21/12 (an open thread)
By 
No peeking at the internet: Is 2112’s protagonist dead, dying, or alive and well at the end of the song?
You can listen for the first time or refresh your memory here.
Unless you would rather chew rusty hat pins than listen to a 20-minute opera written and performed by North America’s most talented trio of nerds. In which case, skip the link and go straight to the comments to talk about how much you love or hate or are indifferent to winter. Or summer, if you’re an antipodean. Or want to share your distaste for rock. This is an open thread.
Of course he’s dead. Which is one thing that made the song shocking and tragic to nerdy grade school me. The hero of the story can’t commit suicide. He has to blow up the Death Star Temple of Syrinx with an enchanted sword electric guitar!
It also made it irritating to nerdy high school and beyond me. Really? The message of this 20+ rock opera is If only the hero hadn’t discovered that guitar when he did, he would have lived to see the end of the rule of the priests?
By the way, I semi-watched a documentary about the song a few months ago. So I am aware why the song exists and that it is so closely based on Ayn Rand’s Anthem that Neil Peart worried he’d be accused of plagiarism. The end might make sense if I read the book. But I don’t like to imagine the chain of events that would end with me reading anything by Rand. At the very least it would involve the threat of death (mine or someone I care about). Also, I’d have to read Rand. And whatever you think of her philosophy, she couldn’t write for shit.
At any rate, it is a tragic opera, so at least one ironically timed death was in the cards.
Here’s another question: Is the army (?) that shows up at the end better, worse or merely differently bad than the priests? Based on the conventions of sci fi, I think the answer depends on whether Peart ever intended to write a sequel.
