Real Visions
Here I would like to share with you a few of the visions for a better world which have inspired people to work to make them realities.
For a vision of how future cities could be made more people-friendly, visit Arcosanti the city being built in the Arizona desert by its future citizens, and funded by the famous Soleri bells.
Please also visit the home of the Jubilee
2000 project, which is campaigning in all the major industrialised countries for the World Bank and individual creditor nations to release the poorest third-world countries from the crippling burden of debt.
Amnesty International campaigns for Human Rights worldwide and co-ordinates letter-writing campaigns for prisoners of conscience. Visit their site and sign up to the Declaration of Human Rights. Find out how you can remind your own government of their obligations as signatories.
RENAISSANCE 2001 is a project to create a global Internet Art Festival for the year 2001. Artists who believe that art can be a positive evolutionary force have started to build a worldwide network of LightHomes across the Internet. These pages will point to a future path for art in the new electronic era, and act as a forum in which RENAISSANCE 2001 will be developed. New members and collaborators in every country are sought.
Damanhur is a Federation of Communities located in northern Italy, with its own social, political and economic structure, based on the practical application of a spiritual philosophy.In 16 years of work they have built a 4,000 cubic meter underground temple which is now recognised as an incredible work of art. It is rich in mosaics, paintings, sculptures and glassworks, among which is the largest Tiffany cupola in the world- and all this hidden inside a hill! Visit their Temple of Mankind, a place dedicated to human creativity and to the divine part in each one of us.
Nearly a hundred years ago, James Oppenheim wrote a hymn for the womens' suffrage marchers, which can now be found in the Unitarian Hymn Book. I have included it in my poetry and prayers section, as it seems to me to embody all that I wish for the people of the World- May you all have Bread and Roses always!
Literary Visions
I am an avid reader of science fiction, and wonder just how much of today's speculation will be the reality of the future, as Jules Verne's and H G Wells' visions were! It's a really exciting time to be alive, on the brink of space exploration. Here are links to some of my favourite authors who write about future realities:
It was hard to decide where to putC
J Cherryh as she writes about Faerie as well as space, but it's her space novels which i find most compelling. The world of her books 'Downbelow Station'; 'Merchanters Luck'; 'Cyteen' and 'Rimrunners' to name but a few is so perfectly realised in every detail that they are totally absorbing.
Dragon Hold-Under Hill is the net home of another favourite author - Anne McCaffrey. Although her world of Pern has a mediaeval infrastructure and feel to it, I have included her here, as the Pern books, with their dragonriders are actually set in the far future of a lost colony, and her other books are set in equally wonderful and imaginative futures. As a singer, my favourite heroine is Killashandra Ree, opera-singer turned crystal-miner, who appears in the books 'Crystal Singer' 'Killashandra' and 'Crystal Line'. I also like the sentient planet of Petaybee in 'Powers that Be' and its two sequels.
No kaleidoscope of future visions would be complete without reference to Patricia Kenneally-Morrison creatrix of the Keltiad, a society of star-faring Celts, who were the original Tuatha De Danaan, carrying their civilisation back to the stars from which they came. Here are all the figures of Legend - Arthur, Taliesin and Morgan among them, re-cast in the old tales in a new future. The first keltiad trilogy are : 'The Silver Branch','The Throne of Scone' and 'The Copper Crown'.
And finally, here is the on-line version of the most popular book in the galaxy, more popular even than '63 more things to do in zero gravity'- The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the GalaxyWhen in doubt, - Don't Panic! - consult the guide!
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