Short Story 43: Beautyland

Gwern Branwen · 02 Aug 2012, 22:04 · from 2012-August.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 18:04:52 -0400
Subject: (urth) Short Story 43: Beautyland
In-Reply-To: <1343944512.26893.YahooMailClassic at web160704.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
References: <1343944512.26893.YahooMailClassic at web160704.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <CAMwO0gwW5o9CyM36Awu+szZ7yrRZihNBJWYaFeH4uxyM0A-a4A at mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 5:55 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Is it from a nuclear fallout or just bad business practices?

I read this long ago, but nuclear fallout never occurred to me. It doesn't
fit in a story about ecology & money, a sudden nuclear war wouldn't be a
persistent hazard over the entire country and wipe out *all* native
wildlife, and the fallout that could persist over many years would both be
fairly weak and wearing filters would not do much to help - certainly you
wouldn't start immediately choking on the air. All of it fits better a
general motif of smog and ozone and whatnot.

(At the time I read it, I wondered how attractive the animals or parcel of
land could possibly be, if the rest of the country was *that* bad off.)

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net
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