March 2019 Open Post

   March 27, 2019
   John Michael Greer
   340 Comments

   As announced earlier, this blog will host an open space once a month (well,
   more  or  less!) to  field  questions  and  encourage discussion  among  my
   readers, and this is the week. All the standard rules apply - no profanity,
   no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no long screeds proclaiming the
   infallible truth of fill in the blank - but since there's no topic, nothing
   is off topic.

   Before we go on,  I'm delighted to make a couple  of announcements that may
   be of interest to readers of this blog. First, the fourth book of The Weird
   of Hali, my seven-volume epic fantasy  with tentacles, is now available for
   preorder in  print and  Kindle editions  (the other  ebook formats  will be
   following shortly). This fourth adventure  in the world of H.P. Lovecraft's
   Cthulhu  mythos turned  topsy-turvy sends  Miskatonic University  professor
   Miriam Akeley  on an  adventure of  her own, in  which strange  dreams, the
   long-vanished Boston  author Randolph  Carter, and  a weapon  of tremendous
   power from long-drowned Poseidonis all have roles to play. The release date
   is April 17 -  and not too long after that I expect  to be able to announce
   the appearance of the next volume.

   Second, my first book on peak oil, The Long Descent, has just been released
   by  Founders House  in  a 10th  anniversary edition  with  a new  foreword.
   The  Long  Descent  was  highly  controversial when  it  first  saw  print,
   because it  rejected both sides  of the conventional  wisdom of our  time -
   the  blind faith  in  perpetual progress  and the  equally  blind faith  in
   imminent catastrophe  - and showed  that modern industrial  civilization is
   following the same path of prolonged  decline that brought down every other
   civilization  before ours,  and  can expect  the same  fate.  So far,  that
   prediction  has  fared  much  better  than competing  views,  and  many  of
   the  other  predictions  made  in  The  Long  Descent  -  for  example,  my
   then-controversial prediction  that the imminent spike  in petroleum prices
   would be followed by a slump - have also turned out to be quite correct. As
   the industrial world  stumbles blindly toward the next oil  crisis, I think
   The Long Descent deserves another look, and I plan on revisiting the issues
   it raises in future posts here.

   With that said, have at it!