[DOWNLOAD] "Critical Mass" by Gunnar C. Garisson # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Critical Mass
- Author : Gunnar C. Garisson
- Release Date : January 24, 2011
- Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 371 KB
Description
There has been much speculation and controversy as to what point it is that it will become irreversible, but the hard fact is that humans will overpopulate the planet to the point of sociological and economic critical mass. Somewhere around 2048, less than 40 years from now, mankind will reach a global population of nearly 11.5 billion people before things get so bad that the growth is predicted by sociologists to actually flat-line; the mortality rate finally equaling the birth rate.
The ensuing depression will give birth to the rampant practice of every desperate act man is capable of. While some innovative solutions had been found to address the environmental holocaust that is staring us in the face, the sociological condition is already nearly irreparable. With the middle class nearing extinction, the rich will need to find new ways to protect themselves from the poor, and a new kind of segregation will take place in most of the major cities of the world.
Out of the ashes of the war torn inner-city jungles, cities are already being constructed right over the top of themselves. Access to large buildings is being sealed from below, and a matrix of new freeways and viaducts are connecting them together at higher and higher levels. Soon, a person will actually be able to live, work, shop, and drive to and from, without ever coming down to ground level. What started as an attempt to ease unbearable levels of traffic congestion will evolve without resistance into a convenient way to leave the unfortunate ones behind. Denial in every form will push the poor further and further out of society. What started as being barred from employment at anything that paid livable wages, and being unable to open a bank account will quickly turn into class-based discrimination toward patrons upon entering a store to spend what little money they do have, and eventually, logistical denial of access to their world at all. The poor will be reduced to a barter system and a state of economic collapse, where the strong survive, and the weak get trampled.
The story follows a small, tightly knit clan of friends in the vast, almost anarchic underground of a metropolis that evolved right over what used to be Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland. This highly descriptive, character driven epic begins in the year 2057 and spans over 93 light years and 7 centuries, detailing the plight of a nomadic remnant human race, leaving a now uninhabitable Earth and colliding with an alien race in the binary system of the "Demon Sun," Algol. The future of their world is unravelling, and it will fall on one who has seen the past to keep them from repeating it as a 2000 year old Viking prophecy unfolds.