Sadly he died on the day before he was due to collect copies of his book The Long-Sighted People from the printers (it is not due for publication until 15 February next year). 'I had naively as- sumed that the eponymous, presbyopic people of the title would be Chinese but, though they boast Sino-characteristics, they live in a remote future: “yuman” survivors of — or mutations from а third global catastrophe rendered inevitable by the idiocies of the current edition of the anthropoid race, Homo desipiens (Stupid Man).
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The book is addressed to his granddaughter, for whom the envi- ronmental message is doom-laden: “In your lifetime or that of your children, there will be nothing to eat but one another. From which predicament nuclear, chemical or bacterial warfare would come as a happy release Just as the bacteria in my gut (and yours) without which we cannot digest our food, will all die when we die; but if they should perish first we cannot long outlive them; so humans will not long outlive those other species which form part of our, and one another's food chain, nor the wild forests & which we are busily destroying for ephemeral profit."
I find it difficult to work up great indignation about ecology and food chains, vaguely accepting a nature red in tooth and claw and natural selection. Nature is more resilient than the doomsters would have us believe.
But Barnett preferred the apocalyptic view. Perhaps his occa- sional sourness could be traced to a resentment that his (most happy) marriage to a Chinese had blocked his promotion. Any- way, he nursed an intense hatred of homosexuality and believed that AIDS was a divine (or Nature's) deserved punishment on societies which tolerated, even glamourised, deviants. Despite this, Barnett protests he is an optimist. But he tells his grandchild: "Some of your descendants (which means mine too) may be among the remnant [of the third catastrophe] but I bet they'll wish they had died with us. I'm that kind of optimist, you see.”
As an author, Barnett had a lot of fun creating a Clockwork Orange-type lingo for his yumans, revealing a surprising element of anti-establishment thinking for a former Hongkong bureaucrat.
Page 30Page 31
Sadly he died on the day before he was due to collect copies of his book The Long-Sighted People from the printers (it is not due for publication until 15 February next year). 'I had naively as- sumed that the eponymous, presbyopic people of the title would be Chinese but, though they boast Sino-characteristics, they live in a remote future: “yuman” survivors of — or mutations from а third global catastrophe rendered inevitable by the idiocies of the current edition of the anthropoid race, Homo desipiens (Stupid Man).
+
+
The book is addressed to his granddaughter, for whom the envi- ronmental message is doom-laden: “In your lifetime or that of your children, there will be nothing to eat but one another. From which predicament nuclear, chemical or bacterial warfare would come as a happy release Just as the bacteria in my gut (and yours) without which we cannot digest our food, will all die when we die; but if they should perish first we cannot long outlive them; so humans will not long outlive those other species which form part of our, and one another's food chain, nor the wild forests & which we are busily destroying for ephemeral profit."
I find it difficult to work up great indignation about ecology and food chains, vaguely accepting a nature red in tooth and claw and natural selection. Nature is more resilient than the doomsters would have us believe.
But Barnett preferred the apocalyptic view. Perhaps his occa- sional sourness could be traced to a resentment that his (most happy) marriage to a Chinese had blocked his promotion. Any- way, he nursed an intense hatred of homosexuality and believed that AIDS was a divine (or Nature's) deserved punishment on societies which tolerated, even glamourised, deviants. Despite this, Barnett protests he is an optimist. But he tells his grandchild: "Some of your descendants (which means mine too) may be among the remnant [of the third catastrophe] but I bet they'll wish they had died with us. I'm that kind of optimist, you see.”
As an author, Barnett had a lot of fun creating a Clockwork Orange-type lingo for his yumans, revealing a surprising element of anti-establishment thinking for a former Hongkong bureaucrat.
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Page 30Page 31
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