Daily Archives: July 27, 2021

A scene from Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Source: Netflix screenshot

It has become axiomatic to say that the world is becoming like science fiction. From mobile phones that speak to us (reminding Star Trek fans of tricorders), to genetically modified foods, to the Internet of Things and the promise of self-driving cars, people in industrialised nations live immersed in technology. Daily life can thus at times seem like visions from the pulp science fiction of the 1920s and 1930s either a world perfected by technology, manifested in events such as the 1939 Worlds Fair, with its theme The World of Tomorrow; or a dystopian nightmare, such as Aldous Huxleys Brave New World (1932).

If we think about science fiction (sf) in terms of the genres connections to pressing issues in 21st-century culture, no topic is more urgent than climate change and the ways it promises to transform all aspects of human life, from where we live to how we cultivate our food to what energy sources will fuel our industries.

The issue is so pressing that some have started to use the term cli-fi for climate fiction but this faddish coinage obscures a longer history of sfs engagement with the environment and leaves unexamined the question of why sf has proven such a valuable genre for thinking about environmental futures. Even before the idea of climate change took hold, the genre embraced the geological and evolutionary timescales of 19th-century science and began to think of the planet as something that preceded our species and could conceivably continue without us. Such conceptualisations of the planet as a changeable environment turned the tradition of apocalyptic fiction toward mundane visions of environmental catastrophe instead of divine judgment.

A key early way such ideas circulated was through the changing imaginary about Mars: In the late 19th century, telescopic observations seemed to suggest the planet was covered in canals, which American astronomer Percival Lowell hypothesised were an irrigation technology, an idea taken up in Edgar Rice Burroughss A Princess of Mars (1912), among other fictions. When this idea was disproven by better telescopes, sf often depicted Mars as a once-inhabited planet whose civilisations had died out due to drought, presaging a fate that might also befall Earth.

In Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars trilogy (19931996), about terraforming Mars to create an atmosphere and enable human colonisation, technology is used to make these canals a material reality. The trilogy represents the viewpoints of several different factions over the decades-long process of changing the surface of Mars, including characters who argue in defense of leaving its environment unchanged. This is the best-known science fiction series about engineering planetary environments, most of which express themes about environmental protection and sustainability, but some of which celebrate a fantasy of total human control over the environment and planetary weather.

Early sf offered spectacles of disastrous destruction of cities and their populations but unlike more recent works did not posit anthropogenic causes. Disease rather than climate was more frequently imagined as humanitys end in these works, including Mary Shelleys The Last Man (1826) and M.P. Shiels The Purple Cloud (1901). At times such tales of massive destruction serve as opportunities to remake society without much environmentalism, such as Sydney Fowler Wrights Deluge (1928), in which existing cultures are wiped out by earthquake-induced floods, distilling remaining populations into a hardier strain. This motif begins to take on a more environmentalist orientation in later works such as John Christophers The Death of Grass (1956), about a mutation that kills all cereal crops, a device that draws attention to humanitys dependence on other species, a theme also present in George R. Stewarts Earth Abides (1949), in which current humanity cannot survive, but the planet can.

Such works are interested in how the remnants of humanity might restore civilisation and what form it might take, and thus remain anthropocentric in their focus. They are notable, however, for their emphasis on connections between humans and the natural world, resisting a technophilic tone of much contemporary sf that envisioned extensively mechanised futures. Moreover, they stand out from other contemporary postapocalyptic fiction in positing a premise other than nuclear war for the end of life as we know it and in explicitly linking images of destruction to environmental themes.

With the more experimental sf of the New Wave period and its relationships to contemporary countercultures, an overtly environmentalist sf appears, although here too fictions of apocalyptic collapses are sometimes more metaphorical than literal. This is especially true of J.G. Ballards stylistically compelling disaster novels, The Wind from Nowhere (1961), The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964) and The Crystal World (1966), each of which depicts the world destroyed by what we would now call climate change high winds, flood, drought and a mysterious force that crystallises matter, respectively.

Ballard uses his transformed setting to interrogate the sterility and violence of the world prior to these disasters rather than comment specifically on environmental themes; nonetheless, his vivid depictions of the monstrosities inherent in industrialisation, capitalism and colonialism evoke topics that would usually be addressed in work by activist authors.

At roughly the same time, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring (1962), a trenchant critique of the use of pesticides in agriculture, which opens with A Fable for Tomorrow in which Carson depicts a future where a blight destroys all life in Anytown, USA, an outcome that Carson traces back to disruptions in the ecosystem caused by pesticides.

