Introduction

Save the Pearls Part One: Revealing Eden by Victoria Foyt takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting where humanity has been forced underground by intense solar radiation, and where the majority of the surviving population possesses dark skin. With the dark-skinned majority comes a new social ranking based on race with those of African-American1 descent (called Coals) at the top with Latinos (Tiger’s Eyes), Asians (Ambers), Caucasians (Pearls), and Albinos (Cottons) following in their respective rankings. It’s worth noting that Cottons are stated to be extinct near the start of the book.2

In short, reverse racism meets global warming.

To be quite honest, the only reason I picked this book up was because of the race-related drama surrounding this book and its promotion. The YouTube video and Foyt’s attitude towards those who criticized her portrayal of race are what ultimately cemented my resolve to shred the horribly flawed logic within this story. To make matters even more outrageous, Revealing Eden has garnered critical acclaim. And we’re not talking small-time local critical acclaim, but nationwide, from accredited critics, acclaim.

There are many issues with this book beyond just the treatment of race. These issues can be reduced to two main classes: failure to research, and failure to think things through. These issues are most obviously manifested in the forms of unrealistic portrayals of the effects of solar radiation, a failure to consider the implications of living underground, and the contradiction within the society’s very structure concerning repopulating humanity. These major issues in conjunction with one another take the portrayal of race in this book from “justified in-story” to “Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea?!”3

Basically, I’m willing to buy that Foyt did not intend to write a racist piece of work. What I will not buy is that the work itself is not racist. Because it is. Very.

Let’s start with the issue of albinos…

Curse of the Cottons

If Foyt had really wanted to deal with the issue of dark-skinned people oppressing light-skinned people, she need only have looked to Africa and the treatment of albinos there. Though I suppose dealing with that issue would have broken the Racism is Bad Aesop seeing as how albinos are not a separate race by any means.

Albinism is present across a broad range of species including plants, insects, amphibians, fish, crustaceans, reptiles, birds, and, of course, mammals. Parents that display no albinic traits can (and do seeing as how “true” albinism is a recessive trait, like blue eyes) produce albino offspring, like this African woman with her child. In addition, albinism is not an all-or-nothing thing. There are several different forms of albinism, and some forms are localized to a very small area (like the eyes in Waardenburg syndrome); people with localized or less severe forms of albinism are sometimes called albinoid, to distinguish them from “true” albinos.

In short, unless all carriers of all forms of albinism were killed or sterilized during the disastrous climate change, there is no reasonable way that albinos, or “Cottons”, to use the in-book racist term, would be extinct as “mating” is still left up to personal choice, compared to the results of a mandatory human breeding program which would breed out all undesirable traits, including albinism, while retaining the most useful ones.

Additionally, there is a case of an albino child being discovered and lynched right in Chapter 7, which just goes to show that albinism hasn’t been eliminated from the gene pool, which means that albino children may yet be born in the future, which, at the very least, points to the misunderstanding and misuse of the term “extinct”.

But I’m not inclined to feel generous about this point. Especially since “extinction” as a term refers to an entire sub-/species rather than a particular morph, and albinos are hardly a separate race or species4, or, to use the older usage, the death of an entire family and all its branching lines. And especially since Foyt described the lynched albino as having “pinkish” eyes; this indicates that she did no research whatsoever considering that even the most basic research would reveal that human albinos have either blue or violet eyes. Never red or anything approaching red. Definitely not pinkish.

Yeah.

In any case, the albino issue is just the tip of the iceberg, though it does highlight a lot of the issues within this book. Such as the basic premise of the society…

Some Society

The society. More than any other aspect of the book, this one has received the most heat and the most scrutiny, for racial reasons. While the racial aspects are a major issue, there are more serious underlying issues to this society that magnify the inherent racism to the point of being ridiculous. And so I shall start with those issues, approaching from a world-building perspective, rather than a racial one.

The most egregious of the underlying issues is that of the lack of thought put into living underground and how it would affect basic things like how people get the materials to make and maintain all the technology they have. The next-most egregious issue is the contradiction between the society’s stated goal (repopulate the planet) and actions. From these two issues, a lot of the more visible issues arise, such as girls being cut off from resources if unmated by the age of eighteen.

Society’s Super-Broken Biology

Going back to the albinos, it is stated in-book that all persons carrying the “albino gene” were subjected to mandatory sterilization. THIS MAKES NO SENSE WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF REPOPULATING THE PLANET. One of the things about albinism is that, although it does make the person more susceptible to cancers and other nasties due to direct sun exposure (which, considering everyone now lives underground is no longer an issue, but more on that later), albinos are no less intelligent or physically able than non-albino persons. Basically, by sterilizing all persons carrying the “albino gene”, you are not only eliminating the undesirable albino traits they’re carrying, but also all the desirable non-albino traits they could pass on, like intelligence, or resistance to disease, or even a higher fertility rate. Coupled with the fact that a mating between an albino carrier and a non-carrier would always result in non-albino offspring (barring freak mutations) and that the facilities apparently exist to efficiently test whether a person is a carrier of a particular genetic trait, and the sterilization of all albino gene carriers is simply stupid. Recessive genes are very easy to breed out of a population.

Basically, the focus of the society within the book is not so much the repopulation of the human species, as it is eugenics. And poorly-conducted eugenics at that considering their only solution was the sterilization of all carriers, compared to careful breeding out of the undesirable trait (which wasn’t all that undesirable considering everyone now lives underground). One only needs to look at dog breeding as a case of careful breeding eliminating undesirable genetic traits, such as hip displasia, while retaining and refining the desirable traits, such as build and coat color/texture/patterns. In short, the society sacrificed countless valuable genes in the name of eliminating a single non-life-threatening, non-crippling gene which was not really a singular gene to begin with seeing as how there are multiple types and causes of albinism. And limiting genetic diversity, especially within an already genetically-limited population, is a great way to invite extinction.

There is a lot more I could say on this point, but that would involve delving into the intricacies of population genetics, which I’m sure most of you would find confusing as hell, if not incredibly boring. The most important point is that genetic diversity within a population is Very Good, and limiting that genetic diversity in any way is generally a VERY Bad Idea. Also that genes have multiple forms (called alleles), and populations naturally regulate the frequency of the various alleles to maintain a stable and beneficial equilibrium for the population as a whole.

Now, although the albino issue itself is minor within the context of the book,5 it clearly highlights two core issues that plague this piece, namely, the complete lack of research, period, and the contradiction between the stated goal of the society (repopulate humanity) and the actuality (sterilization of large portions of the severely reduced population in order to remove one superficially undesirable trait).

The treatment of girls in the book also highlights these two issues, and those of you who watched the video will have noticed the emphasis on girls mating before the age of eighteen. In-story, the reasoning for this is that girls who are not mated by that age are not worth the resources required to keep them alive, presumably because they will not bear children.

