The Riverworld series is a classic example of the setup being better and more thought-out than the plot. It was a road story that didn’t know what to do when it got there.
Do SF writers put stupid details in their books just to annoy nerds? In one scene he had people playing pool on a sailboat, that outraged my teenage self.
I got as far as The Dark Design, which one was that? I think I bought the one after that but didn’t get far before deciding to give up. Like @gellfex says, great set-up, poor plot; I really didn’t feel inspired to finish the series.
If nearly all existing souls are incarnate now, presumably the same was true at any earlier time, which would mean that when a new baby is born, it would get an existing soul if one is available and a new one otherwise. So there would be some souls that had reincarnated hundreds of times, while most of them would be new, on their first or second life, due to the population explosion during the last century.
What if every human ever born came back to life today?
Well, I’d break out the short list of those that I’d immediately snuff out; we don’t want certain problems happening all over again, you know.
That depends… are they zombies? Skeletons? Sentient piles of ash? Because if they are normal resurrected humans I’d say “fucking awesome!”.
We could start taking bets on how long it would take for Jesus to say “fuck it” to the whole “turning the other cheek” thing and start going Rambo on a motherfucker.
The main problem with this is that there is no “today” for every human to live in, no simultaneous instant of “now”. The people who appeared to have died today live in yesterday, which is an actual physical location which exists one day away in relativistic distance. All times exist as a network and the notion of moving through them in a linear fashion is an artefact of some specific kinds of consciousness.
Perhaps not before being institutionalized due to having messianic delusions.
Pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to get past how the current chucklefuck is breaking the Emoluments clause before commenting on any of the amendments.
108 billion humans since 50k BC??? I dont think this is true. What is his source? I have always understood that more humans are alive today than have died.
This appears to have been the data used
I’ve heard that number thrown about as well, but I’ve never found anything “factual” to back it up.
If the JWs are right, the earth is going to be pretty crowded.
That bastard Phil (and his blinkin’ widow, Jo) would have no more excuses for not paying back that $50 he’s owed me since '89! Ya got that Phil? No more excuses
That was my encounter with it. Thought the first one was great, read the rest. The last two were “eh”, but I read them to close out the series.
Yep, The Dark Design is #3, and it’s where things start becoming a little silly/Farmer runs out of worldbuilding and has to rely on plot.
Ishtar spoke to her father, Anu, saying:
“Father, give me the Bull of Heaven,
so he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!”
…and wanted their stuff back?
Or perhaps more like:
That’s true, I had forgotten about that scene. But my intention was for them to meet as adults; in particular I’d want to see what Sagan thought of Tyson’s Cosmos series.
depends on how far you get back (remember the bible?) or how exclusive you define human (whiteness).
What if every human ever born came back to life today?
I’d file this under “a bad thing.” Suffocation isn’t a good way to go. Even more so when you’re being crushed by the weight of six feet of dirt.
And I’d imagine it’d be even worse for the people who came back to life inside one of those nooks they put urns with cremains into. They do not sound like comfortable places to put full-sized human bodies.
And then there’s the sailors who were given burials at sea…
Really, unless I got a sky burial or had my ashes scattered, this sounds like something I wouldn’t want for myself.
The new series isn’t specifically Tyson’s, other than that he is the face in front of the camera.
Presumably Sagan would think it was great Ann Druyan was putting more science on TV.
