Re: Oldest SF not necessarily most dated?

Gene wrote:
> David Cowie <me@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in news:68rpcsF2u97b6U1
> @[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> On Mon, 12 May 2008 13:48:47 -0700, ilya2 wrote:
>>
>>> And if you think that streches the belief, cocaine is not 
> only legal,
>>> but is allowed on board.
>> In one of the other books in the series, Titan ex****ts 
> cocaine to Earth. 
> 
> A little over the top, to be sure. But I sometimes feel I've 
> fallen into an unlikely sfnal future, starting with the 80's. 
> President Ronald Reagan? Who's his secretary of state-Jerry 
> Lewis? Austrian bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor 
> of California-how likely is that, even for California? And the 
> whole thing where Islamism replaces Communism as the big 
> bugaboo is just weird.

I guess I'm lucky in that last one.

Circa 1990, at least one investment newsletter I subscribed to predicted 
that the West vs. Islam would be the new Cold War of the 21st century. 
(And they suggested investing accordingly.)

So SF writers may not have predicted this.  But some of the world's 
savviest long-term investors (Warren Buffett class) did.  Every skilled 
long-term investor has to be a futurist of sorts.

Perhaps that's a weakness of SF in general:  It tends to ignore 
economics.  It was inevitable that the West's insatiable thirst for oil 
was going to make the Middle East Muslims very very wealthy--and with 
wealth comes power.  At the same time that money to pay for all that oil 
was being sucked out of America, making us poorer--and with that growing 
impoverishment comes increasing debt service.  Sooner or later, the 
imbalance of power would result in Islamism coming out of the woodwork 
and feeling its oats.  Which has now happened.

If Zoroastrians had control of 25% of the world's proven oil reserves 
instead of Muslims, then right now we would be fighting a War on 
Zoroastrianism.


-- 
Steven L.
Email:  sdlitvin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 the NOSPAM before replying to me.