
I read another similar book in the 70's, but can't recall the name... was it, 'That Perfect Day'??? It takes place in the Sierra Foothills as well, but the near-total destruction of population is from plague... and a mail carrier plays an important role in it as well.
If anyone can recell the title I would appreciate it... and then I could recommend it.
Cover Text
-------------
In Good News, Edward Abbey's acclaimed underground classic, the West is wild again. American civilization as the twentieth century knew it, has crumbled. In the great Southwest, a new breed of settles, whites and Indians together, is creating a new way of life in the wilderness -- a pastural economy -- with shills and sawy resurrected from the pre-industrial past. Meanwhile, in a last surviving bastion of urban file, the remnants of the power elite are girding their armed forces to reimpose the old order. This is a land of horses and motorcycles, high-tech weaponry and primitive courage, and the struggle for the American future is mounting in intensity. No quarter is asked for given, and the outcome hangs in perilous balance against a background of magnificent nature and eternal human verities.
With this boldly satirical imaginary world, Edward Abbey asks us to look us to look around and take stock of what we value before it is too late.
Joined: May 16, 2004 Posts: 162 Location: Rural, Indiana.
Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 5:50 am Post subject:
No problem, eastbay! I'm reading another one now that was actually published in 1949, then rereleased in the 80's. I missed this one until now. It's called Earh Abides by George Stewart. Main character is in the wilderness for an extended period and while he's gone the world is ravaged by a killer virus. Most humans die. He is bitten by a rattlesnake about the same time the virus reaches him and somehow survives it. Book is about his travels accross the US post-virus die-off. You can tell it was written in some parts in 1949, but you can relate it to curren times. Good read, tho a bit slow in some parts.
Joined: Dec 18, 2004 Posts: 3857 Location: One Mile From the Columbia River
Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 6:05 am Post subject:
Earth Abides!! That's it. Thanks... I'm going to try to find a copy of that and read it again... crumbled freeways... dried out car tires... no more gas... I can only remember scattered parts.
Joined: Aug 18, 2004 Posts: 694 Location: SF Bay Area, Calif
Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 6:56 am Post subject:
Hmmm, novels related to peak oil. Probably means sf.
Some great recommendations were given above. Dr. Bloodmoney is a classic (anything that the Master, PK Dick, wrote is a classic!).
Some oldies:
Wolfbane by Pohl and Kornbluth.
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/wolfbane.htm
Back in 1959, this famous pair of sf writers imagined an earth with low calories/capita, and pointed out that the quality of life depends on the amount of available energy.
Quote:
'...the 1000-1500 calorie range... produces the small arts, the appreciations, the peaceful arrangements of necessities into subtle relationships of traditionally-agreed-upon-virtue. Japan, locked into its Shogunate prison, picked scanty food from mountainsides and beauty out of arrangements of lichen and paper.'
The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth.
Classic send-up of consumerism and commercialism. Fast-paced and funny.
The Merchant's War by Pohl. A sequel written decades later.
"The Marching Morons" by Kornbluth (short story). Hero wakes up in a world where the IQ has dropped ~40 points.
Last Stand on Zanzibar The Sheep Look Up Shockwave Rider
John Brunner's dystopian novels, dealing with over-population, future shock and pollution.
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guinn.
An expedition from a planet of communitarian anarchists, living close to nature, visits a nearby planet with a oligarchic, consumerist, corrupt civilization. It's not exactly goodies vs baddies, though.
More recent:
Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guinn
A sustainable society that looks very much like the California Indian tribes that her father (anthropologist Alfred Kroeber) studied. Set in the Napa Valley of California in an indefinite period in the future.
The Dazzle of the Day by Molly Gloss
http://www.sfsite.com/07a/daz36.htm
Quaker colony leaves a polluted Earth, developing a high-tech eco-commune in the ship that takes them to another solar system. This is not an easy book to get into; it's poetic and literary not pulp adventure. But as a work of fiction, it is extraordinary.
The Ragged World and Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream.
"Alien visitors insist that Earth clean up its polluted and damaged ecosystem.". The second novel is centered on a self-sufficient homestead on the Mississippi river, which is depicted very sympathetically. (The homesteading couple are based on real individuals.)
Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 11:10 pm
Post subject: You might consider the Alternate History Genre of SF
I am reading a book now by S. M. Sterling called "Peshawar Lancers" that is from the Alternate History genre of SF literature. In this book the earth was hit by a meteor (comet?) shower in 1870 and the Northern regions of Europe and North America entered an ice age. The novel takes place in the 21st Century in SE Asia where British subjects had migrated to restart the Empire. The writing is very good and the detail required to pull off a completely imaginary society is amazing.
I was led to this book from another book of Sterlings called "Island in the Sea of Time." This is the first book of a trilogy that describes what happens when an island in the modern U. S. enters a time warp and is transported back in time a few thousand years. It is very interesting because it shows what the people have to do to keep their society running without the supply lines of food and energy that they were used to and how they were able to use the accumulated knowledge of civilization to their advantage in their encounters with the past. Again a very interesting book and well written.
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