Last I checked, human females reach sexual maturity around the age of eighteen, and bearing children before that age is extremely risky to both child and mother. Also, last I checked, human females typically remained fertile for roughly two decades after achieving sexual maturity.

As far as I know, this is common knowledge.

On top of that, in-book it is stated that men have until the age of twenty-four to mate before they are cut off. THIS MAKES NO BIOLOGICAL REPRODUCTIVE SENSE.

In the world of biological reproduction, the rate of reproduction (i.e. how quickly and how many offspring are produced) is regulated by the female side of the sexes. Female members of any species are more valuable than male members reproductive-wise, and part of this has to do with how much more expensive it is to produce eggs versus sperm, much less carry a child to term and give birth to it.

To illustrate, in a scenario of a population of five, if all five are of the same sex, the reproduction rate is zero. If one of the five is female, and assuming that only one offspring can be produced at a time per year, the rate would be 1/yr. Raise the number of females to two, and you have a rate of 2/yr. Raise the number of females up to three, and you have a rate of 3/yr due to the simple fact that one male can mate with multiple females. And so, logically, the configuration with the highest rate of reproduction would be one male, four females.

The society in Revealing Eden culls young, just-reached-sexual-maturity females in favor of retaining males. This is reproductively analogous to junking a car in in order to keep a bicycle.

And there’s more in the world of reproduction fail hijinks. Ohyes.

You would think that, in a society where repopulation is one of the stated goals, there would be a lot of encouragement towards having as many children as possible.

Ha. Ha ha ha.

Not in the society of Revealing Eden. I’ll let the writing speak for itself:

Eden loved old tales about siblings. But one child was the allowable quota, if the mated couple produced enough uni-credits. —Chapter 3

Now, let me tell you all something, something you probably already know. People die. In order to maintain a population, the same number of babies has to be born as people who died. This translates to an average of at least two children per family, minimum. Now remember, people die, and in the world of Revealing Eden, they die young. What this means is that, in order to maintain the population, families are going to need to have, on average, more than three children. If we want to increase the population, however, families would have to be much, much larger, with possibly six children being the norm.

I can only conclude that the society’s ultimate goal is the extinction of the human species.

And that I need a break.

NEXT TIME ON REVEALING EDEN: A REVIEW OF RACE AND LOGIC

We’ll examine the ignored implications of living underground, some more science fails, the portrayal of race, and all sorts of unfortunate implications, not necessarily in that order.

With plenty of guest appearances from our favorite example, the albinos!

Image Sources

http://www.wonders-world.com/2010/07/15-amazing-albino-animals.html
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/06/weird-wild-pictures-albino-animals-revealed/
http://www.fishingfury.com/20080201/rare-albino-fish/

Footnotes

1 There is a reason I say “African-American” specifically rather than “African descent”. Namely to do with all the descriptions of Coals corresponding to the stereotypical African American appearance rather than representing the variety in body types present between the different ethnic groups of Africa.

2 Which, if you know anything about genetics, is but one of the many science fails in this book. But more on that later.

3 Foyt, considering she self-published.

4 More on this later.

5 It exists solely to show us that the love interest is not as heartless as he seems, the unfortunate implications of which I will address later.

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Comment

  1. Taku on 5 September 2012, 16:34 said:

    a post-apocalyptic setting where humanity has been forced underground by intense solar radiation, and where the majority of the surviving population possesses dark skin.

    First problem: Most species that live entirely underground eventually develop pale skin, not darker skin, because pigmentation is a waste of resources. Natural selection would favour individuals who do not waste energy on melanin production.

    lbino as having “pinkish” eyes; this indicates that she did no research whatsoever considering that even the most basic research would reveal that human albinos have either blue or violet eyes. Never red or anything approaching red. Definitely not pinkish.

    But but but, albino mice!

    it is stated in-book that all persons carrying the “albino gene” were subjected to mandatory sterilization.

    ALL humans carry the “albino gene”. I think the author might have meant ‘allele’, which is the particular expression of a gene. But all humans have all human genes, regardless of phenotype.

  2. swenson on 5 September 2012, 17:14 said:

    Wow. I know the racism part is stupid and dumb, but the biological and genetic fails there are pretty headdeskworthy as well. You’re completely right, they’re all idiots who are going to die in a couple of generations because they’re a completely unsustainable society.

    I guess the big question is how overcrowded is this population? In the real world, societies that have limited childbirth (aka modern China) already have an overpopulation problem; the limiting of childbirth is therefore for the express purpose of lowering the population (because older people will die and only half will be replaced, if each couple has a single child). In an after-the-end society, you’d think they’d want to increase the population, particularly if certain groups are sterilized, have difficulty finding mates, or simply have trouble getting pregnant before the cutoff date. So unless they are massively overpopulated, this makes no sense at all. The killing of people who don’t produce children implies that the production of children is an important and valuable thing, but they don’t actually want lots of children, so… GAH! head asplode

    I’m reminded of the quarians of Mass Effect, actually. They, too, are a group with limited resources, of which space is perhaps the most limited (they live on spaceships). Therefore, childbirth is strictly regulated. At the time of Mass Effect 1, children are restricted to one per family. However, it’s clearly stated that when the population begins to decline, the restriction is lifted and people are encouraged to have more children. The end result is that the population remains more or less constant. But you can’t just restrict it to one child forever! That’s just stupid!

  3. Kyllorac on 5 September 2012, 17:23 said:

    @Taku

    First problem

    Which I plan to address later in the section on racism.

    But but but, albino mice!

    I hope that was a joke.

    ALL humans carry the “albino gene”.

    Actually, there is no such thing as an “albino gene”, period. Multiple alleles that affect multiple genes, yes. Singular gene, no.

    But all humans have all human genes, regardless of phenotype.

    This statement is also mistaken. Retroviruses and their ability to insert themselves into the host genome aside, not all people have the same number of genes. The most normal example is that female humans have around 1,200 more genes than male humans. This is without taking into account various genetic disorders and unknowns.

    @swenson

    It is explicitly stated in the book that one of the goals of the society is to repopulate the planet. The head asplosion of not only reading about it but re-articulate it it why I had to take a break. @_x

  4. Anon on 5 September 2012, 18:59 said:

    Sorry for the enormous post. If you want, I can create a thread on the forum.

    “Basically, by sterilizing all persons carrying the “albino gene”, you are not only eliminating the undesirable albino traits they’re carrying, but also all the desirable non-albino traits they could pass on, like intelligence, or resistance to disease, or even a higher fertility rate.”

