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I sincerely appreciate your consideration of the following for the Bookpeople
Mailing List. 
Meyer Moldeven

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THE UNIVERSE-or nothing (A Memoir)

This posting links to my memoir that backgrounds my free novel in which I
speculate on an option that the world's leaders might consider in dealing with
an imminent social and economic collapse at some time in the future. Roots for
the cataclysm are deep and powerful even now. (Reference: Limits To Growth)

There is a convergent and sharpening focus by worldwide governments, their
private sectors, academic and other institutions, and the general public in
this early 21st century on:

1. the Earth's steadily diminishing reserves of accessible nonrenewable
metals, minerals, ores and other natural substances that are essential to
sustain the world's industrial base for the future.

2. aggressive initiatives and commitments by governments and the private
sector toward means by which humankind will transform into realities their
vision of evolving into a 'space-faring' race, and

3. rapidly developing technological and logistics' capabilities by
governments, NGOs, and the private sector to explore, search for, and acquire
essential industrial-base substances from elsewhere throughout the Solar
System and beyond.

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The 1972 Report to the Club of Rome: The Limits to Growth

http://www.clubofrome.org/archive/reports.php

suggested that, within the next 100 years, unless worldwide corrective
changes are made in time to change traditional physical, economic, or social
relationships, society will run out of the nonrenewable resources on which the
industrial base depends. According to the Report, when the world's reserves of
nonrenewable resources are exhausted, a precipitous collapse of the economic
system, manifested in massive unemployment, decreased food production, and a
decline in population will occur. The death rate will soar.

The original 1972 report is supported in the 1992 follow up 'Beyond The
Limits' and the 2004 'Limits to Growth-30 Year Update'.

The following quote is from a review of the latter (2004) edition: "Not
everything bears repetition, but truth does-especially when the truth is both
denied by entrenched interests and verified by new information." -- Herman E
Daly, former World Bank senior economist and Professor, School of Public
Affairs, University of Maryland

Several of the world's industrialized nations are planning for or have
increasingly active programs to explore the interplanetary realm. News media
reported in October 2000 that the People's Republic of China announced plans
to search Earth's moon for useful substances. On-site robotic systems are well
along in analyzing Earth's moon, Mars and other celestial bodies as to their
beneficial potentials. In a speech on January 14, 2004 the President of the
United States of America unveiled a new vision for space exploration. He
called on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to
"...gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to
worlds beyond our own."  "We do not know where this journey will end," said
the President, "yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos."
White House Press Release, January 14, 2004.

~~~~

The choice, as [H. G.] Wells once said, is the Universe-or nothing. . .. The
challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if
we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close.
Humanity will have turned its back upon the still untrodden heights and will be
descending again the long slope that stretches, across a thousand million
years of time, down to the shores of the primeval sea.
 - Arthur C. Clarke, last words of his first book, 'Interplanetary Flight,'
1950.

~~~~

The full text of my 'Background' memoir is at:

http://theuniverse--ornothing.blogspot.com

The novel: 'The Universe-or nothing'   may be freely downloaded at:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18257

and

http://manybooks.net/titles/moldeven1825718257.html

Meyer Moldeven
Yarnspinner88@[redacted]