jameswharris

Have the Climate Deniers Won the War–Or Just Built the 21st Century Maginot Line?

How often do you see a big documentary on Global Warming on TV now-a-days? Sure, the nightly news often mentions global warming when it runs stories on hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires and other extreme weather events, or when it does stories on habitat changes for animals, plants and insects, but you seldom see big documentaries about climate warming anymore. Nor is climate change a hot political issue for the presidential elections. Obama hasn’t made it an issue, and when climate change does come up in Congress or State Capitols it’s often by politicians suppressing climate change data or bills, or even writing laws against collecting climate data.

Read these articles to see what I mean:

Are the climate change deniers and skeptical scientists right? Do we have nothing to fear from global warming? Or are they complete deniers of reality and have built a political Maginot Line to convince the American public we’re all safe from the global warming threat?

Many of the reports above are from writers attacking the idea of global warming and climate change. They consider themselves fighting fear mongers.

Now you can read for yourself the reports about the climate from NOAA – State of the Climate. This ain’t light reading and you have to concentrate on the data, charts and graphs. If you search the web you can find reports from other agencies and countries. On one hand you have the scientists studying the data, and on the other hand people, including some scientists, but mostly right-wing activists who say the data is all wrong, deceptive or incomplete.

Who do you believe? The folks you want to believe? Doesn’t that make us all reality deniers?

We spend untold billions on defense because we fear attacks on the United States. If global warming is the threat scientists say it is, it’s more of a security threat than we’ve ever faced by any war. We have a long history of going all paranoia over reds, but why greens? Some people even believe the greens are the new reds. But the greens are trying to protect America, but the public doesn’t want to believe that.

There is something deeply psychological going on here and I don’t know what it is.

If everyone is sticking their heads in the sand, what do you do? If the collective says, “Let’s pretend nothing is happening, and it will all go away,” what do you do?

If you look at the climate history charts, the scientists appear to be right, so how long do we keep looking at the data and seeing it relate to reality before everyone with their heads in the sand and their butts in the air start thinking, “Hey, my ass is on fire!”

To tell the truth, I’m starting to wonder if there’s a huge scientific reality to denying. That’s it’s part of human nature. That no matter how bad things get, the deniers will keep denying global warming, and finding reasons to think things are okay. That denying reality is MUCH bigger than science. That if I read enough history I’d find that the deniers have always won the war on denying.

Or is it simply, to conservatives liberals always have to be wrong, no matter what, and on every subject.

JWH – 7/11/12

Survivors (BBC 1975-1977)

Ever since I gave up cable TV years ago I’ve discovered I really love finding a TV series and watching it from the first to last episode. Preferably from Netflix streaming, but DVDs are an okay second choice. Watching a complete TV series is like enjoying a very long novel. I listen to novels all the time, so I’m used to their length in hours. Average novels are 10-20 hours. Recently I listened to Anna Karenina and it was 42 hours. I’ve just finished 38 episodes of Survivors which ran on the BBC for three seasons (series as they say) from 1975 till 1977. Each episode was slightly less than an hour, so the entire run was equal to one long novel. It’s a shame actual novels aren’t filmed this way.

Survivors is a post-apocalyptic story set in England about a handful of people who survive a world-wide plague. In the course of the story we hear that only 1 person in 5,000 survived, another time they guessed 1 in 10,000. This plague is far more virulent than the famous Black Plague of the middle ages. Viewers assume the plague was engineered as a bio-weapon from the opening credits.

In the first season Greg, Jenny and Abby each find themselves alone among the dead. They strike out on their own with very different plans but they eventually meet up and work to survive together. Most of the episodes deal with finding food, encountering other bands of survivors with different agendas for surviving, wild dogs and rats, and much talk about how to start civilization all over again. The driving plot of the first season is Abby’s desperate need to find her son who was away at boarding school when the death came. Greg and Jenny agree to help her enthusiastically at first, but as the season progresses and chances dim, become reluctant to keep traveling.