    Uh, so what? It’s not like albinos are more intelligent or resistant to disease or more fertile than normal people. That is to say that there’s nothing that you could get out of albinos reproducing that couldn’t be gotten out of normal people reproducing, except that the albinos will, y’know, be more likely to have albino children which aren’t desired for whatever reason. Unless there’s a huge program of eugenics that deliberately selects for intelligence and fertility, and apparently there isn’t because people can pick their partners, that’s a poor reason to keep groups of people around that aren’t statistically more likely to have useful genes. The fact is that anyone could carry those genes, and without actually testing for intelligence and fertility, how would you know which people should be reproducing more?

    “Coupled with the fact that a mating between an albino carrier and a non-carrier would always result in non-albino offspring (barring freak mutations) and that the facilities apparently exist to efficiently test whether a person is a carrier of a particular genetic trait, and the sterilization of all albino gene carriers is simply stupid. Recessive genes are very easy to breed out of a population.”

    No, they’re not. A recessive gene is just as likely to be passed down as a dominant gene; it’s no “easier” or “harder” to be bred out. This is one of the most common fallacies about genetics. If an albino carrier and a non-carrier have children, they’ll be another carrier half the time and a non-carrier the other half of the time. In other words, the number of carriers in the population doesn’t go down as long as they reproduce at the same rate (the Hardy-Weinberg principle). In theory, that kind of achieves the objective, because you could pair people so that nobody ended up with two albino genes and people could only end up with one, so nobody would ever be an albino, but that would require an indefinite continuation of the eugenics program to prevent two carriers from ever having children together.

    “And limiting genetic diversity, especially within an already genetically-limited population, is a great way to invite extinction.”

    1 in 70 people are albino. In terms of maintaining genetic diversity, removing that many people would make no difference whatsoever, unless the bottleneck is extremely small. Assuming about a million people survived the apocalypse, it would make absolutely no difference to sterilise 1 in 70 of them. Human communities have survived with far lower numbers of people, and far more homogenuous (since apparently we have people from all over the world among the survivors, the genetic diversity is probably extremely good anyway).

    “The most important point is that genetic diversity within a population is Very Good, and limiting that genetic diversity in any way is generally a VERY Bad Idea.”

    No. I mean, it’s not a great idea or anything, but it’s estimated that at times in the Stone Age, the number of all humans alive might have dropped as low as 2,000, all of whom were Africans. Unless you are talking about reducing the number of humans to below 10,000, all of the same race, genetic diversity is not a big issue. You haven’t mentioned what the population of the Earth is in this book, so I assume she didn’t mention it, but I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s a reasonably large number.

    “Last I checked, human females reach sexual maturity around the age of eighteen, and bearing children before that age is extremely risky to both child and mother.”

    You might want to check again, because in western societies menarche happens at 12 or 13. The concept of sexual maturity beginning at 18 is pretty damn recent, and no, not everyone is an American, either (most European countries put the age of consent at 16). Biology does not start at 18 because that’s when Congress says it does. And even in America you still get teen mothers.

    “Also, last I checked, human females typically remained fertile for roughly two decades after achieving sexual maturity.”

    Menopause at 38? Seriously? You must be joking. Quite aside from the fact that sexual maturity occurs earlier than 18…

    “The society in Revealing Eden culls young, just-reached-sexual-maturity females in favor of retaining males. This is reproductively analogous to junking a car in in order to keep a bicycle.”

    It makes sense in some ways. If it’s far more important for women to reproduce, the pressure on them to reproduce should be greater. It’s also much harder to prove paternity than maternity, so it’s a good safeguard against erroneously culling men who did reproduce but forgot to bring witnesses.

    “But one child was the allowable quota”

    This is admittedly incredibly stupid.

  5. Tim on 5 September 2012, 19:16 said:

    albinos are no less intelligent or physically able than non-albino persons.

    Actually, they do tend to have problems with visual acuity ranging up to outright blindness. It’s part of the reason the traditional Creepy Albino Gunman is so ridiculous.

    This is not in itself a decent reason for what the book claims, though, unless they sterilise people for other genetic factors like mental illness. And if they do that right up to “decreased visual acuity” that’s going to mean a whole lot of non-breeders kicking around using resources without doing Important Mating, and if you argue they can do other work then oshit, suddenly there’s a reason to have them around after all!

  6. Pryotra on 5 September 2012, 20:12 said:

    This woman didn’t bother to do any research did she? I spent an hour on it when I was considering using an albino character, and I was aware that human albinos don’t have red eyes or any problems other than bad eyesight.

    You’re a brave, brave person, Kyllorac. I saw this book on amazon and I was a little worried to review it.

    It’s part of the reason the traditional Creepy Albino Gunman is so ridiculous.

    Well, it is Dan Brown. It’s not like he ever researches anything. It’s not the stupidest thing that he’s gotten wrong.

  7. Kyllorac on 5 September 2012, 21:05 said:

    It’s not like albinos are more intelligent or resistant to disease or more fertile than normal people.

    But they’re no less so than normal people, visual problems aside. It’s a really stupid trade-off to sacrifice all the other desirable traits a person has just because they happened to be albino, and there’s nothing mentioned about sterilizing, lynching, or demonizing people with less-than-perfect sight.

    That reminds me, I forgot to tackle how apparently children are taught to hate albinos as part of the standard school curriculum.

    In other words, the number of carriers in the population doesn’t go down as long as they reproduce at the same rate (the Hardy-Weinberg principle).

    The Hardy-Weinberg principle doesn’t apply to cases of directional selection, much less artificial selection. Both are implied to either have occurred or be occurring.

    With that said, my main issue was that the whole sterilization business was stupid.

    it’s estimated that at times in the Stone Age, the number of all humans alive might have dropped as low as 2,000, all of whom were Africans

    I’m aware of that theory, and also that it applies to a precursor to modern Homo sapiens, namely Homo ergaster.

    That said, at this point in the story, humanity is in that grey area between recovery or extinction. It’s stated that Eden’s father’s work is necessary to save humanity, so I’d say that implies extinction is looming.

    (since apparently we have people from all over the world among the survivors, the genetic diversity is probably extremely good anyway)

    Except that it’s implied that people stick to mating within their class, and that there are strong negative reactions to matings between the different classes (like lynching). Not good at all for genetic diversity.

    You haven’t mentioned what the population of the Earth is in this book, so I assume she didn’t mention it, but I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s a reasonably large number.

    She didn’t mention it, but it is mentioned that there are many different languages spoken, and that everyone lives in one strictly zoned city, with monthly mandatory attendance at an event at a plaza. It implies to me that the worldwide population of the Earth was reduced to a very small number.

    You might want to check again, because in western societies menarche happens at 12 or 13.

