Can anyone help me ID this story

[ThoughtCriminal]

It's one I've heard about, but never read, so I can't even be sure if the details are accurate.

An individual has been in suspended animation and is revived in the distant future. He asks if there is still war, poverty, crime disease and is assured that all of these things have been solved or minimized. Then he asks:

"Why does everbody seem so worried?"

Answer: "Well... we have REAL problems"

----

I've sometimes compared this story to what we face today. A person who just woke up from the 1980's would be relieved to find that 2005 is not a radioactive wasteland and the Cold War is over, but would wonder why the nation is on the brink of nervous breakdown... "Well, we have real problems". They might also ask:

"How President Reagan is doing?"

"Ronald Reagan is dead"

"Oh crap! That means Bush is President!"

[mzteris]

1. any more details?

any at all?

[ThoughtCriminal]

2. No, that's all I have - nt

[phantom power]

3. Sounds almost like a self-contained joke to me.

Just tell it exactly like you did above. It made me laugh :-)

[mzteris]

4. Hmmm...... this maybe?

"Published in 1942, Beyond This Horizon gives clear evidence of the genius and writing power that Heinlein possessed, but this early novel is definitely less than perfect. In the process of churning it out for publication in Astounding Stories (published under the pseudonym of Anson MacDonald), he privately confessed to editor John W. Campbell, Jr., that "it stinks." The ideas behind the story fascinated him, yet he struggled to distill a good story out of them. It is my opinion that Heinlein set his sights too high for this short novel, as it basically revolves around the very reason for man's existence.

The premise is quite promising: genetic engineering has produced a "perfect" world, one free of disease, war, poverty, hunger, etc. "All of them should have been happy," as Heinlein begins the narrative, yet they are not. The protagonist in particular is not happy and has no desire to bring children into a seemingly pointless existence. This is a cause for concern for the local sociopolitical moderator because Hamilton Felix hails from a true star line of men. His genetic code represents one of the more impressive accomplishments of social and genetic engineers working over the course of three centuries, and his line will be essentially perfected in the course of two successive generations-if he can be induced to father a child. Of course, one of a very select group of females must be selected, and the chromosomes of the match must be carefully manipulated, but society needs him to reproduce. In fact, the powers that be agree to begin a scientific search for the meaning of life in order to talk him into becoming a father.

Thrown into the mix of all this is an attempt to overthrow the government by a group of men intent on creating their own genetic ideals and a man from 1926 unfrozen and forced to adapt to a strange new world, a world in which, to his dismay, football no longer existed. "

[mzteris]

5. Movie?

You don't mean Demolition Man (with Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes, do you?)

[politicat]

6. It sounds like CM Kornbluth's The Marching Morons.

I can't be certain, because I have the Marching Morons only on audiobook (I've never found a print copy) and I don't like the voice talent, so I've never gotten that far into it, but the story is about a greedy real estate swindler who was put in suspended animation, only to be reawakened to an America taken over by over-breeding idiots who are kept alive and functional by the extraordinary efforts of a tiny band of the intellectually able.