Oh, Darwin

How much is too much?

A friend of mine told me that I read alot, like crazy much, which, well yeah, I guess I do. I read for pleasure, to escape the stresses of the everyday world (I manage a Cafe), to live vicariously through someone else and maybe, just maybe, to see the world from a different angle.

And that angle, right now, is dystopitarian (which probably isn't even a real word). Dystopia, however, is a real word and this is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Dystopia is a vision, of an often futuristic society, which has developed into a negative version of Utopia. A Dystopia is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. It often features different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and a state of constant warfare or violence.

I think one of the reasons why I like those books, along with post-Apocalyptic ones, is to see how the world would function or change in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event. In Ariel, for example, the Change itself was the introduction of magic and the end of technology.

These events really show the determination of our species to survive on a whole, to adapt to new circumstances and to conquer what we don't understand. It also brings out our more basic, animalistic tendencies. As a Biology major, I have a special place in my heart for natural selection and these books just prove again and again the power of Darwin's ideology: survival of the fittest.