    Menarche and maturity are not the same. While it is possible for a 12-year-old to become pregnant and carry a child to term, the odds of the pregnancy being a safe one are much lower than the pregnancy of an 18- or 20-year-old. Around the age of 18 is when all the physical structures have completed development, namely, the widening of the hips and development of the breasts, in addition to the skeleton being more completely ossified (and therefore stronger and able to bear more weight).

    Teen pregnancies are characterized by a lot of physical stress on the mother, premature births, and low-birth-weight babies. They’re nowhere near as safe or healthy for the mother or child as the pregnancy of a mature woman.

    Menopause at 38? Seriously? You must be joking.

    No. Fact that I said “roughly” aside, and that some women do in fact experience menopause at ages younger than 38, a woman’s fecundity decreases around the age of 35 and continues declining rather dramatically. A 38-year-old woman will have a much harder time becoming pregnant than a 20-year-old, not to mention the greater health risks during pregnancy for both the mother and child when the mother is over 35.

    If it’s far more important for women to reproduce, the pressure on them to reproduce should be greater.

    I considered that, but it still doesn’t work if reproduction truly is the goal. More effective would be a policy where a woman has up until the age of 18 to choose a mate, or else she gets placed in a mandatory breeding program for life.

    It’s also much harder to prove paternity than maternity, so it’s a good safeguard against erroneously culling men who did reproduce but forgot to bring witnesses.

    Except that genetic testing is available and quick, and all citizens have their genome on record. Proof of paternity is not an issue. It also doesn’t negate the fact that men are less valuable reproduction-wise than women.

  8. Tim on 5 September 2012, 21:11 said:

    Well, it is Dan Brown.

    He’s far from the only one, though. Creepy albino sniper / gunman is something of a character archetype.

  9. Pryotra on 5 September 2012, 21:16 said:

    Creepy albino sniper / gunman is something of a character archetype.

    That’s pathetic. I’m suddenly glad that I seem to avoid the books where this archetype exists. I mean, I didn’t do much research and I’m aware that albino people have bad eyesight and can’t be exposed to the sun very long.

    What gets me is that they can get away with this stereotype. Then again, they go one about Dumb Blondes and Fiery Redheads, so I guess it’s nothing new.

  10. Tim on 6 September 2012, 03:00 said:

    To illustrate, in a scenario of a population of five, if all five are of the same sex, the reproduction rate is zero. If one of the five is female, and assuming that only one offspring can be produced at a time per year, the rate would be 1/yr. Raise the number of females to two, and you have a rate of 2/yr. Raise the number of females up to three, and you have a rate of 3/yr due to the simple fact that one male can mate with multiple females. And so, logically, the configuration with the highest rate of reproduction would be one male, four females.

    Well, this is in an ideal case where population is only limited by how fast you can reproduce, which is hardly ever true and certainly wouldn’t be true for technologically sophisticated humans living underground, where useable space would be the primary limiting factor. In addition, these societies hardly ever do away with monogamous relationships, so what you end up with in the last situation is one mated woman and three spare. Monogamy dictates a 1/1 ratio, and unless men are obliged to sleep around (which in spite of stereotypes not all of them will be happy doing) women aren’t actually more valuable than men are.

    Also in a society with wanky genetech the five women might have 100% fertility if you can synthesise sperm from stem cells or fertilise eggs with eggs, and even in the 1/4 situation you’d probably just snip off one of his balls, toss it in a vat of nutrient solution and work it 24/7 while letting him go and do what he likes with the other.

    I considered that, but it still doesn’t work if reproduction truly is the goal. More effective would be a policy where a woman has up until the age of 18 to choose a mate, or else she gets placed in a mandatory breeding program for life.

    The problem with the whole “send them to Camp McRapington” idea is that when you’re considering things from a societal standpoint, what you actually care about is the number of useful people you have, not the total. A mandatory breeding program breaks down when you think though the resources that are going to be required to house (or rather imprison), feed, clothe and care for the women, as well as most like having 24-hour surveillance to stop them either killing themselves, terminating their pregnancy or doing enough damage to their undercarriage that they can’t reproduce anymore and you have to let them go.

    The bottom line is that each person working at that facility is minus one useful citizen; it’s better from society’s perspective to let them not breed and save all the resources involved; each one can still work and is therefore +1 citizen, and you have all the security staff, maintainance, administration and so on available to do something actually useful. Nevermind that, as said, the limiting factor on a population is very rarely as simple as its birthrate and maxing out birthrate artificially will just mean you smack into some other limit like food production or availability of clean water, or have a huge number of people who aren’t doing anything useful because there’s nothing useful for them to do.

  11. gervasium on 6 September 2012, 09:27 said:

    “However, there are cases in which the eyes of an albinistic person appear red or purple, depending on the amount of pigment present, due to the red of retina being visible through the iris.”

    Albino eyes can look red/pinkish, more frequently than other people’s eyes do on photographs. I don’t see a problem with the description.

  12. gervasium on 6 September 2012, 09:40 said:

    Reading this review makes it seem like you’re against the portrayal of stupid societies in books. Haven’t a lot of societies been male dominated in the past, with women being attributed lower value? And haven’t these same societies also wanted to increase the population/number of kids? It doesn’t seem at all unrealistic that another society such as that might happen, especially if it’s implied that the population decreased tremendously, access to information and research would also decrease accordingly.

  13. swenson on 6 September 2012, 10:09 said:

    Albino eyes can look red/pinkish, more frequently than other people’s eyes do on photographs. I don’t see a problem with the description.

    The issue is that in the book, they’re described as all being like that, when in reality it’s not very common among albino humans.

    It doesn’t seem at all unrealistic that another society such as that might happen, especially if it’s implied that the population decreased tremendously, access to information and research would also decrease accordingly.

    Sure, it’s true that maybe the society is just plain retarded. But I can’t think of a single historical or present-day society that is this self-destructive.

    Still doesn’t make sense, anyway… so you want to increase the population (force women to have children), but you want to limit the population (limit them to a single child). That makes very little sense.

  14. Tim on 6 September 2012, 11:20 said:

    And haven’t these same societies also wanted to increase the population/number of kids?

    No, they tend to want to grow at a rate they can actually sustain rather than raising a huge population who promptly fucking starve because they haven’t had time to develop the infrastructure needed to support those people.

  15. Danielle on 6 September 2012, 13:38 said:

    You know a book is bad when it uses biblical references improperly. Eden, according to Genesis, was (at the very least) quite a pleasant garden. The upper world has been ravaged by global warming, and the underworld is inexplicably racist. So, not Eden.

    Even if Foyt is going for the ironic angle, it’s still irritating.

    And why are they killing off/ preventing the procreation of a sizable portion of their population? I mean, if they’re going to repopulate the planet, at least try to break even between the people who die and the people who are born!

  16. Fireshark on 6 September 2012, 17:38 said:

    Eden is the girl’s name, and most likely not a reference to the world she inhabits.

