< It might not surprise anyone here that I have become a CliFi obsessionist
with Kim Stanly Robinson's stuff well represented ("Ministry for the Future"
standing out well above the others). His Red/Green/Blue Mars series is a good
complement with the social/technological/spiritual implications of Terraforming
there. >
Huh. I found MftF drawn-out and boring with distracting little nonsense
chapters interleaved. I don't see why it is popular. A few good ideas here
and there but couldn't care less about the characters. It could be massively
compressed.
Marcus
________________________________
From: Friam <[email protected]> on behalf of Steve Smith
<[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 5:26 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Cautionary Tales: CliFi
DaveW -
I too am a Bacigalupi fan, "Water Knife" in particular, also "Windup Girl" but
for different reasons.
It might not surprise anyone here that I have become a CliFi obsessionist with
Kim Stanly Robinson's stuff well represented ("Ministry for the Future"
standing out well above the others). His Red/Green/Blue Mars series is a good
complement with the social/technological/spiritual implications of Terraforming
there. The 2015 Loosed Upon the
World<https://www.amazon.com/Loosed-upon-World-Anthology-Climate/dp/1481450301/ref=asc_df_1481450301/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312029683605&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5512945638363124067&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9030505&hvtargid=pla-491283653239&psc=1>
anthology of Climate Fiction includes contributions from Bacigalupi, Robinson,
Atwood among others.
Most recently, I read Neal Stephenson's well crafted "Termination Shock" which
I feel is way too focused on TechnoPhilic GeoEngineering escape conceptions but
as is his style he covers the sociopolitical implications of Climate Change
*and* our response to it well with his very unique style.
The classic (pre)CliFi (for me) is Santa Fe's own Roger Zelazny (RIP) 70s
"Damnation Alley" which was made into a very weak B-movie (as most SF was
before the budgets started getting gargantuan (e.g. Star Wars/Trek/Gate/???).
Bruce Sterling's 1994 Heavy Weather was a good (early) dip into the
implications of climate change on extreme weather from the perspective of a
gaggle of Storm Chasers. Another NM author(s) is Stephen Gould and Laura
Mixon's "GreenWar!". There are surely earlier examples, but I'm not recalling.
Of course one could press biblical things like the Deluge (Genesis) or the 4
horsemen of the Apocalypse in Genesis, Zecharia, Revelations...
Jack Williamson's (RIP) (New Mexico's amazing son raised on classic Scientific
Romances and contributing his own work right at the beginning of the Golden
Age). Terraforming
Earth<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/898087.Terraforming_Earth> is a "Dont
Look Up" (asteroid smacking) scenario which does a good job IMO (I'm a big fan
of his life story and work) of addressing the (near) mortality of the human
species and Earth's biosphere itself. The friend who introduced me to him in
his 90s (died at 103?) knew him when he was a teen and provided him with the
title for this book, though his first choice was "Terraforming Terra", but the
publishers prevailed with "Earth" for arcane reasons. FWIW the OED's SciFi
inspired
neologisms<https://www.capstan.be/sci-fi-is-a-fertile-breeding-ground-for-neologisms-some-have-entered-everyday-language-and-even-scientific-jargon/>
credits Jack for coining "Terraforming" in a 1941 novel.
?Glen?'s invocation of the earth as a seed becoming an (naturally) empty husk
(an expelled placenta?, a recovering womb?) as we flee it has interesting
implications I hadn't thought of before... it is a good complementary
perspective to thinking of it as simply escaping our own self-fouled
water-hole. "Terraforming Earth" also puts it's own twist on this.
Ramble,
- Steve
On 1/25/22 2:05 PM, Prof David West wrote:
Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife. Excellent read, more for background on water
and the kinds of things people WILL do to access it, than the story line.
In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective,
assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez "cuts" water for the Southern Nevada Water
Authority, ensuring that its lush arcology developments can bloom in Las Vegas.
When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent
south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and
the landscape becomes more and more oppressive. There, he encounters Lucy
Monroe, a hardened journalist with her own agenda, and Maria Villarosa, a young
Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north. As bodies begin to pile up, the
three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger and more corrupt than they
could have imagined, and when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift
like sand, and the only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed
if anyone hopes to drink.
davew
On Tue, Jan 25, 2022, at 11:02 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Glen writes:
< I don't see how we can prune the combinatorial explosion of [im]possible
outcomes without deciding some kind of objective at the start, even if it's
super vague like a Gaia-ish homeostatic health of the biosphere. >
One could imagine a sort of Mad Max scenario out in the streets where the Whole
Foods deliveries are intercepted by the street dwelling climate refugees? Or
large compounds where food, water, temperature-controlled clean air were
ensured for a price? Take all the rusting metal sitting around from Trump's
wall and build bigger fences around estates? Green Zones, like in the Iraq
sense?
Marcus
________________________________
From: Friam <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]> on
behalf of glen <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 11:50 AM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
<[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] health care logistics
Well, OK. But the question still stands: Necessary for what objective?
The Siebert & Rees paper talks about shared values like "socially just
ecological sustainability", "salvage civilization", "one-earth living", etc.
And each one of their criticisms in section 3 also assume some values. So, I'm
guessing it's something like their objective that we're assuming as our
objective. And anything that does not target that objective isn't put into the
kitty of things we'll evaluate as possible or impossible. (E.g. the
second-earth idea where we abandon this earth as a husk is not part of the
conversation.)
I don't see how we can prune the combinatorial explosion of [im]possible
outcomes without deciding some kind of objective at the start, even if it's
super vague like a Gaia-ish homeostatic health of the biosphere.
On 1/25/22 06:39, David Eric Smith wrote:
> To say this is a value question is fair, glen, given my shorthands of
> language.
>
> However, I would like to split apart questions of "who wants what" from
> questions of "what can or cannot happen under what conditions, irrespective
> of what anybody wants". In principle we have ways to get at the latter
> question; we often do worse in getting any resolution out of the former.
> Maybe there is something basic in this? Our notion of truth is that on any
> properly-posed question, there should only be one durable answer. Whereas in
> the area of desires, we think it is either inescapable, or for many also
> desirable (a self-referential value judgment) that different answers coexist
> indefinitely.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>> On Jan 25, 2022, at 8:02 AM, glen
>> <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Necessary for what, though? We need the shared value(s) before we can ask
>> what response we'd get from the convergence on something that might be
>> necessary to adhere to that value. Is the shared value that biology on this
>> planet should be preserved and the thing we need to do is impossible? Or
>> perhaps the shared value that all "lower forms of life" were simply stepping
>> stones to the human organism, but to preserve the human organism is
>> impossible? Etc.
>>
>> As Jon likes to ask: What are we optimizing? If we can't agree on that, then
>> the responses to impossibilities will be as diverse as the values that
>> underlie those impossibilities. And, if that's the case, then we're back to
>> the clustering/homogenizing we see in any aspect of pop culture.
>>
>> On 1/24/22 17:21, David Eric Smith wrote:
>>> In a real situation where we decided something was necessary that we
>>> believed there was no way to do, somehow I feel like the same movie doesn't
>>> become the response. Something else does. What is that?
>>
>> On 1/24/22 17:34, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> Before I launch into a diatribe about why the hell we can't agree to basic,
>>> never mind interesting things:
--
glen
Theorem 3. There exists a double master function.
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