The Press Stories
Note: Mike Ryan, a tour guide in Old New York, arrives with a group of remaining Africans from North America. 200 years after the “great panic” of the 20th century, Africans are now world rulers. It is difficult for them to understand how this civilization once ruled the world, which angrily annoys their own guide.
Review: One would like to feel the work is far-sighted, but it is undoubtedly: if the themes addressed in this short story published in 1970 seem more relevant than ever, it is because we are reading it in 2021. The story evokes a wind that has become so breathless in the United States that the continent can no longer live on the surface. To think of the remnants of this lost society, tourism has the power there.
The question of air quality is certainly a slippage of American productivity, but the awareness of the 1970s was so weak that the ecological theme is often dealt with only in the science fiction literature. (CF Green Sun or The Planet of the Apes). We have rediscovered all interest in this genre, which has long been defined as a “supplementary literature”, while it is full of philosophical, social and scientific reflections that are numerous and relevant.
In his writing the author manages to mix images of a dilapidated, catastrophic and charismatic megalopolis with significant questions in American society: racism against blacks, the rule of entertainment, the race for innovation. In fact, if the African continent is now the master of the world, racism remains a central issue: whites have become miserable. However, are they hateful? Their contemporary community is far less unique, which is the pride of the guide and the embarrassment of Africans. How to understand a society that has been able to organize chaos and its own destruction?
Norman Spinrod eloquently narrates what was once in New York, through a brief tour of the end of American civilization, its successes, beliefs and its ideals. In his helicopter, he tries to impress his passengers by showing the best engineering achievements of the twentieth century, mastering the human environment, and the sheer beauty of the cities. African tourists are torn between admiration and understanding: Sure, the spirit of this civilization seems spectacular, but what good is all this? Thus using the wonder of his characters, the writer seems to support development as a warning against his contemporaries and for this purely human response to the ever-desired.
However, the metroglobulites are still there, and the last men of this lost age have risen up the wall in the New York tunnel, the content of which will continue to be a bad presence. Confronting these once powerful people is a deeply touching chapter in the book, as well as the experience they experience beneath the surface.
The uniqueness of the messages is that this world of the future is not a revelation. Planet Earth is livable. Ideally, the population is not the same. While depicting the end of the American regime, the author pours his story with a wind of hope. In the end, Mike Ryan and his team want the same option: a simple, breathtaking life without power struggles or domination. The hero is the future candidate in a sense.
Presenting a foreword written by the author in March 2021, it is necessary to underline the significant works for editing this work which stimulates the context of the publication and finally encourages the reader beyond his reading through literary advice or cinematography. Very commendable enrichment.
144 pages
EP 8 / € 5.49 in EPUB / PDF
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