  17. Danielle on 6 September 2012, 20:26 said:

    How did I miss that?

    Stupid name. I’m sure it carries no blatant forshadowing at all.

  18. Kyllorac on 6 September 2012, 21:12 said:

    Well, this is in an ideal case where population is only limited by how fast you can reproduce, which is hardly ever true and certainly wouldn’t be true for technologically sophisticated humans living underground

    It does set the upper limit for reproductive potential, however, as pregnancy is still apparently required to bring forth children in-story. Also, a 1:1 paring ratio for a monogamous society is the ideal case, where everyone is completely monogamous; monogamous societies in actuality do not display that 1:1 ratio due to extra-pair copulations. There are three main types of monogamy — social, sexual, and genetic — and they do not necessarily overlap, with a couple who are socially monogamous not being sexually monogamous, or vice versa. Additionally, one can have monogamous relationships in sequence with a variety of different partners (serial monogamy).

    Point is, you only really need one source of sperm to impregnate multiple women, whether it be a promiscuous man, or a vat of testicles. In contrast, unless external gestation is available, the potential number of offspring is limited to how many babies the number of women you have can carry to term.

    That said, it is better to have multiple sources of sperm, for the sake of genetic diversity in the next generations.

    The problem with the whole “send them to Camp McRapington” idea is that when you’re considering things from a societal standpoint, what you actually care about is the number of useful people you have, not the total.

    Dead is less useful than not-dead. Either way, you’re down one worker, but in the Camp McRapington scenario, the lost worker is contributing to the supply of workers rather than contributing absolutely nothing at all. And who says they have to be housed in comfort? Keeping them immobilized would eliminate a lot of the logistical problems you brought up.

    maxing out birthrate artificially will just mean you smack into some other limit like food production or availability of clean water, or have a huge number of people who aren’t doing anything useful because there’s nothing useful for them to do.

    In which case, you send those extra lumps up to recolonize the surface where they’ll drop like flies while accomplishing the whole rebuilding human civilization thing without straining the limited resources (and ideally contributing to the resources pool).

    However, there are cases in which the eyes of an albinistic person appear red or purple, depending on the amount of pigment present, due to the red of retina being visible through the iris.

    Citation please. Wikipedia will not be accepted. Also, red-eye from camera flash is relevant because…?

    Reading this review makes it seem like you’re against the portrayal of stupid societies in books.

    That would be because I am, with “stupid” being defined as “could not plausibly exist in an actual world setting” rather than “built upon a moral framework I disagree with”. The society portrayed in Reveal Eden is not feasible, and that it is so makes the Racism is Bad message completely fail. In fact, it makes the Racism is Bad message turn in on itself so that it becomes Racism is Natural.

    Also, arguments about limited access to information and research do not apply in this book. Both are either freely available or actively worked upon, and there’s no mention of any strict monitoring of informational access on the holographic internet everyone is wired up to 24/7.

    Eden is the girl’s name, and most likely not a reference to the world she inhabits.

    This.

    I’m sure it carries no blatant forshadowing at all.

    Of course not. It’s not like she’s doomed to be the mother of an entire new race of genetically altered animal-human hybrids.

  19. gervasium on 6 September 2012, 21:48 said:

    “Citation please. Wikipedia will not be accepted. Also, red-eye from camera flash is relevant because…?”

    Because that’s red camera flash isn’t a red light the camera invents, it’s actual reflected light that exists (provoked by the flash, but that can be seen whenever there’s a strong light reflecting through the retina). Albino irises are more transparent, and reflect the color of the retina out of the eye, the retina being also less pigmented, which is also one of the causes of their vision problems.

    And I shouldn’t bother explaining because at the moment I can’t produce any good citations and my last unused argument would be a fallacy of authority you’d all see through anyway. But hey, I’d love to see your references for the claims you made before.

    To someone who replied that the problem was that they had described (all) albinos as having reddish eyes, that is a valid argument. Not having read the book, I was under the impression that only one albino showed up in the story and that was the only one described, which I can’t be sure of.

    I didn’t address the offspring limit because it makes no sense, and there’s no arguing against that. I can’t imagine a way in which a society that wants to grow would be that stupid.

    On my other points, however, I’ll stand. Several religiously-influenced cultures have been living under a rule to multiply and spread over the earth for many years and still remained incredibly patriarchal, so I can’t see a contradiction. The argument that women deserve more power in these situations does not always follow into them actually getting it.

  20. gervasium on 6 September 2012, 21:58 said:

    Would you say this is citation enough?
    Mayo Clinic on Albinism

  21. swenson on 6 September 2012, 22:25 said:

    Seeing as that article states “very light-colored eyes may appear red in some lighting”, yes, I’m fairly certain Kyll would accept that as a citation… seeing as it says the same thing she did originally, that albino people don’t have red eyes. Eyes that temporarily and under specific circumstances appear to be a particular color aren’t typically considered to be that color. As an example, I have blue-gray eyes. However, in certain lighting, I’ve seen them have a greenish tinge. But to describe me as having green eyes would be completely incorrect. Similarly, it’s incorrect to describe an albino human as having red eyes because they ordinarily would not.

    Anyway, I don’t think Kyll was saying that society was unrealistic because it was patriarchal (unless I misinterpreted the original article?), just that the society was unrealistic because it was stupid in general. Of course patriarchy and a desire for children coexist. Children and women are, after all, an important status symbol in patriarchal societies.

    (on a side note, Kyll, I wrote an enormous rant this afternoon about just how stupid their reproductive strategy is, focusing on the point that the fewer women you have, the more children each remaining woman must have to maintain a stable population. But it ended up just devolving into gibberish as I tried to comprehend how this system could ever possibly come about. :P)

  22. Kyllorac on 6 September 2012, 22:37 said:

    Would you say this is citation enough?

    Yes, however, the source itself states that eye colors “range from very light blue to brown” and “very light-colored eyes may appear red in some lighting” (emphasis mine). In other words, the red coloration is not a permanent feature, and is only present under certain (presumably very bright) lighting conditions. For example, certain eye colors (like hazel) appear to change under different conditions, such as depending on the colors the person wears. Does that mean the eye color itself changes?

    I’d love to see your references for the claims you made before.

    Which claims do you want references for?

    The argument that women deserve more power in these situations does not always follow into them actually getting it.

    I never argued that, so I’m wondering where you got this impression from.

    I also have no issue with the society portrayed in-book being patriarchal. If anything, the in-book society is closer to being egalitarian than anything else, age disparity in the cut-off point not withstanding.

  23. gervasium on 6 September 2012, 22:41 said:

    “Albino eyes can look red/pinkish, more frequently than other people’s eyes do on photographs. I don’t see a problem with the description.”