Carson thus demonstrates the rhetorical power of fictional, futuristic depictions to shape public understandings. In attempts to discredit her scientific credentials and disparage her personal character, Carsons opponents were as vociferous and vile as any Ballardian antagonist. Nonetheless, her work, alongside the Club of Rome report The Limits to Growth (1972) published a decade later, fostered new ways of thinking about ecological futures, premised on sustainability.

Silent Spring energised a contemporary environmental movement, which had significant overlaps with contemporary antiwar and antinuclear activism. The first Earth Day was proposed in 1970, aimed at making air and water pollution a mainstream public concern, and eventually resulting in the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of legislation related to pollution and endangered species.

Earth Day drew on the sf imaginary both in terms of Carsons use of futuristic narrative and in the image of the planet as seen from space as a symbol on a flag designed by John McConnell, which was intended to convey the interconnectedness of all life on the planet. The turn toward imagination as a powerful rhetorical technique in the environmental movement is also apparent in the launch of the Whole Earth Catalog, a countercultural magazine started in 1968 and published until 1998, which also featured an image of Earth from space on its first cover indeed, this is the whole Earth of its title. An early example of DIY activism, the magazine fostered an imaginative community oriented toward an ideal of living more sustainably, addressed, in this way, to inhabitants of that future.

As with feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, environmental activists turned explicitly to sf and its relationship to the utopian tradition to promote countercultural values. The most famous example is Ernest Callenbachs Ecotopia (1975), written as if it were the notebook of William Weston, a journalist who in 1999 is visiting and reporting on a society in the Pacific Northwest that seceded from America to establish a new polis defined by sustainability, recycling, minimal use of fossil fuels, localised food production and gender equality.

Like the authors of 19th-century utopias, Callenbach demonstrates an imaginative possibility for how one might live otherwise. Moreover, the novel suggests that changed relationships to environmental ideals require transformation of other aspects of social life, such as patriarchy and capitalism, themes that persist in ecological sf today. Similar ideas about the need to address problems of poverty and discrimination alongside pollution and environmental destruction are found in fiction by Kim Stanley Robinson, unquestionably the most important living sf writer addressing environmental themes.

There are then dystopian works of environmental sf such as John Brunners The Sheep Look Up (1972). Taking its title from a line in Miltons Lycidas about hungry sheep failing to be fed by a corrupt church, the novel scathingly critiques the entrenched capitalist system that simultaneously destroys the environment and markets products designed to ameliorate the risks caused by contaminated air, water and food. The plot concerns Nutripon, a manufactured food sent to developing countries as part of an American aid package. A shipment causes hallucinations that result in violent behavior, and some believe this is a deliberate attempt to eliminate people of colour.

Meanwhile, in the United States, money is less and less able to insulate the rich from contaminated food and water. Finally, we learn the Nutripon shipment was contaminated by toxic waste in the factorys water supply, an accident. In a world of irresponsible polluters who value profit above all else, a conspiracy is not required to produce genocide. Brunners work stands out for its global scope and its recognition that the damage done by colonialism continues in and is exacerbated by pollution.

Frank Herberts Dune (1965) is often understood as a prescient novel about climate change, given its desert setting and its invention of several technologies for survival with a minimum of water. It is the first novel is what would become a sprawling franchise. The original novel recounts the political machinations by which young Paul Atreides is displaced from his inheritance as a feudal coloniser of Arrakis, lives among nomadic Indigenous peoples while mastering psionic powers, and eventually reclaims his dynasty while also fulfilling a messianic prophecy.

Alongside Robert Heinleins Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), in which a libertarian, free love-promoting human comes to Earth from Mars, Dune was read widely outside sf circles when it was published. Heinleins strange protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, preached a hippie-like philosophy best expressed by the novels invented term grok, that is, comprehension so intense as to approximate union with the object of attention, a phrase soon widely used beyond sf. Both novels were embraced by a youthful college audience who saw in them a reflection of their own anti-establishment values.

But the shift from pollution to climate change as the main engine of dystopian futures doesnt firmly take hold until the 21st century. The explicit turn to sf as a tool for environmental activism characterises this second generation of writers, who often write fiction about climate change and are involved in activism.

Wanuri Kahius important short film Pumzi (2009), depicting the regeneration of a future Africa after a period of intense environmental loss, shows the power of new voices taking up these themes. Another prominent example is Paolo Bacigalupi, who addresses the uneven global effects of climate change. His young-adult trilogy Ship Breaker (2010), The Drowned Cities (2012) and Tool of War (2017) is set in a world changed by sea-level rise and projects both growing economic precarity and the rise of authoritarian governments in such circumstances.