In the second season, Jenny and Greg have settled with others on a farm and the season is about rebuilding civilization at the rural level. Charles, a new main character replaces Abby. Each episode deals with various post-apocalyptic issues, like having babies, finding medicine, fighting roving bands of thugs, producing methane for tractor fuel, handling dysfunctional people, how to decide who does what jobs, making alliances with other settlements, developing trade, and so on. Many fans didn’t like this season because the action slows. Stories are about raising sheep and cabbages. I actually like the second season quite a lot. Each episode dealt with true post-apocalyptic problems.

For the last season, Jenny, Greg and Charles travel most of the season seeing other settlements, promoting trade, and hoping to get electricity going again. Our characters do a lot of horseback riding around rural England and Scotland. Fans felt the action picked up in the third season.

It’s too bad this show is 1970s television technology because the bucolic scenery, old manor houses, and rustic farms would have been beautiful in modern high definition. There was a 2008 remake of Survivors that only ran for two short seasons that gives us a taste of what could have been. The original series never had big production values but that never bothered me because after-the-collapse stories are among my favorite fictional themes, and living is inherently low tech in such a scenario.

Overall, I really enjoyed Survivors, which is only available on DVD through Netflix, so I had to wait patiently for each new disc. Sadly, the discs are old and scratched so I don’t know how much longer they will be available. There is a 6-disc set of the entire three seasons at Amazon that came out in 2010, but I wonder how long they will stay in print. Plus the set is on 5 double-sided “flippy” DVDs and 1 single sided DVD. In England and Australia the set was on 11 single sided discs. I consider it bad form, lack of respect and cheapness to put shows on double-sided DVDs, which keeps me from buying it. I enjoyed the series enough that I know I’ll want to watch them again in the future, but I don’t want to buy it with flippy discs.

Evidently this show still has lots of fans in England, but it’s little known in America. That’s too bad because it’s a intriguing show. It’s not fantastic, but it is thought provoking and I liked the characters. I was sad they fired Carolyn Seymour who played Abby at the end of the first season. And many appealing secondary characters get killed – but hey, that’s what life would be like after the collapse. Survivors introduced many secondary characters over the course of the three seasons, several of which I really got to like before they disappeared or were killed off.

The show had lots of room to grow because of all these additional characters, and I’m sorry the producers and writers didn’t explore their lives more. Instead of 13 episode seasons the concept could easily have supported 26 episode per year, and the entire show could have run five or six years without running out of interesting topics to pursue. But then I like technical stuff. I’d gladly would have watched several episodes about getting the steam trains running again, or getting tractors to run off of methane. The 1970s was a big back to nature era and this show would have been perfect for the Mother Earth News crowd.

To me, the Gold Standard of post-apocalyptic novels is Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. In England I assume it’s The Day of the Triffids. Only Earth Abides takes its story into the third generation after the collapse. When they remade Survivors in 2008, they should have started with the second or third generation after the original 1975-1977 series. The actors who play Abby, Jenny and Greg are still alive, so it would be interesting to see them reprise their roles as grandparents. Instead they modernize the original series and brought in a ridiculous secret government program.

Since Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, every generation has imagined what life would be like if civilization collapsed. The list of novels is long, and there have been many movies dealing with the theme, but there have been few television shows covering the topic. Survivors, both 1975 and 2008, are the standouts, along with Jericho from 2006-2008.

JWH – 7/8/12

Global Warming On Trial–A New Type of Reality Show

Although global warming is well accepted in the scientific world, the concept has been strongly rejected by much of the American public. Since CSI type television shows are very popular, as well as court and crime dramas, I’ve wondered if this conflict on global warming doesn’t present us with a potentially new type of reality TV show.

Put global warming on public trial. Let both sides of the argument present witnesses and testimony. Let the TV viewers be the jury. It will be hard to develop the show without bias, but if it’s designed right, we might get close to impartiality in the structure of the trial. The prosecution will be the scientists with the crime being that humanity is causing global warming. The defense will be all the people who believe humanity is innocent.