    The preceding quote being what I originally said, and which has been disputed, and is clearly supported by the citation, though I do hope Kyll accepts said citation.

    But say I was writing from the point of view of a character who just met you, swenson, and in that particular meeting your eyes appear greenish. Couldn’t I describe you as having green eyes. Would it make any sense to write: “Character X saw swenson’s eyes, which looked green to her but were in fact blue-grey eyes under different circumstances, most of circumstances, but in this particular light seemed greener, thus confusing Character X.” No. If the character doesn’t know better, you write what the character knows.

    And frankly, the color is only and always a reflection of the ambient light. It’s not like one type of light shows the real color of the eye, and the other shows an apparent color of the eye. Your eye changes color depending on what light is reflected on it, it doesn’t matter which light is more frequently reflected. You wouldn’t say, if you were only exposed to the ambient light that make your eyes look green, that they were blue, yet the eyes would be exactly the same.

  24. Kyllorac on 6 September 2012, 23:20 said:

    Also, for the record, ALL albinos in the book are described as having pinkish eyes, including one Eden directly interacts with in dim lighting. It’s not just an isolated case, and the description holds for when the lighting conditions are not conducive to making any red visible.

    Read for yourself:

    The pearly glow of dawn barely illuminated him. He wore the bat mask, which had done the trick and wooed him back. She tentatively touched the tip of one wing.

    “Do you like it?” she asked, keeping her voice light. “It’s not nearly as nice as the portrait you painted—which I love. I’m glad I have the chance to thank you for it. You’re very talented, Logan.”

    Finally, he made a garbled response, though it sounded positive. Did he have a speech defect, perhaps the result of growing up in isolation? Was that the big secret?

    “My name is Eden,” she said softly. “You have no idea how happy I am to meet you.”

    He seemed to relax so she released her hold. She stepped back to take a better look at him, as a ray of sunlight glanced through the window. She almost laughed. No wonder she had imagined a spider monkey—he wore black clothing from head to toe. How hot he must have been in the tropical climate. For Earth’s sake, he even had on gloves. Even stranger, Eden saw whitish, kinky hair that puffed over the bat ears. She had expected biracial features, but certainly not Rebecca’s recessive coloring.

    “You can trust me,” she added.

    Logan turned and stared at her through the slits in the mask like a frightened animal peering from its hole. Despite the overhang of fabric that shadowed his eyes, Eden detected a pale color. Clearly, he also had inherited it from his mother, despite the low genetic odds. Was that what Bramford had meant? But what were the odds?

    Anxious to see the boy’s face, Eden reached for the mask. “May I take it off?”

    Since Logan didn’t react, she gently lifted it away. But she wasn’t prepared for the sight of him. How could she ever imagine pinkish eyes or the lack of any pigment in his skin?

  25. Tim on 7 September 2012, 03:13 said:

    It does set the upper limit for reproductive potential, however, as pregnancy is still apparently required to bring forth children in-story. Also, a 1:1 paring ratio for a monogamous society is the ideal case, where everyone is completely monogamous; monogamous societies in actuality do not display that 1:1 ratio due to extra-pair copulations. There are three main types of monogamy — social, sexual, and genetic — and they do not necessarily overlap, with a couple who are socially monogamous not being sexually monogamous, or vice versa. Additionally, one can have monogamous relationships in sequence with a variety of different partners (serial monogamy).

    Yes, but these stories tend to assume societies with exactly the same social attitudes towards monogamy as ours. In addition, who’s going to actually provide for all these extra children? Cranking up your birthrate seems fine and good until you realise that if you have twice as many kids you have twice the number of dependants per generation, so unless your society doubles in productivity every generation (unlikely) you’re going to have less to give them. Twice as many kids who can do half as much work because they’re puny as hell and have serious health problems caused by vitamin deficiencies and suchlike is a net benefit of zero as far as society is concerned.

    Bear in mind humanity is perfectly adept at surviving without any of these steps (ref: the whole of history) and that it takes far more effort to persuade a population to not grow. Trying to force the issue just leads to stupid population density, shitting in your own water supply and everyone dying of cholera.

    Point is, you only really need one source of sperm to impregnate multiple women, whether it be a promiscuous man, or a vat of testicles. In contrast, unless external gestation is available, the potential number of offspring is limited to how many babies the number of women you have can carry to term.

    But in practical terms it’s also limited by your ability to feed those children, care for them, deal with the by-products of their existence and find useful things for them to do once they reach adulthood.

    Dead is less useful than not-dead. Either way, you’re down one worker, but in the Camp McRapington scenario, the lost worker is contributing to the supply of workers rather than contributing absolutely nothing at all. And who says they have to be housed in comfort? Keeping them immobilized would eliminate a lot of the logistical problems you brought up.

    Um, no. The human body isn’t designed to be immobile for long periods, and the result of that would be sickly children with awful mortality rates and even more effort spent simply keeping your victims alive. Better to just provide an incentive for women who already want to have children to have more and leave the ones who don’t be. It saves all the resources you would have used building and operating the camp, so by not having the breeding program you liberate multiple citizens per inmate to do useful work. Instead you could, say, extend your living quarters to make more space for natural population growth.

    The trouble with all this is that population growth is a means to an end for a society, not an end in itself. “Repopulating” is not a sensible societal objective if you don’t actually have a specific place to repopulate, so it would come down to how much your society can sustainably grow by. In the case of Asmanykidsasyoucanistan, it’s going to last until mightly Lord Humungous of the Other Cave decides he wants your shit and you realise it doesn’t matter that you have three soldiers for every one he has because one of Lord Humungous’ well-fed, well-motivated soldiers is worth five of your sickly runts who hate the society they’re supposed to be fighting for.

    The only way it would make sense forcing people to procreate when they don’t want to would be if you had a staggeringly low female fertility rate, and even then it would make more sense to just oblige harvesting eggs. The thing about fates worse than death is they’re, well, worse than death, and a dead citizen is less useful than one who doesn’t want to have kids.

    In which case, you send those extra lumps up to recolonize the surface where they’ll drop like flies while accomplishing the whole rebuilding human civilization thing without straining the limited resources (and ideally contributing to the resources pool).

    Um…So you’re going to have a lot of extra kids and then kill most of them. This is actually a markedly worse plan than the traditional post-apocalyptic fallback strategy of wearing only spikes and leather, welding random lengths of rust to any vehicle you can find and calling yourselves The Reapers.

  26. swenson on 7 September 2012, 09:11 said:

    So everyone’s in agreement, then. Their reproductive strategy, whether you interpret it as being encouraging population growth or limiting it, is stupid, in every possible way.

  27. Kyllorac on 7 September 2012, 11:13 said:

    Their reproductive strategy, whether you interpret it as being encouraging population growth or limiting it, is stupid, in every possible way.

