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Books, and the future
Apr. 22nd, 2008 12:14 pmOOC: Crossposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse, today.
Prompt 227: A friend asks you to recommend a book: which book would you choose and why?
That would really depend on the friend, now wouldn't it? I'm not exactly going to recommend one of those Cardassian twenty-seven book epics about a life of service to the state to Jean-Luc, for example.
Actually, I wouldn't recommend one of those to anyone. I can read an entire book in a nanosecond, and I still resent the loss of those 27 nanoseconds I spent reading one of those things.
You know what book I'm inordinately fond of, that I would recommend to anyone who wants to understand what it is I like about humans? Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis. Normally I have very little interest in Lewis, since most of his work is an elaborate fantasy about how humans get to live forever and the cosmic entities responsible for the universe's creation actually personally care for human beings and would even willingly die for one. Okay, I've been in a situation where I more-or-less willingly offered up my life for a bunch of humans, and I'm a cosmic entity, but I'm not responsible for the universe's creation (I've made a planet or two, but if I were responsible for the entire universe, it would be a *much* more entertaining place), and besides, I was a mere human myself at the time. The idea that something vast enough to encompass the creation of the universe would actually personally concern itself with individual humans is... well, it's quaint, and amusing, the way it's amusing when small children think the entire universe revolves around their lives.
But in any case. Voyage of the Dawn Treader manages to overcome this problem because it's not *about* the fantasy of immortality and benevolent gods. It's about the need humans have -- as personified by a talking mouse in the story, but hey -- to explore to the edges of what they can survive and beyond, their need to push themselves to learn everything there is to know. That need resonates powerfully with me, since I was created in order to learn everything there is to know (and then I learned it, and life has sucked ever since.)
( The future's not all it's cracked up to be )
theatrical_muse, today.Prompt 227: A friend asks you to recommend a book: which book would you choose and why?
That would really depend on the friend, now wouldn't it? I'm not exactly going to recommend one of those Cardassian twenty-seven book epics about a life of service to the state to Jean-Luc, for example.
Actually, I wouldn't recommend one of those to anyone. I can read an entire book in a nanosecond, and I still resent the loss of those 27 nanoseconds I spent reading one of those things.
You know what book I'm inordinately fond of, that I would recommend to anyone who wants to understand what it is I like about humans? Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis. Normally I have very little interest in Lewis, since most of his work is an elaborate fantasy about how humans get to live forever and the cosmic entities responsible for the universe's creation actually personally care for human beings and would even willingly die for one. Okay, I've been in a situation where I more-or-less willingly offered up my life for a bunch of humans, and I'm a cosmic entity, but I'm not responsible for the universe's creation (I've made a planet or two, but if I were responsible for the entire universe, it would be a *much* more entertaining place), and besides, I was a mere human myself at the time. The idea that something vast enough to encompass the creation of the universe would actually personally concern itself with individual humans is... well, it's quaint, and amusing, the way it's amusing when small children think the entire universe revolves around their lives.
But in any case. Voyage of the Dawn Treader manages to overcome this problem because it's not *about* the fantasy of immortality and benevolent gods. It's about the need humans have -- as personified by a talking mouse in the story, but hey -- to explore to the edges of what they can survive and beyond, their need to push themselves to learn everything there is to know. That need resonates powerfully with me, since I was created in order to learn everything there is to know (and then I learned it, and life has sucked ever since.)
( The future's not all it's cracked up to be )