To make the show more interesting, it would be appealing to have real trial lawyers working each side of the case, and maybe even a real judge, or judges to preside over procedures. This would be an expensive show to produce, and it could take months to play out. To make it more appealing, we should allow the public to vote on the progress in each episode, and to vote on aspects of how the trail is being conducted.

I know the public will vote the way they feel now about the subject – how impartial is Dancing with the Stars? It will be interesting to see if the numbers change though. Can people be persuaded by facts?

This could be the trial of the century, and people love those. Certainly, global warming could be the crime of the century.

If such a show was developed, it could be very popular. I’m tired of the old reality shows. Having a more realistic reality show is appealing. And once this case is over, pick another.

JWH – 7/7/12

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker–A Powerful Literary Science Fiction Novel

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker came out June 26th and it’s already getting tremendous press.

I listened to the audio edition with pitch-perfect narration by Emily Janice Card. The Age of Miracles is a science fiction novel told in first person by eleven-year-old Julia, so it feels like another science fiction YA novel, but it’s not marketed as either as SF or YA, and it’s far from another hit young adult novel for adults. It’s a literary novel about a young girl witnessing the Earth undergoing a catastrophic change called “the slowing.” Earth begins to slow its spin. Before the novel is over the Earth’s day is over twice as long.

As soon as I saw the announcement for this book I knew I had to read it. If you loved The Lovely Bones or The Secret Life of Bees, there’s a good chance you’ll love The Age of Miracles. However, if you loved Earth Abides, The Day of the Triffids, Alas, Babylon, there’s also a good chance you’ll love this novel. If you ever wished Catcher in the Rye had been science fiction, then this book is for you. When The Age of Miracles is pitched to movie producers I’m sure they’ll summarize it like this: coming of age in the apocalypse.

The editorial reviews collected at Amazon.com rave about this book. The customer reviews are a bit mixed, with most people loving it, and a few people complaining, some rather bitterly. A few complainers weren’t expecting a YA novel. Other complainers object to the science. I too had trouble with some of the science, but I think Karen Thompson Walker is right in that we’d weigh more if the Earth’s spin slowed. For those people objecting to her science, just read “If the Earth Stood Still” and you’ll realize Thompson is up on the details.

But I’m not sure the details of the science are important to this story – science fiction has often been wrong about science. The Age of Miracles is an allegory about how nature turns against us and how we respond.

The Age of Miracles is more literary than YA – there are no teenagers fighting to the death on television. It’s more literary than science fiction, it’s not about heroic astronauts trying to save the world. The narrator is telling her story from years later, after the events, so we know she survives. The Age of Miracles is a very simple tale, a coming of age story set against our world falling apart.

The defining issue with any end-of-the-world novel is how people react. I can’t help believe that the slowing is a metaphor for global warming, but don’t let that stop you from reading The Age of Miracles if you’re on the wrong side of that political question. The Age of Miracles is science fiction at its best because it’s all about sense of wonder. I’ve always found tremendous sense of wonder in end of the world novels. These novels aren’t predicting gloom and doom, but exploring how people face the immensity of reality.

Julia is just an eleven-year-old kid that has a mother and father, a few friends, a music teacher, and a sheltered life where’s she shy and timid, but like most kids her age, wants to fit in. Half of The Age of Miracles is about Julie coping with normal life. The other half is about coping with a world going through a lot of scary changes. The people in this story decide to fight their fears by leading ordinary lives. This is not a post-apocalyptic novel with Mad Max type warriors. This is the end of the world coming to suburbia, soccer moms and mini-vans.

Most of the classic end of the world SF novels came from the cold war era. The Age of Miracles is maybe what J. G. Ballard would have written about the Internet Age facing the apocalypse if he was channeling Harper Lee.

