Another Dylan image, from his chilling nuclear-apocalypse "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"--still one of his best--

"I saw a young child beside a dead pony."

If anyone has ever wondered about the reason for that line, aside from plain old morbidity, there's a scene in John Wyndhams post-apocalyptic novel "The Chrysalids" where that exact image occurs. The context is that many years post-nuclear war, much of N. America is still radioactive and uninhabited--but a small society of humans still exists in of all places, Labrador--a globally warmed Labrador. They have a rigid fundamentalist obsession with "normalcy" and don't allow mutants within their territory. One day a little girl wandered off with her pony only to be attacked by a mutant outlaw...

The Chrysalids was written in the 50's, and can be taken as much as a comment on the tenor of those conformist times as sci-fi.

Pretty smart guy, John Wyndham. Predicted biotechnology, global warming and other real developments while other sci-fi writers were stuck on spaceships and rayguns. Too bad the movies made of his books have been just awful--Day of the Triffids and two versions of Midwich Cuckoos. (Another prescient crazy notion--a village of humans impregnated by aliens? Now who would believe such a nutty notion? Quite a few people as it turns out.) A real filmmaker could make something quite significant from The Chrysalids.

Willie-O