Some dystopian fiction (ab)uses books as a central part of their plot. Consider Fahrenheit 451, The Book of the New Sun, The Diamond Age, We, even 1984.
Who is trying to get rid of books? Trump? Republicans? Anyone not aligned with your ideology? Seriously, no one is talking about banning books. Oh, are you talking about lgbtq+++ books in children’s schools?
Especially important now to find and keep books about things like the Tuskegee airmen, the Japanese internment camps, J6 and books they want to ban. We cannot let them rewrite history.
Because an uneducated population is the perfect ground for a totalitarian system. The uneducated are easier to convince that their system is the best for their interests. Remember who voted for trump?
My great grandfather (the guy I’m impersonating) has some wonderful civil rights books and writings. I’ve been buying up as many copies as I can. The Little Blue Book series is cool too, he wrote a few for Haldeman-Julius
This why we need to buy paper books and not digital. It's too easy for tech companies and big brother to erase digital copies, probably which you don't even own but are just renting. Read the TOS when you buy digital media.
Not just books—the loss of the quiet space they create. A world without them isn’t just illiterate; it’s thoughtless, impulsive, running on borrowed opinions with nowhere to sit and think.
True. They dont want the population to be informed. Thats why we must fight for libraries and to eliminate book banning. Let kids decide. They are smarter than adults most times.
I’m teaching Speculative Fiction this semester and I can explain why: most dystopian fiction puts art/books/humanity on one side and technology/power the other; in these stories, we replace humans with tech and we lose art. We see art as something human. In dystopian fiction, humanity often loses.
What’s surprising to me is that it doesn’t appear to be necessary—people will just delude themselves because they have no critical thinking skills. All the books can still be there.
How true! Books hold too much power and that makes people afraid. And fear they can not have. The ability of people to read and learn and grow and stand up in times when atrocities are being committed against them.
Books are only seen as valuable to those that have the time to use them. But they forget that a book can teach someone to garden, forage, cook, build, survive & improve when everything is failing. It's a short story summer vacation in a nuclear winter. It's a permanence when memory itself fades.
I remember a story on NPR years ago about a young Afghani girl who was forbidden from reading. She was fortunate to obtain one book. Little Women. She read it front to back for years. One day she was able to come to America. I was so happy she made it here but, given our fall, now I’m not so sure.
Once people primarily consume books through ebook sources (which is pretty much now) it becomes a lot easier to delete or alter information and history. Books and the written record have been the backbone of civilization.
Buy books, magazines, anything in print, hold them dear, because a time will come when the control of digital media, information and knowledge will be the ultimate commodity..
I have been doing this very thing. I have science and history, not just my scifi/fantasy. Though I'm sure my scifi/fantasy will be seen as subversive too considering what most of it is about.
My husband is a maintenance tech... so we got fixing things down. I have a masters in Env. Eng. so have water covered. I also work as an environmental scientist and routinely do plant id. I've got foraging covered.
Perfect, well done you guys.. Sadly these are the things we should all have... I'm no prepper at all.. but I'm beginning to think it might not be a bad idea...
Honestly, I have the books because I was interested in the topics. I love the environment, especially h2o thus the education. Hubs was a maintenance guy before we met. We got the generators because of power loss during storms. It just turns out, that that stuff is also handy during the apocalypse.
I have numerous foraging, storing, small design water/waste water, and other such useful books. We have fuel and solar generators, 1000s of movies on our own server...cats to eat if things get really bad 😆
I tell my kids if a dystopian future starts to occur, everyone else will go for food, meds etc & there will be massive fights, so whilst they fight each other, go for a tangible form of entertainment and information like books & you will become a sought after trading partner.
Comments
They don't gotta burn the books, they just remove 'em"
#DystopiaStartsWithDistraction
#BooksAreTimeTravel
#ReadOrBeRewritten
(FYI, it has been said that Trump has an I.Q. of 75).
Removing ideas and hopes is a good way to get there.