Long Afternoon Of Earth

This is one of those books to force the mind away from the everyday, the mundane, the what's-happening-today-in-Bongo Bongoland-and-what-are-we-doing-about-it that has our minds squeezed so tight we can't think further than the next daily broadcast of the world news and the next spoon-fed opinion from our favorite demigogue. The planet earth has a future that might, or mightn't include a fragile, two-legged creature who thinks he owns it all. In this book it includes him, but he doesn't own it.

The Long Afternoon of Earth is a lesson in perspective, in humility, in one of the many possible futures of mankind when all the wars have been fought and forgotten, when all the nations and political parties have had their sparks of glory and died. It's a world of no heroes, no cowards, no real signifance except the same one mankind faced in his deepest history: survival. There's a touch of wistfulness here, a touch of melancholy. But it's a good lever to pry your mind away from the mess your dog made on the livingroom floor, the mess your favorite politician made on the floor of your big ideas, the mess your nation made on the face of a planet that goes on and on, where human affairs and the centuries are an insignificant spark.