the recovery’s ersatz, the political class is floundering and NASA says the icecaps are melting. We’ve got 200 years, max. But on my walk back from town in the constant rain, the gates stood open to hope. We’ll have clean fusion and new propulsion drives for the rockets in a decade or two and nascent planet homes to wander, pebbles on a black shore. I’ll see twin suns and phosphorescent birds and all the fantastic sights I dreamed of as a kid reading Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury and the others, huddled in front of the electric bar fire. And if I don’t make it, the nippers will, before the polar bear cubs are heard mewling on the high street. Books are all escapes. No wonder my visions of hope follow the same wooden horse tunnels, barbed wire squeeze-throughs and stop-or-I-fire bolts for the treeline.
