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liked being able to see the Hollywood Hills clearly. They liked the way the air smelled in the morning. They liked working in the garden, walking to the corner store, actually talking to their neighbors, and living at a less frenetic pace.
    Teams of sociologists who studied the phenomenon—now called disvehiclization—observed that it was not simply a rejection of the automobile,
but of the entire technological cocoon that had enveloped daily life. The disvehiclized person was also more likely to leave his or her cell phone off, turning it on only for limited periods each day; the disvehiclized person rarely watched television; he or she also cut back on computer time, accessing the Internet only for essential news or shopping services.
    But not everybody could afford disvehiclization; it was a luxury of the retired, and of those who could work from their homes. Those who still depended on day jobs could not survive without transportation. While the subway, light rail, and emergency bus lines were able to provide some measure of service, they were simply not designed to handle the traffic load, nor did they provide the degree of coverage necessary to the entire basin. In the first month alone, over a million people emigrated from Los Angeles to surrounding counties.
    In Orange County, rents soared first, demand far exceeded supply. Real estate values followed quickly. Automobile sales took off as well, both new and used; individuals who felt their lives were dependent on their mobility were quick to replace their lost cars. For the first few weeks, car dealers all across the nation were shipping as many vehicles as they could into Ventura, San Bernardino, Santa Clarita, and Orange counties.
    Commentators have called this influx of additional vehicles onto the avenues and highways of the counties surrounding Los Angeles the “squeezed mud” effect. Squeeze a handful of mud, it oozes out between your fingers; squeeze Los Angeles, and the traffic oozes out in all directions across the state. Cal-Trans projects that the post-crystallization era will see at least an additional million vehicles on the highways of the four counties surrounding Los Angeles.
    Cal-Trans officials are also quick to point out that the recent stoppages on the 22, the 55, and the 91 are only localized anomalies, and not representative of any larger process. There is absolutely no reason to fear crystallization in Orange County. Absolutely no reason at all.

And Tomorrow and
    BY ADAM ROBERTS
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    Adam Roberts is a professor of nineteenth-century literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published six novels under his own name: Salt (2000), On (2001), Stone (2002), Polystom (2003), The Snow (2004), and Gradisil (2005), and is responsible for the parodies of A.R.R.R. Roberts: The Soddit (2003), The McAtrix Derided (2003), The Sellamillion (2004), The Va Dinci Cod (2005), and Star Warped (2005). Roberts is an SF critic and reviewer, and he has a wealth of short fiction and academic publications to his credit.
    â€œâ€˜And Tomorrow and’ is a comic piece,” Roberts said, “although not an especially cheery or giggly one. I was intrigued by the disjunction between, on the one hand, the Gordian-knot vehemence with which Macbeth unleashes violence upon the things that restrict him, and, on the other, the pedantically legalistic terms of the prophecy that is his eventual undoing. But I was more intrigued by the comic possibilities of reading this most bloody and murderous of Shakespeare’s plays as an articulation of a very modern sort of heroism, the refusal to simply crumple, the refusal to give up, the discovery of a strenuous and dark Joy in the face of extinction. I was also struck that the pedantic and legalistic prophecies that doom Macbeth wouldn’t stand up to ten minutes of cross-examination in a court of law by any half-decent contracts lawyer.”
    Find more about Adam Roberts at