Beyond This Horizon
Synopsis courtesy of GoodReads: Utopia has been achieved. For centuries, disease, hunger, poverty and war have been things found only in the history tapes. And applied genetics has given men and women the bodies of athletes and a lifespan of over a century. They should all have been very happy.... But Hamilton Felix is bored. And he is the culmination of a star line; each of his last thirty ancestors chosen for superior genes. Hamilton is, as far as genetics can produce one, the ultimate man. And this ultimate man can see no reason why the human race should survive, and has no intention of continuing the pointless comedy. However, Hamilton's life is about to become less boring. A secret cabal of revolutionaries who find utopia not just boring, but desperately in need of leaders who know just What Needs to be Done, are planning to revolt and put themselves in charge. Knowing of Hamilton's disenchantment with the modern world, they have recruited him to join their Glorious Revolution. Big mistake! The revolutionaries are about to find out that recruiting a superman was definitely not a good idea....
Stats for nerds
1recommend
2mentions
2people
2008–2022years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- John Christopher's Tripod Trilogy: "The White Mountains", "The Pool of Fire", "The City of Gold and Lead"
Robert Heinlein "Podkayne of Mars","Tunnel in the Sky", or "Beyond this Horizon"
Samuel Delany "Babel-17" or "The Einstein Intersection"
Roger Zelazny "Lord of Light"
- > An armed society is a polite society. -- RAH
You may wish to actually look up the Heinlein quotation and its context:
> To begin with, the quote isn’t a Heinlein quote any more than “I seen that black n****** yonder ruttin’ on my Mayella!” is a Harper Lee quote. The “polite society” line comes from a Robert Heinlein character in the novel Beyond This Horizon. That character is a privileged product of generations of eugenics. He lives in a society where genetic manipulation has extended lifespans and overpopulation is a prime concern. In that world, dueling has been re-introduced not because it makes people “polite” but because it kills people. And the character likes it because he believes it specifically kills those lesser people, those genetically inferior people, who need to be weeded out to make room for the übermensch to thrive.
* https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/2/1881430/--An-armed...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_This_Horizon#In_popular...
Further:
> There are two problems with this line of thought. First, there is plenty of evidence that it is not true. Second, even if it were true, we shouldn't settle for this kind of "politeness."
* https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/ethics-everyone/2022...
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