Nightmare Scenario

Ignorance is Bliss.

That's what they say, but in reality, proceeding along in ignorance leads to anything but bliss. I heard about a study recently that was centered around the phenomenon of deception and one of the conclusions they came to was that some of the happiest people are people that lie to themselves. Those that tell themselves that they are fine and everything is fine and manage to convince themselves of this despite all evidence to the contrary are rewarded with not only happiness, but success. It's just another variation on the old Ignorance is Bliss adage.

I've always been a big fan of Science Fiction, so I've read a lot of it over the years. Many Science Fiction writers are engineers or scientists by training that went into writing because they spend a lot of time thinking about why things are the way they are and now things should be if we could just plan an orderly transition into the future. I like history, too, and I always thought that History and Science Fiction were perfect wings spreading out from the present. They answer the important questions of where have we been and where we are going. So many of the authors look at all the elements of what led up to this point and project a future based on what they know. That future is sometimes quite rosy, but often is the result of some really nasty times. The scary part of knowing a lot of these tales is that many of the story elements used in them are coming true.

A lot of storylines center around a crisis where the carrying capacity of the planet becomes outstripped by rising population. The scenarios differ in severity. Some hint at belt tightening, or new laws restricting freedoms in order to conserve food or energy or space. Others take the dire route and outline food riots and all-out war for survival. Technology plays various roles in future dramas, sometimes riding in to save the day, other times riding in as the pale horse of the apocalypse.

The stories I'm specifically thinking about while I write about this are Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, The Stand by Stephen King, Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge, the Foundation series by Arthur C. Clark, the ancient history outlined by the Dune series by Brian Herbert, the backstory for the Terminator series, and the "history" of our upcoming times outlined by Star Trek (mostly Next Generation, but Enterprise too). Numerous short stories and other books touch on the subject, too.

I've been watching the Ethanol Boom over the past few years and noticed the unpleasant effect of unintended consequences. Due to high energy prices and instability in the world, it finally makes sense to start trying to make our own energy out of mostly corn. Half way through the "boom" of dozens of plants going up everywhere, people started talking about the downside of the scheme to grow our energy. Corn prices started to rise dramatically. But what the heck, it's not a boom without something exploding, right? So suddenly the profit numbers for ethanol production start to drop. These plants were not put up with efficiency in mind, they were constructed with low capital cost in mind. Not only is it so expensive to produce a gallon of ethanol, but no one wants to distribute it or use it because it's not a lot less expensive than gasoline (especially when you look at cost per mile you can drive). Then people start realizing that these plants use a lot of water and water is not something that is in such abundant supply that you can use it indiscriminately and not worry. Next, you start to hear about corn that used to go into food production drying up and people having a hard time feeding their cattle. Food prices start to rise. The reports say the food prices are rising a lot, but it's hard to tell unless you actually watch what you pay for things. The program that used to pay farmers not to try to farm marginally croplands and put them to rest for wildlife buffers has seen farmers withdrawing land and putting it back into production at an incredible rate. Recent rises in corn prices have caused land equal to the area of Rhode Island and Delaware to be brought out of this idling program and into production.

I heard that some countries are cutting off any export of food since they are finding food scarce all of the sudden. I've also heard that food prices are rising even faster in some parts of the world, cutting poor people off from a large portion of their daily intake. There is talk about food riots, so far just talk. Asia & Africa are supposedly the worst place to be right now in that respect, but Mexico, surprisingly, was listed as a place where food prices have really outstripped people's buying power and shortages are being felt. Some reports say the cost of food has doubled in some areas of the world.

Gasoline prices, in the mean time, keep going up and people are starting to personally feel the pinch. I grew up in the late 70s and up until just recently, they have been saying that gasoline is not as expensive now when you adjust for inflation. That is no longer true. Now gas is more expensive than it has ever been. This is starting to alter people's behaviors somewhat. It's not making people drive less, it's making them buy less of other things in order to feed their hungry gas tanks.

After energy and food, Water is due to become the next crisis. It already is in some parts of the world. I've heard for years that water will be the next spark to set off war in the Middle East. Fixed supplies of water and an ever increasing population make this a certainty. We're starting to see much more desalination plants going in around the world. This is a great solution except for the fact that it uses a huge amount of energy. And looking to the oceans has its limits, too. You may have heard about collapsing fish stocks due to overfishing, increasing dead zones near river deltas, and growing amounts of trash in our oceans.