Bacigalupis most forceful novel to date is The Water Knife (2015), based on a short story originally published in the environmental magazine High Country News, about near-future water wars as California, Arizona and Nevada all battle to control the dwindling resources of the Colorado Basin. It is mainly an indictment of legal manipulations that keep water rights in the hands of an elite, portraying with sympathy the fraught ethical choices left to the disenfranchised, and it concludes with a glimmer of hope in green technologies distributed by a Chinese government that is mostly in the background of the narrative.

Octavia Butlers Parable series (1993-1998) is a truly prescient work about climate change. One of the few writers of color to achieve prominence in the field during the 20th century, her reputation has only grown in the years since her death in 2006. In this series, she imagines a future California beset by massive displacements fueled by climate change. Although published more than 20 years ago, these books read as plausible futures, perhaps now more than ever. Unlike Bacigalupis despair, Butlers novel is rooted in hope, although she depicts an equally grim future. Like her Xenogenesis series, this work demands of its audience that we confront the difficult task of building communities in the face of loss, displacement and tensions about diversity.

The Parable series imagines a future religion, Earthseed, as the core of this new kind of community. As Shelley Streeby outlines in Imagining the Future of Climate Change (2018), Butlers work has inspired activists, some of whom have formed the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network to cultivate the values Butler espoused, treating her sf as a manual for alternative lifeways what Streeby calls a place to practice the future. Streeby connects this network to other instances of imaginative activism in 21st-century environmental politics, particularly by people of color and Indigenous communities, showing powerful ways that sf is becoming a rhetoric for activist practice.

Butlers vision insists that environmentalism must proceed in tandem with other social justice movements that counter racism and colonialism, a perspective that also informs N.K. Jemisins celebrated Broken Earth trilogy, the most important recent work to address climate change and social injustice as mutually constitutive problems.

Kim Stanley Robinson has written about the environmental damage caused by capitalism throughout his career, generally offering the hope that technology can ameliorate our dire situation. Climate change is most centrally the focus in his near-future Science in the Capital trilogy (2004-2007), about the struggle to mobilise politics and science together to confront the inevitability of climate change. The first novel, Forty Signs of Rain (2004), focuses on structural barriers that bar research and legislation that could address climate change, and it ends with the spectacle of a flooded Washington, DC.

The second novel, Fifty Degrees Below (2005), is set during a mini Ice Age caused by the halting of the Gulf Stream, and it explores possible technical options to ameliorate this changed climate: a lichen engineered to capture more carbon, re-salinating the ocean to restart the Gulf Stream, and various tools and clothing that enable a high-tech Paleolithic lifestyle with a smaller carbon footprint than the lifeways of urbanised modernity. The final novel, Sixty Days and Counting (2007), offers the utopian possibility of an elected US president who will prioritise climate change and who institutes a set of policies that push the U.S. economy into sustainable energy, while acknowledge the global disparities that are the legacy of capitalism. A number of the technological amelioration projects succeed, and we are left on the cusp of a new chapter in history.

Appearing about the time that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, we can see in retrospect that the trilogy addresses issues of extreme weather, just as we can see now that Katrina was only the first of what has since become the new normal for the climate: heat waves, cold waves and extreme storms. The vast scope of his work speaks to Robinsons careful attention to the complexity of climate change and the institutional barriers that prevent even acknowledging this reality in some circles. His wide cast of characters enables readers to see how politicians, lobbyists, funding agencies, displaced migrants and families in America are all part of the network that informs how climate change is perceived.

The utopianism of Robinsons conclusion seems a bit forced, perhaps, but he is careful to show the number of people and institutions that must come together to enact meaningful social change as he refuses to simply capitulate to the cynical despair that fuels Bacigalupis work. Although perhaps not self-evidently a climate change novel, Robinsons Shaman (2013), set during the last ice age and recounting how early humans adapted to a changing climate, further reinforces his ideas about the value of elements of Paleolithic ways of living with, rather than in opposition to, ones environment.

Science fiction is a genre that has long used its projected other worlds to offer commentary on our material (and contemporary) one, especially to remind us that this world is open to change. There is myriad evidence that authors from outside the genre use sf techniques in precisely this rhetorical way. Consider Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conways polemical The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future (2014), written as if by a Chinese historian in 2393 who is reflecting back to theorise why Western civilisations failed to act, despite clear signs of their looming collapse.