End of the world novels usually draw the reader in by getting them to imagine what they would do in the same situation. The Age of Miracles is different. I’m 60, and I’m being asked to imagine how an 11 year-old would see things. It’s a powerful motif. I can’t help but wonder how young people feel today growing up and imagining what global warming will bring.

In the past decade there have been a number of literary novels that used science fictional plots and they have been very successful. In fact, they have generally kicked genre butt. Stories like The Road, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Cloud Atlas, Never Let Me Go, The Sparrow brought deep characterization and a sense of realism to very far out ideas. I can’t help but wonder if would-be literary writers haven’t noticed that pairing literary style with the fantastic sells, especially if it also appeals to both the YA and adult readers.

I can only speculate why Karen Thompson Walker wrote The Age of Miracles, but whether intentionally or by accident, she’s hit on a perfect combination of literary and science fiction styles. Is Ms. Walker a science fiction reader trained in a MFA program? Or is she a literary writer influenced by all the science fiction in our society. There’s a good chance that the science fiction genre played no part in influencing the writing of her story. Did George Orwell need to read SF before writing Nineteen Eighty-Four? We could assume Karen Thompson Walker is like Michael Chabon and attempts to live in both the literary and SF genre worlds.

Maybe Ms. Thompson is even more savvy than that. Maybe she wanted to write about global warming and knew the topic would turn off many readers, so she developed the slowing as a stand-in. If she did, it will be just as effective for making people think about our future.

I bet there will be a lot of literary and science fiction writers wishing they had written The Age of Miracles. I’m sure it’s going to spawn a lot of imitators.

JWH – 7/5/12

Forgotten Science Fiction: A For Andromeda by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot

In 1960, astronomer Frank Drake pioneered the concept of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) with Project Ozma.

In 1961, the BBC ran a seven-part TV show called A for Andromeda about a SETI success story, later made into a book by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot.

Sometimes forgotten science fiction is worth pursuing when it is first to explore a new idea.

I’m reviewing the novelization, and my edition is the 1964 Crest paperback. Only one complete episode and fragments of other episodes exist for the original television series, which featured Julie Christie in an early role. According to Wikipedia the idea was developed by Fed Hoyle, an astronomer and author of The Black Cloud, and expanded with characters and dialog by television producer John Elliot, who wrote most of the script, and probably the novelization, but Fred Hoyle is given top billing. Hoyle was a noted astronomer and I’m sure his name sold the book.

I wish the original television serial was available, because the clips on Youtube make it look pretty good for a 1961 science fictional TV show. The show was remade in 2006, but is not available on Netflix yet. Youtube does have the complete “Face of the Tiger” episode in 8 video parts – this will give you an idea of what it was like.

However, we do have the whole book if you’re willing to track down a used copy, because it’s been out of print since 2002, and never widely circulated.

As far back as 1896 Nikola Tesla suggested using radio to contact ETs, and in 1924 radio audiences had to endure 5 minute blocks of radio silence hoping astronomers could hear broadcasts from Mars, so the idea has been around for awhile, but it was never used all that much in science fiction.

The basic plot of the story is scientists discover a signal from space with instructions to build a computer, which then decodes further instructions for building life forms. Two other movies, along with A for Andromeda have covered this topic in film, first the 1955 This Island Earth, and more recently with the 1997 Contact. In all three, the early part of the story is about making SETI contact, and the rest of the story is about following the alien instructions. This Island Earth was based on a book by Raymond F. Jones, a long forgotten minor SF writer who had some moderate successes in the 1950s and 1960s. Contact, of course was based on Carl Sagan’s novel, and it’s probably the most famous SETI story.

James Gunn took a more realistic look at the idea in The Listeners from 1972, by having the story span a hundred years. Any real SETI conversation will take centuries if not thousands of years. Jack McDevitt tackled the subject in 1986 in The Hercules Text. Less well known, is His Master’s Voice by Stanislaw Lem, first published in 1968 in Poland, but with English translations still in print.

