There seems to be many things around me that keep pointing me in this direction. I’m very excited to continue this quest into the idea and aesthetic of the future from the perspectives of past generations.

It seems that an obvious connection is being made from this concept with the genre of Sci-Fi. To be honest, I’m a closet Sci-Fi fan. So, it’s fun to open this door and look inside.

How does this connect to the original inspiration (the book All That is Solid Melts into Air by Marshall Berman?) Well, the book is about the human struggle of modernism, which is the overabundance of choice and the conflict of Morals coupled with the importance of the Machines and the progression of industrialization.

I find that in these sci-fi movies (BladeRunner, Dune, Mad Max, Solaris, Brazil, and others) and in the Manga book I’m reading (Blame) there is a constant theme of the enhancement of the Machine and Technology and what that has done to the human condition – how it has changed the lifestyle of the human.

Alot of the time there is a post-apocalyptic sub-plot. In being faced with rebuilding a culture after such an even causes the humans in these stories to re-examine their ideas of constructing society and the use of machinery.

Again, machinery and technology take on an importance. It seems in these stories it has become necessary to re-evaluate the priority of technology in relaitonship to society and the environment. Mad Max is the best example of this where in a post-apocalyptic time the remaining people have had to reconstruct societies in different ways. I’ve only seen Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, so I can not speak with the full capacity of the story, but nevertheless we see how two different groups of people have rebuilt society and what it means to them.

There are The Waiting Ones, who seem to be an extension of a faith based people. They are a naive group of young people who have created a story about a Messiah, Caption Walker. They are waiting for this Captain Walker to return so that he might restore an abandoned plane and take them to “Tomorrow Morrow Land”, a place they believes exists but is actually a pre-apocalyptic city.

These “Ones” live in a hidden Oasis in the midst of a desert and their lifestyle is similar to that of the Never Never Land of Peter Pan. This reference automatically leads me to the J.D. Salinger reference of the Catcher In the Rye. A metaphor for remaining a child – and not taking the metaphoric leap from the Rye Field off the cliff into “adulthood”. It’s an interesting comparison to naivety and Christianity. Because the focus is on the future it ultimately leads to the questions of where faith fits in when we think of the future.

The other city mentioned in the movie is a place called “Barter Town”. Run on methane farmed from Pig Shit, it is a place referred to by Max as “A Sleaze Pit”. The basic concepts of the city seem to be barbaric. You come to trade, be it a service or objects. Disputes are settled in a fight to the death, and if “you break a deal, you face the wheel” which leads to a variety of punishments that are chosen by fate – a roll of the wheel. This gives a sense of order in a way, while showing us a different face of faith.

As I continue my research I’ll update you. In the mean time do you have any thoughts or ideas to share? This is an open forum. Please share your ideas.