About the Book
When capitalism and socialism cooperate, good things happen. The current alliance, though wobbly, has resulted in major advances across the board. While the first philosophy creates huge wealth, the second ensures that a broad spectrum of the population also benefits. The on-going 75-year stretch of global peace is one huge benefit of this cooperation, and, if one trusts dispassionate actuaries, the average human today enjoys a longer healthier life, receives more schooling, and her children's chances of abuse or untimely deaths are markedly down. In 10 years, statisticians also affirm, those at the top of the pyramid will have doubled their fortunes and own just about everything worth owning, while, if our princely generosity continues unabated, extreme poverty will have been officially eradicated. Mind you, as a liberal, that a quarter of a billion people live on 2 dollars a day and that the richest six are each worth 65 billion dollars, sticks in my throat. And yet, I swallow my outrage and tell myself that we're on the right track. --- So why does it feel as if we're reliving the plight of Sisyphus, King of Ephyra? This far into our journey, what's with all these tyrants in democrat's clothing: Bolsonaro, Orban, Putin, Lukashenko and Trump? Dudes who gained power by fanning fear of one's neighbours. And here I was naively thinking that such odious discourse had been banished to the dustbin of history. Humankind's best is inspiring, but, Madre de Dios, how revolting is our worst. --- Heed this, therefore, greedoids and piggoes. Rile not the humble, for they wave witty signs at sit-ins, join the Raging Grannies, and, mindful that ridicule is the bane of tyrants, write Tellurian Days. --- Three books make up this tale: --- (i) Ur the Grungalang - Over the eons, Grungalangs evolved into all-powerful, greedy, arrogant, covetous, xenophobic, misogynistic, seven-dimensional quantum entanglements. Fascinated by everything Earthly, Ur has watched the planet since creation. Inexplicably, the grotesquely rich Grungie is intrigued by philosophers Locke, Unamuno and Sanders, divergent though their liberal thoughts are from everything he believes in. Then, disaster, in a classic example of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, the evil Viscount, Lord of the Beneath, redirects a blob of tenebris purgamentum towards our planet. On the last tic of a forthcoming year of the Dragon, Earth is to be nullified. --- (ii) The Promised Land - Back home some 35,000 years before Nullification, hunted mercilessly by ratpedes, the free-thinking Cro-Magnon Gal-Gars and Neanderthal Boon-Teks embark on a migration of epic proportions, traversing the endless grasslands in the hope of reaching the Promised Land. As if the march were not formidable enough, a seemingly insurmountable hurdle remains, the slopes of Keita, five-thousand precipitous metres of ice and granite. Still, with the land of opportunity awaiting on the other side, despite the Viscount crowing that murderers and rapists will never cross his beautiful wall, the migrants push on. --- (iii) Nullification - Entombed in a glacier for 35 millennia, Har-Lou the Druid and Eg-Nog the Questioner defrost, awaken, and confront the lunacy of modern Earth. Joined by Cyril, a street savvy vagrant, the gang embarks on a transcontinental hike. It's imperative that they reach the Pond where 98-year-old Tom-Tom and doomsayers Radu and Gennaro await to fulfil their destiny: the prophecy of Diphthong the Skrav. --- For millennia, the Eagloid mother ship has lain buried under rubble. Planet Ambrosia is within reach but does E.S.S. Speranza have room for all Earthly creatures, including greater kudus, or will only the billionaire elite be allowed on-board? Having set the fare to ten tonnes of bullion, Bizarroland's President Rashid Kuntzgrubber grants no exceptions. No ticket, no passage to Ambrosia.