We, the mankind, had pushed the self-destruct button a long time back and are currently in the final stages of the countdown, the end of which would mean the end of mankind, the end of this world, and perhaps, the end of the planet.
“Annihilation : Almost” is an attempt to show how mankind’s blind lust for power and supremacy can lead to its end. It is also an interesting insight into the complications that can rise out of our over-dependence on technology and can accelerate our drive on the path to self-destruction.
“Details about just another way
to destroy the planet” is how the author puts forth his description of the plot
of the book.
************** Some excerpts from the book **************
This novel revolves
around the life of a fictional character Robin and his fight, along with his
colleagues, against a computer hacker ‘Alexander’, who has taken over the
fastest supercomputer on the planet that was created by some US security agencies
to pry on the world. The hacker launches all the nuclear missiles in the world
when he is about to lose and destroys everything. Only 10000 humans remain and
they get together to rebuild the planet in a new manner. The plot also
incorporates some idealistic viewpoints of the author about how a society
should be as well as some thoughts about the concept of God.
************** Some excerpts from the book **************
“Somebody who does not exist cannot create you. There isn’t any GOD. It’s just a belief that you hold dear. When we created you, we gave you the power of thought, the power of speech and a language. We had put you on the path of discovery after giving you those tools. We gave you some explanations and, then, left you free to gather the rest of the knowledge floating in this universe on your own. But, instead of persevering on that path, you stopped midway and gave birth to an assumption and called it GOD. GOD did not create you, you created GOD. And. Had you stopped there, it wouldn’t have been a big problem. But, you kept going further on that misleading path that gave birth to ‘Religion’. Again, GOD did not create Religion, you did. And, you kept going and going. Some idiots kept reinforcing your beliefs and fears about that assumption for selfish reasons and messed up your minds to such an extent that you started believing in God’s Incarnation, God’s messenger, God’s son and what not . . . .”
“Now, when we talk about Sanskrit and its usage in Computers, there are three features of the language that are of most use to us. One, the order of words in a sentence has no bearing on the meaning of the sentence. The structural formation of the language is such that while composing a meaningful sentence, it does not matter what is the position of any word in the sentence and any rearrangement would not alter the meaning of the sentence. This is mainly because of the fact that there are no proper nouns in Sanskrit......"
"After a moment, I glanced back to see if I could find out who were we running from, and, was shocked to my bones by what happened. Just as I glanced back, a streak of tigers jumped on to the road from the right hand side of the road from behind the heavy foliage that lay on both sides of the road. They were at quite a distance but were catching up real fast. After all, they were tigers and we were just average humans......"