So there are all these warning signs that a rough road is ahead of us. We've managed to curb widespread wars and learned to beat back many diseases, so our population isn't getting thinned out like it used to. We recognize a need for population control when it comes to deer, and justify hunting as a necessary thinning of the herd. There is no season on humans.

One thing is sure, if you ignore all this, life is sweet. For some reason, I can look at all this and not feel despair. I think there is a point past being realistic where it stops being depressing. One thing certain about human society, it doesn't make any fundamental changes until it is forced to. I think all these things coming to a head are just a wake up call that will force us to act. What we really need is a combination of solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, and fusion energy to power our growing energy needs. All these sources will have the added benefit of being clean as well as being renewable There is a place for biofuels, but more in the form of algae grown from our own wastewater than crops like corn. We'll have to learn to recycle our own waste back into drinking water. They have to do it in space, because space is a closed system, and Earth is too. We could afford to ignore that fact when our numbers were small, but there are enough of us now that there's no frontier or open space for us to move into. The days of the nomad or frontiersman are over. We'll have to learn to preserve the plants and animals of the world, because many of our solutions will come from them, their genetic tricks designed by nature and hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And their health and prosperity will be an indicator of our success. So rather than being bummed out by these prospects, I'm encouraged. We have a job to do and a sense of purpose to spur us on. What more could you ask from life?

Temporal Binocular vision

My wife was telling me about something that she read in the book Reading Lolita in Tehran. The assertion was that Middle-easterners are focused on history and Americans are focused on the future. My wife believes \that history should play a part in the decisions we make, and that those decisions are for what will happen in the future.

I thought about what she said about history and future, east and west, Muslim and Christian. I believe that Science Fiction has always appealed to me because it is a way of hoping for a better future (and sometimes showing a worse future to avoid). I think in some ways, it is my theology.

The problem is that either option, a person that only looks to the past, or a person that only looks to the future is like someone with only one eye. Using both eyes, you have binocular vision and you can focus on something and take in it's depth (actually, you have depth perception with binocular vision, so the analogy comes close).

New technology is a double edged sword. If you charge toward the future with a new innovation you have to keep in mind the effects. If you do not have a good idea of what happened up to now, or what usually happens when someone makes a similar change, you can have unintended consequences. Ignoring the past can cause problems, either with the technology itself or with society's resistance to change.

Only through being grounded in the past can you learn from it and move confidently into the future. This isn't just introducing technology, but in politics and diplomacy, too. Look at Iraq for instance. If we paid the slightest attention to Viet Nam, we would have known that it was not going to be easy, but instead, we just looked at securing oil for now. Sometimes politics are short sighted.

The problem with many people that are focusing on the future is that they are focusing on the future of next month or next year, and not 5, 10, 50, or 100 years from now. In a way, it's not even fair to say that they are looking toward the future, they are looking toward their immediate short term needs. This country used to do things like buy the Louisiana purchase because they knew there would be a time when it would make sense to control all the land between the seas, this during a time when a trip of 100 miles could be a week long ordeal, and there wasn't even a way to get across the country yet. That's foresight and vision. What we do now that passes for thinking about the future is the equivalent of wondering what's for lunch.

We're getting a little better with science in analyzing long term impacts of current decisions. Climate change science is helping to focus scientific thinking in this respect. Evolution, Geology, and Astrophysics all teach us to think about things in the long term. In science, it's easier to predict things. Certain principles can be studied and replicated, most fields of study have similar patterns that can be expected.

This vein of thought when focused on politics is not very satisfying. Politicians are not rewarded for looking at the long view. The current news cycle is the predominant focus, and the 2 year election cycle prevents anyone from thinking beyond the immediate future. True leaders had a sense of the length of history and their place in it. Many people do not realize that Abraham Lincoln was horribly unpopular in his time, but his steadfast focus on mending the Union saw him through some terrible times and kept him working through all the setbacks until he succeeded. Now he is considered the best President we have ever had. John Kennedy put us on the moon, in a time scale that was beyond what he could have hoped to still be President, if he had lived and been re-elected. We need this kind of leadership today when we look at the way we will use energy and what we will do with our nation's debt in the future. Because one thing is for sure about the future, stick around long enough, and it will come to pass.

The Ghost Brigades

Book Review: WARNING! WITH SPOILERS

You've been warned. I mowed through the last of the second book in the series by John Scalzi. It was also very good. Not quite as good as the first, but that one was up in the stratosphere, so we're still talking much better than most.

