The Future Runs

30 March 09
6 miles - 49.00 min sunny, light, cool breeze

Light stride, easy run - felt a bit like Max Kammerer, a hero of my favourite sci-fi book from the 60s, Prisoners of Power, also known by its Russian title The Inhabited Island.


He is a man from a future utopian Earth, where people live and stay healthy for as long as they have an interest in life. The anti-utopian (distopian) option of the future is on a planet where Max lands to prepare a report for the KGB (K-Council of Gallactic B-Security-bezopasnost.) People there drink, smoke, die early and are controlled by mind-bending rays broadcast from cell-phone type pylons. Nations wage nuclear wars against each other polluting the planet that is already suffering from unbalanced environment.

Stranded on the planet Max misses his favourite pastime on Earth: running. It's not any running. His was a run through the woods a-chasing the deer. The future human would catch up with the deer, grab him by the antlers, stop, hold down and then release.

Oh, and while on the planet Max discovers a race of Headdies (Golovans), dog-like creatures who, as a result of mutations, acquired intelligence equal or superior to human. Dogs eventually join the human on his mission, running beside him and warning of approaching danger...

The Inhabited Island by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1969, published in English in 1977 under the title
Prisoners of Power


Yesterday, 29 March, saw first swallows (or house martins). It's only March! Are we in for a scorching Summer? Or are they just passing and stopped in my garden on their way further North. Swallows go all the way to the North Sea and the White Sea.