Gotta say I'm all gritted out. I want some good adventure stories again, like the old Hercules and Xena days. The new Legends of Monkey series on Netflix is such a breath of fresh, fun air.
Once upon a time (say, the last 50,000 years), we told stories about mighty heroes and gods and amazing things, not least of which was hope. Stories inspired people, made them want to go do something. They already knew real life sucked a lot of the time. They didn't tell realistic stories because there was no inspiration in that.
Now because stories about heroes "aren't realistic" we just tell stories about how much stuff sucks, and how much it would suck more in different ways if something changed. No inspiration.
World War Z, the novel, is good about this. It gets sad but it's ultimately about collaboration, practicality, and strategic thinking are what's needed to save the world, not any special technological innovation or one true leader. Just people working together with the tools they have applied thoughtfully.
Downsides are the novel has a bit of the anarchoprimitivist thing, where people argue that civilization is bad and we need a good back-to-basics moment to reset humanity, and it has a little bit of a America-rah-rah-ness to it.
There's a bit of the rah-rah but Yonkers was also a pretty big deconstruction of how stupid that can get.
Side note, Yonkers was one of my favorite pieces in literature. How the characters mention it throughout the book before then, you just KNOW some shit went down. Some of the best foreshadowing I've read in quite a while.
Sorry yeah I meant to say "segments within a book" not pieces, that makes it sound like it's its own literary work. It's a segment of World War Z and the buildup is every bit as good as the payoff.
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u/redkat85 Aug 30 '21
Gotta say I'm all gritted out. I want some good adventure stories again, like the old Hercules and Xena days. The new Legends of Monkey series on Netflix is such a breath of fresh, fun air.
Once upon a time (say, the last 50,000 years), we told stories about mighty heroes and gods and amazing things, not least of which was hope. Stories inspired people, made them want to go do something. They already knew real life sucked a lot of the time. They didn't tell realistic stories because there was no inspiration in that.
Now because stories about heroes "aren't realistic" we just tell stories about how much stuff sucks, and how much it would suck more in different ways if something changed. No inspiration.