All of these stories deal with common themes and issues surrounding the impact of SETI contact. A for Andromeda was written during the early days of the cold war, so in that story, the message from the stars was mostly kept secret from the public. I don’t want to tell you much about A for Andromeda in this section because there’s not a whole lot of dramatic plot develop, so why give away what little there is. I read A for Andromeda just after reading The Day of the Triffids, and unfortunately Andromeda pales in comparison, because Triffids is a gripping classic page turner. A for Andromeda is an interesting read, especially if you like to read stories about messages from space, which I’ve discovered that I do.

Strangely, science fiction has seldom used SETI as a theme, even though it’s probably the most realistic of all alien contact methods. There are thousands of alien invasion stories, which says so much about our paranoia and lack of knowledge of physics and the reality of space travel. If we’re to make first contact with alien intelligences who live on planets orbiting nearby stars, the odds are almost 100% it will be through SETI contact.

I thought it interesting in A for Andromeda that the story was less about aliens and more about getting technology to uplift Great Britain’s falling status as a world power. It was also about computers and scientists working for secret government projects, and how the government has to spy on their own people because of national and industrial espionage. I got the feeling while reading A for Andromeda that the writers might have been influenced by Ian Fleming.

A for Andromeda is not a bad read, but it’s not a great one either – I’d mostly recommend it for the science fiction historian.

Analysis with Spoilers

Don’t read beyond this point if you haven’t read the novel and still plan to read it.

The aliens who send the message in A for Andromeda are very smart. They give instructions to build a computer that queries the Earthmen about what they know and then customizes the message and results for them. When the computer is finished it queries about the biological life on Earth, and then gives instructions for building a DNA sequencer. Then it produces a strange Cyclops creature that has a symbiotic relationship with the computer. From this experiment the computer learns more about Earth biology and then builds a beautiful young woman that the scientists call Andromeda. Part of the book is about her education. The novel doesn’t deal with artificial intelligence, but it gets very close.

As usual in these stories, some scientists are gangbusters to move forward as fast as possible hoping for a big technological payoff, while other scientists contemplate the horrors of what the aliens might be planning. In This Island Earth, A for Andromeda and Content, the message has instructions to build something. This is great for developing a novel plot, but I’m not sure if it’s realistic. Would we ever follow such instructions without many back and forth messages of getting to know the folks at the other end of the SETI phone line?

All these novels have another common problem – how to present alien intelligence that’s greater than our own? In This Island Earth the message turns out to be local, and the instructions to build a machine, a test to prove the scientists worthy of further contact and a flying saucer ride. The moviegoers are taken to a distant planet. In Contact, Jodi Foster is sent on a fantastic worm-hole jaunt to meet some rather god-like aliens, but upon her return her story is disbelieved. Most alien contact stories are about invading Earth, or weird comedies like Men in Black. Star Trek and Star Wars are both famous for developing alien diversity, but how serious have they ever been? Vulcan and Klingons aren’t very realistic aliens.

Science fiction seldom deals with the actual problems of SETI, making first contact and the dynamics of languages. A for Andromeda handles the later problem by having the human form Andromeda commune telepathically with the computer. Most real scientists believe our initial conversations will be about math, which will lead to physics, chemistry and eventually biology. It will take a long time before we get to religion, philosophy and technology.

In the end, Andromeda is accidently killed before she can communicate what she might know about distant worlds. The computer is destroyed before it’s real mission is revealed. In other words, Hoyle and Elliot chicken out rather than speculate about what the aliens might really want. There is a sequel, The Andromeda Breakthrough, but I haven’t read it or seen the TV show. It is available as a special DVD edition along with the remaining fragments of A for Andromeda, but it’s not available in the U.S. The Andromeda Breakthrough is available for digital rental and sale through Amazon, but I haven’t been tempted, it more about espionage.

Like I said in the first section, A for Andromeda is pleasant but mild read, mostly likely to appeal to readers who study SF literature.

JWH – 7/1/12