Against The Day / (np) Alas, Babylon

[Dave Monroe]

On 6/23/07, mikebailey at speakeasy.net <mikebailey at speakeasy.net> wrote:

> on Dave's recommendation, I read Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank.
> Liked it.  Sort of a more grounded Heinlein?
> In reading these type stories, it always makes me appreciate our
> own level of culture - lacking perfection though it is -
> and how my choice to "opt out of violence" would be pretty
> meaningless in a place where marauders were looting etc...

FINALLY catching up here again, thought I'd heard my name. David
Brin's The Postman (not to be confused with Kevin Costner's Dirtworld,
even if it was adapted from Brin's book) is a decent successor to AB.
Am currently working, however, on Richard Matheson's I Am Legend
(filmed as The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and, apparently, in
progress under its own title).  Meanwhile, if anyone is interested in
some possibly pre-Pynchonian classic SF NOT by Philip K. Dick or
Alfred Bester, try Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth's The Space
Merchants.  Still holds up well, despite the Venus setting ...