1. The cliff-dwelling residents of Neo are somewhat like the Eloi in HG Wells Time Machine. All the Neons' physical needs are provided for: When the "flesh pool" that recycles their corpses into fresh meat gets low, a siren goes off, and thousands of rodent-like "kikks" come running from the surrounding fields and jump into the pool, replenishing the meat supply. Instead of Morlocks, the Neons have technologically adept ancestors (us)--who somehow made machines that never run down--to thank for their comfort.

2. I read recently that California has what entomologists are describing as a "super-colony" of ants that stretches from San Francisco to San Diego. Gene samples from either end of the colony show that the ants, who migrated from elsewhere (South America?) fairly recently, are all essentially brothers and sisters. They represent a tremendous threat to indigenous species, and are killing them off right and left. The colony is held up as an example of the kind of "super-organisms" (the Kudzu vine is another) that are emerging during the current Great Extinction Period issued in by us humans.

I immediately thought of Tedron and Krake, the ubiquitous, world-controlling trees in Doomtime. I wonder if Piserchia's vision of the future, in which humanity survives by virtue of its own ancient technology while rival super-organisms dominate a drastically reduced ecosystem, may not be dead on the money. Scary.

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- tom moody 3-11-2002 12:32 am