    Pretty much.

  28. Nate Winchester on 7 September 2012, 15:45 said:

    Oh Kyllorac, was this whole thing one long attempt to seduce me? (hey, genetics was my first love major in college) [wistful sigh]

    (heh, now I have all these memetastic thoughts about stupid pickup lines inspired by this book)

    And we’re not talking small-time local critical acclaim, but nationwide, from accredited critics, acclaim.

    And people wonder why I don’t put much stock in “professional” critics.

    The next-most egregious issue is the contradiction between the society’s stated goal (repopulate the planet) and actions. From these two issues, a lot of the more visible issues arise, such as girls being cut off from resources if unmated by the age of eighteen.

    There is a lot more I could say on this point, but that would involve delving into the intricacies of population genetics…

    I don’t see a thing wrong with that.

    You would think that, in a society where repopulation is one of the stated goals, there would be a lot of encouragement towards having as many children as possible.

    One would think Catholicism would almost be resurgent. Also: twins? What’s up with them?

    You might want to check again, because in western societies menarche happens at 12 or 13. The concept of sexual maturity beginning at 18 is pretty damn recent, and no, not everyone is an American, either (most European countries put the age of consent at 16). Biology does not start at 18 because that’s when Congress says it does. And even in America you still get teen mothers.

    Just want to point out, but some have theorized that the increasingly younger sexual maturing in America is because we’re a resource rich society (or to put it another way: our kids’ bodies can afford to grow up faster). If things are as bad as the world setting describes, we could expect sexual maturity to start occurring later.

    It makes sense in some ways. If it’s far more important for women to reproduce, the pressure on them to reproduce should be greater. It’s also much harder to prove paternity than maternity, so it’s a good safeguard against erroneously culling men who did reproduce but forgot to bring witnesses.

    Uh… technical note, but wouldn’t the woman present be considered a witness?

    I considered that, but it still doesn’t work if reproduction truly is the goal. More effective would be a policy where a woman has up until the age of 18 to choose a mate, or else she gets placed in a mandatory breeding program for life.

    Nevermind that, as said, the limiting factor on a population is very rarely as simple as its birthrate and maxing out birthrate artificially will just mean you smack into some other limit like food production or availability of clean water, or have a huge number of people who aren’t doing anything useful because there’s nothing useful for them to do.

    Uh… wouldn’t the former take care of the latter? Namely, if you’re running out of food, and you have bored people, then the obvious solution would be: get people to grow more food! As the saying goes, babies bring 1 mouth to feed, but 2 hands to work. (hence why farming families tend to be a bit large)

    Reading this review makes it seem like you’re against the portrayal of stupid societies in books. Haven’t a lot of societies been male dominated in the past…

    Wait. Stop. Clear you didn’t read the review. Go back, try again.

    Yes, but these stories tend to assume societies with exactly the same social attitudes towards monogamy as ours.

    Heck, our society doesn’t have the attitude towards monogamy some think we do. If things were that bad, seems like society would adopt a more favorable attitude to open marriages. (and/or things like females to becoming concubines, rights difference between those who have borne children vs those who haven’t, so on)

    In addition, who’s going to actually provide for all these extra children?

    Uh… the previous children? Older siblings help out with the younger all the time. And if this society is very “back to basics” (more concerned about food & shelter than technical features for example), then children don’t have to be very old at all to begin contributing to society. And that’s not even counting older people who are past reproductive years.

    Cranking up your birthrate seems fine and good until you realise that if you have twice as many kids you have twice the number of dependants per generation, so unless your society doubles in productivity every generation (unlikely) you’re going to have less to give them.

    Why unlikely? Again, 1 mouth to feed, 2 hands to work. Shouldn’t be a problem here.

    Twice as many kids who can do half as much work because they’re puny as hell and have serious health problems caused by vitamin deficiencies and suchlike is a net benefit of zero as far as society is concerned.

    Just because they don’t have the total production output of a grownup does NOT mean they have an output of 0. Again, if repopulation is a goal, then every person is a net benefit of 1 to the society (unless they are a murderer). Heck, if you look at society as a giant computer and each brain a processor, sure every new person added is more of a “power drain” on the society as a whole, but it’s also the addition of a new processor to work on problems.

    But in practical terms it’s also limited by your ability to feed those children, care for them, deal with the by-products of their existence and find useful things for them to do once they reach adulthood.

    Repeat: I think the former takes care of the latter. Again, how are you going to have a society with all the problems you’re talking about AND bored people?

  29. Tim on 7 September 2012, 16:24 said:

    Uh… the previous children?

    You’re talking a good 10-12 years before you can reasonably expect anything of the sort. That certainly doesn’t reflect maximum birth rate. Humans use a nurturing survival strategy rather than a reproductive one, meaning we invest more time and effort into each of our offspring instead of cranking out as many as we can and hoping somebody survives.

    Uh… the previous children? Older siblings help out with the younger all the time. And if this society is very “back to basics”

    Vast always on holographic internet.

    And that’s not even counting older people who are past reproductive years.

    The life expectancy in such a society would mean such people would rarely be a issue since people half a century old would be about as rare as people a century old in our society.

    Just because they don’t have the total production output of a grownup does NOT mean they have an output of 0.

    You’re talking years per child before they’re ready to do anything at all for themselves, and a good decade where they can’t reasonably be expected to do useful work. Trying to have children do hard labour before they’ve finished growing also sets them up for a life with a fucked-up skeleton.

    Again, if repopulation is a goal, then every person is a net benefit of 1 to the society (unless they are a murderer).

    Repopulation is not a sensible societal goal unless you have a specific thing you want to repopulate. No society in human history has required any external force from it’s government aimed at making more people simply to have more people.

    Repeat: I think the former takes care of the latter.

    It doesn’t. You’re trying to create the social equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.

    Again, how are you going to have a society with all the problems you’re talking about AND bored people?

    A minimal amount of research would allow you to show yourself that a country can have overpopulation and unemployment at the same time.

  30. Fell Blade on 7 September 2012, 16:45 said:

    A minimal amount of research would allow you to show yourself that a country can have overpopulation and unemployment at the same time.

    But this is a group trying to recover, not with an overpopulation problem. As far as we know they haven’t exceeded their resources.

    @Kyllorac, does the book deal with what kind of resources are available? Are the humans outgrowing their natural resources or reaching high levels of unemployment? If not, overpopulation shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

  31. Tim on 7 September 2012, 19:13 said:

    But this is a group trying to recover, not with an overpopulation problem. As far as we know they haven’t exceeded their resources.

    That’s not how overpopulation works. The population they can actually sustain is determined by how many people their current society can support, not by how many people used to live in a dead society in a place they have no real access to. If fifty people are living in the ruins of New York and there’s only food for twenty, that’s overpopulation. The fact that 8.1 million people used to live there is irrelevant.

