The same thing happened with the recent condo collapse in Miami. One of my favorite authors of the seventies was John D. MacDonald. I always ran out and got every one of his Travis McGee novels as soon as it came out. He is one of my heroes and models in writing crime fiction and I have read just about everything he has ever written as I have done with Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker and Lawrence Block. One of his non McGee books also became a best seller. It was called "Condominium" and was about the collapse of a condo in Florida. Albeit it was during a hurricane, still the shoddy workmanship and the criminal malfeasance seems to have predicted what happened in Miami. I remember when it came out and all of the builders in Florida swore up and down that they complied with all the codes and what not. There was a minor scandal here and there but it all went back to normal. I wonder if they examine the structure and what went on if they will find what I think they will find.
Once again life follows art.
8 comments:
I'm just happy Del Boca Vista didn't collapse.
I hear that!
But subsidence, salt air, lack of maintenance and poor initial design all contributed to that collapse. So it goes.
The House on the Rock
…25 The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because its foundation was on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its collapse!
Also, observeth building codes applicable to hurricane zones and buildeth not in the swamp.
I remember when the condo craze hit Miami. You could get a high rise condo in the mid twentie$. Prices stayed fairly low till recently. My neighbors who live there part time say prices are going through the roof. Well see if this slows it down. Florida is another place that should be building desalination plants.
And crap/corrupt code enforcement, don't forget that.
For example: The 58 story Millenium Tower in San Francisco, which includes over 400 residential units, was built on fill, and is sinking and listing to the side.
Along the same lines of authors predicting real events, this one takes the cake. From the preface to Walter Lord's "A Night To Remember:"
In 1898, a struggling author named Morgan Robertson concocted a novel about a fabulous Atlantic liner, far larger than any that had ever been built. Robertson loaded his ship with the rich and complacent and then wrecked it one cold April night on an iceberg. This somehow showed the futility of everything, and in fact, the book was called Futility when it appeared that year, published by the firm of M F. Mansfield.
Fourteen years later, a British shipping company named the White Star Line built a steamer remarkably like the one in Robertson's novel. The new liner was 66,000 tons displacement; Robertson's was 70,000 tons. The real ship was 882.5 feet long; the fictional one was 800 feet. Both vessels were were triple screw and could make 24-5 knots. Both could carry about 3,000 people, and both had enough lifeboats for only a fraction of this number. But, then, this didn't seem to matter because both were labelled 'unsinkable.'
...
Robertson called his ship the Titan; the White Star Line called its ship the Titanic. This is the story of her last night.
linkage
This is happening in Red China in many areas. The scariest has to be leaking nucular reactors and sinking artificial islands. Corruption in dictatorships is the rule.
PS Template, not ten plate.
"Ten plate" was a Freudian slip, he was thinking about his lunch.
Norwegians will also remember Nevil Shute predicting the Comet disaster in No Highway. Great book. Great movie with Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich in there primes.
I was a big McDonald fan too. Reread the green ripper a couple years ago and it holds up well. Ditto Elmore Leonard. Always a good read.
I much preferred donald westlake to Robert Parker. Dortmunder, of course, but all his others as well. Kawaha, a caper involving the theft of the entire uganda coffee crop under idi amin may be the best of all
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