You got to the point where you really liked John Perry by the time the first book finished, so for those John Perry fans out there, there is no John here.

There is a nod to other science fiction stories. Scalzi has a group of people reading war fiction, and it's really a reading list of influences on his development. Interestingly, we've read most of the same material.

This version really got into how the Special Forces troops were made. It gets into the awakening and integration of the troops as well as their training. The computer brain interface allows them to have consciousness, even as they are first awakened. They talked about how they were able to clone a full grown adult in 16 weeks by accelerated development, which was cool. They talked about consciousness transfer, which was an interesting concept.

The main character is a clone that is made to house the consciousness, stored in a device, by a mad scientist that defected from the humans and was trying to serve his own goals, which unfortunately involved the slaughter of the human race.

He has the memories or personality of the defecting scientist downloaded onto him, but it doesn't take. So he is trained as a Special Forces soldier, only to have some of the memories and emotions of the bad guy come out gradually and incompletely.

They did another space drop in this one, and they had only one really active battle scene, although it focused more one the main character than the blood & guts you come to see.

In the end, the story was more about morals and honor, conceptual ideas, rather than the mechanics of how all this works. You find that the person that is accused of having no morals or sense of humor has the best of both of these. The way he kills the bad guy in the end is a very interesting twist.

There is a third book in the series, which I think I will wait a while to read. Perhaps when it comes out in paperback. I look forward to seeing more good things from John Scalzi in the future.

Old Man's War

WARNING: THIS BOOK REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS:

I found this book by John Scalzi by accident. I was looking for a book called The Forever War in a newly reissued version around Christmas and was told casually by the person at Barnes and Noble, who had read the Forever War, that this book was a little like it and also good. So I bought it and put it on a shelf for a month.

Then I read it in 3 days.

Absorbed is kind of a light word for my reaction to the book. I might also say entranced or enthralled, but that doesn't quite cover it either. Let's just say that I have not one critism of the book, it's excellent in every respect.

Probably my favorite aspect of the book, after the concept, is the dialog. Probably my favorite dialog is the part where John Perry talks with the Consu, a superior alien species, in order to find out information about humanity's enemies. It's not a negotiation, but a one sided conversation with a species that hates humans and doesn't care much what they say. The funny part is that John Perry has nothing to lose, so he talks with the irreverence of a high school kid with an attitude. It's fun.

The character development is very good. You really feel like you are getting to know John Perry well, and you really get to like him and feel some strange pride in his accomplishments.

The technology is very interesting. Cloning, consciousness transfer, integrated personal computers in your brain, the Skip Drive to get you around the cosmos without having to slog along in a straight line, nanobots, and advanced weapons spice up the story nicely. The space drop onto a planet is a cool touch, similar to a halo drop by our combat forces in real life.

The story builds nicely, because you know of some important things without knowing about them. The whole mystery of what is going to happen to them as their age is reversed is a wonderful mystery until it happens. Another favorite thing about the book is their time in basic training. The drill sergeant character is another high point in the book.

Threading through the book is the love story of John and his dead wife. It's poignant, believable, and interesting without weighing the book down with melancholy. I like the way the believability of the book is enhanced by this aspect of the story. You know that the character understands why things have to happen, and even understands what it is that he is feeling without being rendered useless by his feelings. That in itself makes John Perry a hero, but his matter of fact way of dealing with each new twist, shock, or surprise is what you really come to like.

I'm half way through the sequel, The Ghost Brigades. Not as compelling as the first book, but still head and shoulders over most books I've read. I'll write about it when I'm done.

Dune Series

CAUTION: Book Review with spoilers:

I can finally say I've finished the Dune series.

I read the original some time in High School. My brother and I read the original 3 books (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune), as well as all the later ones done by Frank Herbert's son, at roughly the same time. I had read the continuation of the classic line (God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse) by Frank Herbert years ago, and my brother read them more recently. I remember thinking that it was becoming more and more incomprehensible as Frank Herbert put out his last three sequels.

But that didn't stop the story from being intriguing and interesting. I like the way that the son stepped in and backfilled the original story, as well as taking the old storyline forward.

The continuation of the series was a collaborative effort between Brian Herbert, Frank's son, and Kevin J. Anderson. I just found out, after finishing the series, that Kevin J. Anderson did a lot of the Star Wars books. I'm glad I didn't know that. Most Dune purists probably think of Dune as being an intellectual exercise, and the Star Wars series is more like the pulp fiction branch of science fiction. Heavy on the action and adventure, light on the science and philosophy.

