all because I want a book

I learned a couple of weeks ago, because it took me that long to realize that something was wrong, that the film version of The Road will not come out for another year. To ordinary people, this means that another depressing movie is just coming out a year later. To the weirdos who live and breathe post-apocalyptic stories, it's a depressing fact.

It's not that I believe that the film will surpass the book (although, can I say, Alfonso Cuaron kicked ass on Children of Men and took a book I thought predictable and made it exciting), it's that sometimes you need a fresh fix. There's the doom and gloom that surrounds the economy and the world, but that's a different batch of depressing, that's the reality side of the house. What I need when I say I need a fresh fix is something not real, something that's separate from reality even if firmly standing on reality. What I need is a flight of fancy into a dark world that could be ours. I need a cautionary tale. I need a speculative look at our lives. I need the post-apocalyptic, the dystopias. Sometimes, it's the weight of it. You feel it in you, it makes you want to change things, it makes you want to do things, and if it's good enough, you do good things, you change things. The land of dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories is a land of hope and inspiration because you have a chance, you can effect change on your world, you can see the warning and the hope the creator has for you, and you can use it. It's sort of like with Duchamp's Fountain, he's daring you to step up to the plate, he's daring you to challenge him, he's daring you to be something more, he's daring you to think about the mundane. Dystopian literature does that. It dares you to be better, hope more, and smile often. It's not doom and gloom, it's the genre of hope.

And now, I wait until 2009, probably late 2009.

Otherwise, a perfect book.