Hardcore Professor's Learning Curve: Back to the Wild from 2525

Professor Hardcore's Learning Curve: Back to the Wild from 2025 (4 vols.) is more than just an Appalachian Trail hiking story. It delves into the subject's entire life journey, exploring the reasons behind his sixty-three-year quest to complete the trail. The narrative unfolds with a meta-dystopian framing, featuring three narrators, each with their own distinct font color. At the center of this tale is the subject, a naive, spoiled, nerdy, and pretentious Lutheran minister's son who ultimately becomes Professor Hardcore.

The physical challenges faced by the subject are significant, including worsening post-polio scoliosis (up to 110 degrees) and the demands of his roles as an English professor and outdoor educator, all while being a husband and father of two children. However, these are mere obstacles compared to the subject's slow learning curve, which is the true focus of the story.

The narrative is divided into three volumes, each with three parts. Volume 1 delves into the subject's ancestral background and early childhood (up to 1950), his time in Norristown (1950-1960), and his experiences in Gettysburg and at the University of Pennsylvania (1960-68). Part I introduces the subject's family history, including the overcharged Horne libido and his conflicts with his Philadelphia-born father and other male authority figures. It also lays the foundation for the subject's love of nature, inspired by his mother's upbringing in Gettysburg's bucolic battlefield, which he visited often.

In Part II, the subject's journey takes him from the rural Sellersville to the congested downtown Norristown, where the new parsonage was located. The onset of polio at the age of ten and its physical, psychological, and social consequences carry the narrative through to Part III. Breaking free from his father's control, the subject begins to find himself through his involvement in the College Choir, creative writing, and a romantic encounter during a choir tour to Europe.

Right after the tour, marriage and parenthood provide focus for the callow young man, who must then overcome multiple hurdles as a student of English literature and a Teaching Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, his father's hometown. With a second child on the way, he leaves Philadelphia without completing his dissertation to take his first teaching job at the University of Michigan-Flint, in Vehicle City, the hometown of Michael Moore.

Interwoven throughout this personal journey is the narrative of the subject's chief editor, Overton, an android with learning capabilities. Overton's AI learning curve mirrors the subject's and addresses the looming threats of climate change, nuclear holocaust, recurring pandemics, and the potential dangers of uncontrolled artificial intelligence. The value of wilderness emerges as a crucial theme, as the subject navigates his path back to the wild.

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