I just finished re-reading The Dispossessed.

Gosh, I like that book. Always have. (I'm especially fond of the little detail of asking Shevek if he's right-handed - I feel it shows that his society is overwhelmingly lefty and it just fills me with left-handed pride. Left-handedness is part of neurodiversity, after all.)

At one point near the end of the book he says that his work might, in many years, come not to the invention of faster-than-light travel, but maybe to the invention of faster-than-light communication, and he makes several points about how not having to wait 20 years to talk to somebody from another world might make all the difference. What's very striking, of course, is the fact that the communication in this book is strikingly backwards for people with space travel (though it wasn't when the book was printed, of course)! All that talk about how they can get away with suppressing his books (despite not even having a government) with the very real claim of a paper shortage, and all that talk about missing letters (and about societal pressure not to send unnecessary letters), and about having to set an appointment to make a phone call, or else just get a message (more societal pressure against "waste", and presumably it has also to do with actual, human switchboard operators)! No email, no messageboards (except presumably the physical kind), no chatrooms or webpages or blogs or any of that. How different would this story have been if he could've just posted his theory in dribs and drabs online, gotten help from the whole world - or both worlds! Of course, much of it still could've been done, but the story would have to have been written around that, wouldn't it?

A word to the wise:

If you're going to sneak around "late" at night (like, 8:30 - these kids were young) doing nefarious things at your school (or any school!)? Do it without the shushing.

Those brats made a lot of noise for people ostensibly wanting to be quiet. I heard the schoolyard gate (this is the school cater-corner to us in the back), but I would have ignored that, gates clank open and shut all the time without meaning anything. But that first urgent SHHH! got my attention, and all the further "shush!" and "shh, be quiet!" and "don't make so much NOISE!" and "ssshhhhh!" just reinforced the message: Somebody was Up To No Good.

I ended all of this with a well-timed HEY, and got a view of them dashing down the parking lot into the street down the hill. Hilarious, really. I don't think they'll be back tonight - the early hour, combined with their height (they were all the height of the average ten year old, and while any one ten year old could be very tall or short, a bunch of kids the same size are likely the same age as well) and their amateur ways (shushing each other? really?) makes me think I gave them the adrenaline rush of their lives and they ran back to be in bed before lights out.

Tomorrow I'll pop by the church which runs the school and let them know some kids (probably THEIR kids, I can't imagine kids that age wanting to vandalize somebody else's school and it only runs up to the 8th grade) are poking around wanting to cause trouble. Maybe they'll finally fix that fence of theirs. One end is "locked" but it gaps wide enough to let a small-sized adult through and I often see children hopping out of that fence during recess to fetch balls and whatever. Nothing criminal, but they could just as easily ditch, right? At the very least, if the other gate had been locked the kids would've dashed towards that exit and then had to dash back towards me, and THAT would have had me rolling on the ground laughing.