There was a different flavor to the continued series. The original series made the characters seem too complex to completely understand, while at the same time, more respectable and less human. The new series had the characters feeling more human, but also more shallow and superficial. It wasn't a major flaw, just a minor distraction.

The major draw of the continued series, both the backstory and the continued thread of the main story was all the background and explanation as to why things were the way they were. What was the real motivation of people and peoples - this is what made the whole saga more detailed, coherent, and complete.

That said, there were a couple of annoyances. The Deus Ex Machina of having the Oracle of Time simply fly in and solve the problem with the machine invasion and Omnius at the last second was a little too convenient to be satisfying. The fact that everyone simply stopped struggling and got along once Duncan Idaho merged with the machines and was found to be the ultimate Kwizatz Hadderach was not very interesting (it was satisfying, but not interesting). The entire conflict went from coming to a head to being resolved so quickly that you get literary whiplash.

So, in truth, what does the completion of the series accomplish? There were no loose ends left to tie up that I can think of. There is no reason to write more backstory or continued narrative. I have no curiousity about things, it's all been explained. I'm glad I read the series, it was interesting and an epic saga with many interesting characters and concepts. I'm left not feeling sad or nostalgic about the book, as the original three books of Dune left you feeling sympathy for the tragedy of Paul Atreides life. This one leaves you feeling like things will go on, only better now.

The conflict and messiness of the original core of the series is what made it interesting. Like a splinter in your brain, there's always some pressure and a little bit of pain, the issue never goes away completely. I think that I would have always felt that way if I hadn't read the series to the end, but now I find that I miss that feeling.

I hope that's not a comment on life in general. You think you are striving toward completion and contentment, but what does it mean when you're not satisfied being satisfied?

The Forever War

Joe Haldeman wrote a science fiction classic back in the 70s.

It was originally published as installments in the Science Fiction magazine Analog. Later it was published as a book and went on to win many awards and become quite well known.

My father subscribed to Analog, and I still do. I don't know if I read it originally in the magazine or as a book, but I know I used to have a dogeared copy of the book that I read several times. My brothers read it too, and we used to talk about it.

Recently, the author released an "Author's Preferred Version" of the book, as I heard on NPR from Nancy Pearl, author of the "Book Lust" series. Nancy is a librarian and prolific reader and has nice clean concise summaries of books that seldom fail to make me want to read the book.

So I went out and got the new version. It took me a day to read it.

Granted, I was sick (therefore immobile and not distracted) and it was familiar ground, but it was still impressive how smoothly the material flows in. A truly laminar work.

I did not know or realize until hearing Nancy Pearl's review that Joe Haldeman was a Viet Nam vet. He wrote the novel because of his experiences, which taught him that war is stupid and senseless. The chapters he was asked to remove and rewrite from the original version were deemed too depressing. Haldeman had great difficulty getting a publisher because they all feared that the public did not want another war protest book. Good fiction can divorce itself from the original inspiration and outline basic truths in a way that make you see universal rules that underlie our existence. I believe Haldeman achieved that with this book. I found myself throwing his thought template over the current situation, the Iraq War to see if any truisms emerged from it. There are definitely lessons that apply to all three wars, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Haldeman's fictional Forever War.

Beyond the depth of the work, there are also some very compelling and fun elements to it. I use the word fun even though it is somewhat inappropriate, but being a technophile, I love the gagets in this book.

While the stasis field, grenade launchers, missiles, gigawatt lasers, and immense ships with all their fighters and drones are interesting, the apex of his creation is the fighting suit. Part spacesuit and part exoskeleton, the suits tranform soldiers into their own tanks. They could be camoflagued with the flick of a wrist and enabled the soldier to see at any magnification or illumination he needed. They had unlimited food and recycling capabilities, emergency medical features, high tech communications, and finger lasers. Best of all, they had strength amplification circuits, so a person could leap incredibly high or crush things with their hands. Just this week, there was an item in the news about the military working to develop a soldier exoskeleton - possibly inspired by Haldeman's work? The other coolest thing about the story was that soldiers that lost a limb were taken to a hospital planet called Heaven and had their limbs regrown. Stem cell technology of the future.

Overpopulation, birth control, homosexuality, mind control, time dialation, future shock, and the inherent violence of the human species are all woven together in the story.

And it has possibly the most touching love letter I've read in the last chapter. So I would highly recommend this classic to anyone that enjoys a good action story, a good war story, or a good mirror to society and the human condition.