h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Patient 5261 - A86668898
Author: minorvogonpoet - U3099090

A dystopian vision.

This is good.

It does what dystopian fiction does best - take a personal fear that is shared by many people, exaggerate it into a reductio ad absurdam, and play it out. We learn something on the way.

I like the little touches - the antiquated buildings, for example - that reflect the overall theme.

I'm worried about the flashback that starts here:

>>They had met in odd circumstances<<

I think it detracts, but I think I know what you're trying to accomplish: Put these people in perspective.

Here's my suggestion: Lengthen the section, but take it away - far away - from internal reminiscence.

Have Sarah need to keep Steve occupied. Let her take some photos out of her bag. Let the two of them talk about the photos together until the doctor shows up.

By the way, I love the last line. Now *that's* showing, not telling.

On the subject matter:

This doesn't resonate over on this side of the Atlantic, because our health care system doesn't do enough for younger Americans.

When I had the bad sense to develop problems associated with old age (cataracts and really bad hearing), it cost me a bundle. A sweet young thing at the doctor's office opined that 'Medicare will help you with that.' Then got embarassed when I told her I wasn't old enough yet.

I'm really grateful to Lyndon Johnson. His programmes kept my elders in pills and tests and procedures. Since they make money on it, the doctors give them the best.

I'd like to see us do that for poor mothers and their kids.

Thanks, Dmitri.

I had a feeling my flashback didn't work, but didn't want to take it out altogether, because I wanted to develop the characters a bit further. I'll have a go at doing what you suggest.

I also suspected that this story doesn't cross the Atlantic.

Great story, wonderfully told. I somehow knew where it was leading to, but that's because it reminded me of a film I watched a couple of times or more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_%28film%29

If you like scifi, go and watch it.

Good film, Bel. (Elektra noticed that, too.) I love all the cats in Washington.

Thanks, Bel.

I've seen Logan's Run, but I wanted to describe a society that was a bit more plausible.

I'm not sure if understand Dmitri's comment about cats.
Am I being dim?

Elektra said I shouldn't have said that.

As I recall, in the film 'Logan's Run', the ruins of Washington, DC, were overrun by cats.

Elektra fussed at me for mentioning this to Bel...

Oh, it reminds me of all those cats in Turkey.

>>I wanted to describe a society that was a bit more plausible. <<

Well, the danger of over population in the film seemed plausible enough at the time (it's been a while). You do not mention it, but I guess your reason is that older people get weak and ill and have to be eliminated on those grounds?

This is why I fulminate against eugenics - even though people think it's a dead issue.

My thinking was that, in a society where resources are stretched, those who are unable to work, due to age or ill-health, are disposable.

Well, weak + ill = unable to work, no?

But you set an age, didn't you?

I set an arbitrary age of 60. Perhaps you can guess how old I am!

I was thinking they would have to allow some time off for sick leave among younger people, because people are bound to get flu and things like that. Do you think it should just be dependent on how long you're off sick for?

Here I am writing the rules for a society that polishes off its sick people! Deeply worrying.

Not worrying at all. We are theorising and discussing what is plausible or not in light of your story. And 60 is quite old in terms of losing work power etc. I'm nearing 50 and the ailments start now already.

Hey!

I'm 59. (Gets back to work. )

Ah yes. Patient 5261. The Peace Room. The sky the colour of wet newspaper. Ah yes. I understand. I know this. This. The This. The This that prowls. What? Ah yes. The This of every age. .

I sat in the waiting room, for the Peace Room equivalent, sometime last year, with my father, enduring the Pre-Peace Room experience, (with my mother losing it in another ward somewhere in the same hospital), and he was so brave, and I had a copy of Allen Ginsberg poems in my bag, and he asked me what I was reading, and so I showed him Sunflower Sutra and Howl, and there he was reading Kaddish for the first time, 88 yrs old, and I was trying not to cry, sitting side by side in the Pre-Peace Room, both of us trying to defy the This, the Number, the .....

You started me now, mvp. Hah! Thankyouverymuch for writing this, and how did you feel after you had written it? And should I mix with writers. hmm. Hah! Yes! and now I dance with the spook, hah!, and I have so many hospital Notes, five years worth of them, lurking in my head, all fuelled by chocolate and coffee from the hospital canteen, and ....hmm

Ah AWW, I love you, where the edge can still find word. What is the Edge? Apart from the U2 guitarist, haha. The Edge, the Edge made Word, so that it isn't the Edge any more. Unless it is.

Discuss. Or not. .

OK that's enough of me for now. heheh.Now I need a coffee, then back to the Hammock. . Ah, the Hammock.

Luvvit. Thanks luv.

This is quite pertinent to society today.

If you excuse me from relating a little incident that happened just yesterday when I collected the regular monthly prescription for my ancient but otherwise fairly healthy parents. My grandson was amazed to discover that without these pills ( blood pressure and other normal stuff ) that the elderly take - they wouldn't be alive.

He said 'It's lucky they're rich enough to buy them then' as he didn't know that they were free. So. What would happen if free medicines became part of the cutbacks? We'd soon lose a whole generation.

Thanks Lanzababy.

I'm sure these are issues which will be discussed more and more, as costs of health care go up.

Are treatments just rationed by cost, in which case the poor die?

Or are they rationed by need? In which case people start asking questions like - should the needs of a young man outweigh the needs of an old one? And what about the needs of a premature baby which is likely to be severely disabled for life?

Difficult

Thank you both for that feedback, CC and Lanzababy.

It gives you something to think about, doesn't it?

Hi cc. Thank you for the memories of your father.

I'm afraid I've been depressing everybody, including myself.

There is a high incidence of mental problems among writers. So perhaps we're not the best folks to mix with.

Nonsense.

Do you know what I do, at least twice a day? Without being aware of it?

Some horrible thought comes to me - a flash vision of catastrophe. Elektra's late? She got run over by a maintenance golf cart in the parking lot. That twinge in my back? It's the sign of terminal metempsychosis, and I'm going to turn into a giant bug.

I let it run its course. Sometimes it comes out all right, sometimes it doesn't. At some point, I wake with a start, and realise it's not true.

Writing it out does the same thing - only better. Because then you can 'interrogate' the sucker.

And see? It turns out other people have the same thoughts.

What did Pope say?

'True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.'