    This is the issue here, the idea that they need to “recover” to some hypothetical larger population. If they’re in no direct danger of extinction there is no reason whatsoever to try to grow their population any faster than it would grow normally and every reason not to, especially underground where expanding habitat and utilities requires a distinctly non-trivial amount of effort.

  32. Kyllorac on 7 September 2012, 19:18 said:

    @Kyllorac, does the book deal with what kind of resources are available?

    Yes and no, and the information presented contradicts itself. I’ll be touching upon it in one of the later parts. Probably Part 2. I will say that unemployment is not mentioned as an issue.

  33. Kyllorac on 7 September 2012, 19:21 said:

    If they’re in no direct danger of extinction

    But they are. Eden’s father is the top scientist at the love interest’s research company, and it’s emphasized that his work is key to saving all remaining humanity, with undue emphasis on it saving Pearls in particular. Because the series is all about saving the Pearls above everyone else.

  34. Tim on 7 September 2012, 19:57 said:

    But they are. Eden’s father is the top scientist at the love interest’s research company, and it’s emphasized that his work is key to saving all remaining humanity, with undue emphasis on it saving Pearls in particular.

    Well, if only smart people can save the day then that means you need more smart people, ie focusing on quality over quantity in the population. You’re not going to do a lot of sciencing in a population that’s growing so fast it’s struggling to feed itself, after all.

  35. Kyllorac on 7 September 2012, 20:20 said:

    Well, if only smart people can save the day

    And yet, sciencing is apparently NOT a priority for that society, considering that a rather big deal is made of Eden’s father being allowed to even be a scientist seeing as how he’s a Pearl. Oh yeah. Eden is supposedly a scientist too, because her dad shoehorned her in, and the taxonomy stupid is just… gnaws on facsimile of book as digital copies are not very gnawable

    This book has so many levels of fail that often contradict themselves, I had to leave out a lot of details for the sake of keeping this a readable length, even after deciding to split it up into multiple parts. It is insane and I hate this book. Which is why you can expect a chapter-by-chapter sporking of the science fails specifically, especially those in the beginning chapters because lord knows I’ve only read them at least ten times.

  36. Nate Winchester on 7 September 2012, 20:28 said:

    If fifty people are living in the ruins of New York and there’s only food for twenty, that’s overpopulation.

    Uh… I think if 50 people lived an area with only food for 20, we’d see 30 dead people very soon.

    Well, if only smart people can save the day then that means you need more smart people, ie focusing on quality over quantity in the population. You’re not going to do a lot of sciencing in a population that’s growing so fast it’s struggling to feed itself, after all.

    But who’s going to feed and support the scientists? This entirely depends on how much labor savoring tech survived. If say… tractors and horses both are gone, then it’s going to be awhile before you reach any kind of reduced return on the acreage the people are working on. And that’s not even getting into manufacturing and whether it has to be done manually or whether any automation is still around.

    I should have clarified earlier. While it might be possible to be overpopulated and have unemployment, it’s just not going to happen in any situation where humanity is devastated and near extinction unless it’s something like… a dozen folks trapped in a bomb shelter. (in which case, nobody’s employed) If things are backwards enough, then nobody will be unemployed because to work is to survive (or, if someone doesn’t work, they’re soon dead, aka the “Tarzan’s job” concept).

  37. Tim on 7 September 2012, 21:27 said:

    Uh… I think if 50 people lived an area with only food for 20, we’d see 30 dead people very soon.

    More likely you’d end up with 50 people trying to cheer each other up while they all die of malnutrition. Regardless, that’s the pint of overpopulation; the current situation being unsustainable with reference to itself rather than some arbitrary ideal number you think you should have.

    But who’s going to feed and support the scientists?

    Oh, I’m not suggesting going Randroid and having no labour pool and genius ubermensches who use their vast intellects and gigantic penises to make everything perfect. Focusing on quality means maximising chances for those with potential, but it favours everyone. Stronger, healthier workers have stronger, healthier children, live longer, are useful longer and are less likely to “accidentally” rig your air filter unit to fill your house with contaminated air because your second in command seems slightly less psychotic than you.

    If things are backwards enough, then nobody will be unemployed because to work is to survive

    But you run into limits of how much you can actually do. You can only farm the land you actually have access to, you can’t make things out of more materials than you have, etc. Unless you go for Soviet-style fake employment (hiring twenty people to clean one street to create the illusion of 100% employment) you’ll hit other limits sooner or later. And sooner if you’re creating a huge surplus of people.

  38. Tim on 8 September 2012, 03:58 said:

    On a different topic, the whole explanation of the “coal” and “pearl” thing reeks of after-the-fact excuse.

    After all, what good is a ‘Pearl’ in a post-apocalyptic world? Pearls are crushed in this new world. The Coals have the power here

    Trouble is pearls aren’t utilitarian in any world, they’re prized because they’re rare and beautiful, and Pearls here have the “rare” part down. You can stick a shovel into the ground in most countries and find coal; while it’s useful, it’s common as dirt and of little value. It’s like watching someone trying to explain that technically “negro” just means “black” and so it’s not degoratory to call someone a term that’s a minor corruption of “negro.”

    The whole setup is nonsense because whites in the affluent West would have more resources available to ensure their survival than the other races (who the radiation still killed, IIRC). It reads like some white supremacist apocalyptic fantasy; civilised society collapses and the “lesser races” are in their element all of a sudden, talking down to our wimminfolk and trying to kill off the last of us. Is Eden going to be rescued by a bunch of inbred survivalists who grabbed their SKS and got inna woods?

  39. Pryotra on 8 September 2012, 12:34 said:

    It reads like some white supremacist apocalyptic fantasy; civilised society collapses and the “lesser races” are in their element all of a sudden, talking down to our wimminfolk and trying to kill off the last of us. Is Eden going to be rescued by a bunch of inbred survivalists who grabbed their SKS and got inna woods?

    I noticed that to. It has a kind of a Birth of a Nation vibe to it really. (Yes, I had to watch that show in my Southern Lit class.) It’s creepy.

    And yeah, the whole thing with Pearls is obnoxious. The real problem I see is that no matter what, people think with in the standards and ideas of their says. You can’t say that Pearls is a slur.

    Truthfully, I wouldn’t have touched this idea with a ten foot pole if I was thinking of a idea plot for a dystopian novel.

  40. Kyllorac on 8 September 2012, 13:41 said:

    On a different topic, the whole explanation of the “coal” and “pearl” thing reeks of after-the-fact excuse.

    Because it is.

    Is Eden going to be rescued by a bunch of inbred survivalists who grabbed their SKS and got inna woods?

    That isn’t that far from the truth, actually.