/lit/ - Literature

I just read Limbo by Bernard Wolfe. It was written in 1951 and I'd rate it as better than the canonical great dystopian novels of the 20th century like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. It's about brain surgeon who deserted during WW3 in 1972 and has been living on an uncharted island for the last eighteen years as a lobotomist to the natives. He returns to what remains of the USA to find that people have started voluntarily amputating their limbs and replacing them with high tech prosthetics to prove their commitment to pacifism but the short supply of the metal needed to make the prosthetic limbs is leading to another war. It's a black comedy about a man confronting his own neuroses in a world that has deliberately crippled itself out of fear.

I just read Limbo by Bernard Wolfe. It was written in 1951 and I'd rate it as better than the canonical great dystopian novels of the 20th century like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. It's about brain surgeon who deserted during WW3 in 1972 and has been living on an uncharted island for the last eighteen years as a lobotomist to the natives. He returns to what remains of the USA to find that people have started voluntarily amputating their limbs and replacing them with high tech prosthetics to prove their commitment to pacifism but the short supply of the metal needed to make the prosthetic limbs is leading to another war. It's a black comedy about a man confronting his own neuroses in a world that has deliberately crippled itself out of fear.