Aorist Rods
The story contains the aorist rod concept, which provides a compelling environmentalist allegory:
A man invents an aorist rod to mine energy from the past, and within a year tracts of the past were being fully drained. Those who complained were accused of an "extremely expensive form of sentimentality", as the past was a cheap, clean and plentiful source of energy. Anyone who said "draining the past impoverished the present" was told to "keep a sense of proportion".
Only when the people realised that the "selfish plundering wastrel bastards up in the future" were doing the same thing to their era were aorist rods banned. "They claimed it was for the sake of their grandparents and grandchildren, but it was of course for the sake of their grandparent's grandchildren, and their grandchildren's grandparents."
Read more about this topic: Young Zaphod Plays It Safe
Famous quotes containing the word rods:
“At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)