Resurrection (Eden Book 3) by Tony Monchinski Read Free Book Online Page A

like Y2K would be mildly amusing to them. “And those technologies or issues never materialized, right? So, what do you guys think? Do you think twentieth-century people would be disappointed?”
    Julio answered. “I think they’d be happy. They were spending hundreds of billions of dollars on ‘defense’ in the U.S. alone in the early two-thousands. Today we spend what? Maybe ten million here in New Harmony?”
    “All we have to protect against is Zed.” Felice picked up Julio’s point. “No one is going to be stupid enough to develop and use another nuclear weapon. We’re dying as it is.” After she’d said it, she darted a nervous glance towards Jermaine, but his attention was on Tricia. “So the government’s able to spend money on people and the infrastructure. That’s important to do, what with—” Felice cast another quick look towards Jermaine, hoping no one noticed her doing so “—all the radiation and illnesses.”
    “Good point,” conceded Anthony. “Let’s see if we can’t situate these novels and their use of technology in the dominant ideologies of their days. Anyone want to give it a try?”
    Megan motioned, indicating she was up to the challenge. “Ayn Rand’s Anthem . Rand was part of a libertarian surge in what? The 50s and 60s? All about stressing the dangers the individual faced from the collective. It’s like when Equality goes to the World Council with his dynamo. He’s thinking they’ll hail him because the generator can make people’s lives easier, better. But what do they do? They chase him out and they tell him that whenever something isn’t thought up by all, it just isn’t true.”
    “Lowry touched on a similar theme in her Giver .” Jermaine was back in the conversation. “The little kids wear jackets that have to be fastened down the back, so they’d have to button each other’s jackets.”
    “What was Lowry’s point with the jackets, Maine?” Anthony prodded.
    “The kids were learning interdependence. Again, that whole idea that collectivism was a problem, that an extreme form of individualism was what was good.”
    “Which is exactly what Rand and even Lowry in her way were championing, right? Forcing a contrast between the individual and the group. Like it’s either/or.”
    “A dualism,” Erin said.
    “Which you could contrast with… what ?” Anthony left the question hanging.
    “A non - antagonistic dualism,” answered Julio. “Or at least that’s the term Plumwood used.”
    “I didn’t like that book,” Jermaine said.
    “Which book?” asked Anthony.
    “ The Giver .”
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know. It felt unoriginal. Too derivative.”
    “When you get to a certain level,” Maxwell pointed out, “ everything ’s derivative.”
    “Okay, maybe that’s true.” Anthony listened to Jermaine and wondered how much time the kid had left. When he’d visited Jermaine in the hospital, the doctors hadn’t been very optimistic. But here he was, back in class. “…I think a writer’s task,” Jermaine was explaining, “is to mask that. Not let it be obvious.”
    “So Lowry didn’t do that for you?” Just because the kid was dying didn’t mean Anthony wasn’t going to challenge him.
    “Honestly? No.”
    “That’s fine. But let’s get back to Megan for a moment. What is it about the use of technology in dystopian novels that interests you?”
    “Well, I mean, the whole idea that technology was going to be something that made our lives easier , right? And then, here it is in all these novels being used to make people’s lives worse .”
    “Can anyone think of any ways technology has made our lives easier today?”
    “We’ve pretty much ended green house gas emissions,” said Julio.
    “No one needs eye glasses any more,” Erin said.
    “We can detect fetal abnormalities with genetic markers almost from day one,” said Felice.
    “Yeah, all that’s true,” said Jermaine, “but…”
    “But what?” Anthony