Similarly, popular books such as Alan Weismans The World without Us (2007) and the documentary television series Life after People (2009) encourage us to reflect on how humans have changed our environments as they offer speculative visions of ecosystems continuing without us, erasing the technological signs of human habitation. Or consider Werner Herzogs strange environmental film, The Wild Blue Yonder (2005), which is part documentary, part sf narrative, fused with NASA footage of outer space, deep sea photography and a scripted narrative about an alien species who destroyed their ecosystem and seek to relocate to Earth.

Environmental rhetoric, like speculative design, an approach that encourages thinking about and designing possible futures in a meaningful way, is one of the main places we see sf become a discursive way to grasp the present. Lindsay Thomas, in a compelling article on preparedness discourse, argues that sf provides a counterdiscourse to the kinds of speculative projections found in disaster planning, including government projections about climate change. Whereas documents such as the Department of Defense 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, cited by Thomas, cultivate feelings of neutral detachment and automated response to already anticipated scenarios, sf about climate change enables readers to experience multiple temporalities beyond the individual human life.

Preparedness discourse responds to change, understood as disaster, through strategies of containment. But science fiction offers something much more. It offers us a way of thinking and perceiving, a toolbox of methods for conceptualising, intervening in and living through rapid and widespread change and the possibility to direct it toward an open future that we (re)make.

Sherryl Vint is professor of media and cultural studies and of English at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of several books, most recently Science Fiction, from which this article is adapted. It was originally published by MIT Press Reader and has been republished here with permission.

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A Century of Science Fiction That Changed How We Think About the Environment - The Wire Science

If you want to see some of the toughest, most hardy organisms on the planet, youre going to need a microscope. Microbes bacteria, amoebas, archaea, and so on can live just about anywhere, from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the tallest mountain. Theres trillions of them in your body right now and they can even survive in the cold void of space.

So you can imagine what a surprise it must have been for Noah Fierer and his team of microbial ecologists to find somewhere with no microbial life at all.

Viable microbes have been detected in even the most inhospitable environments and it is widely assumed that all environments on Earth should contain detectable microorganisms, wrote the team in their study published last month in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. This assumption is likely incorrect.

Given how ubiquitous microbes are across the planet, it was no mean feat to find somewhere they hadnt already colonized. In fact, the researchers had to take themselves all the way to the Shackleton Glacier in Antarctica, where the unique mix of cold, dry, and salty conditions combine to make one of the least hospitable environments on Earth.

Its the combination of multiple very challenging environmental conditions that restricts life more than just one acting by itself, study co-author Nicholas Dragone explained in Science News. Its a very different sort of restriction than, say, just high temperature.

Using a range of tests, the researchers analyzed more than 200 soil samples from the region looking for evidence of microscopic life. And while the vast majority contained enough microbes for the team to detect and classify the various species, a good 20 percent turned up no microbial DNA at all.

We are not suggesting that we have found lifeless or sterile soils, nor have we identified the low temperature threshold for life, cautions the paper. However, our inability to detect microbes or microbial activity in certain soils suggests that these surface soils represent a limit to microbial activity and survival driven by the cold, dry, and salty environmental conditions.

Now, the discovery of, essentially, nothing may not seem like a big deal, but it really is. You see, microbes are one of our best bets in the search for extraterrestrial life, and a lot of astrobiologists have got pretty excited recently about the prospect of a bunch of the microscopic creatures burping on Mars. But if there are places on Earth where no microbes can be found, Fierer and his team say, its probably not going to be easy to find them on Mars.

The combination of conditions found in the surface soils of the Shackleton Glacier are similar to those found on the surface of Mars, the paper explains. Given that Martian soils are much older, experience similar or even harsher conditions, and contain even higher concentrations of the same salts our results suggest that searching for active life in surface soils on Mars is unlikely to return positive results.

On the other hand, maybe we shouldnt lose hope. Finding life on Mars may be a long shot, but finding life on Earth is generally pretty easy which is why some in the scientific community think the results of the study must be a simple false-negative.

Certainly, there were things there, Jeff Bowman of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who was not involved in the research, told Science News This is Earth.

This is an environment that is massively contaminated with life.

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Scientists Went To The Ends Of The Earth And Found Nothing. Here's Why That's Important. - IFLScience

Welcome to the latest, action-packed episode of Billionaires in Space. In case you missed the most recent action: Sir Richard Branson made it to the edge of space in his Virgin Galactic rocket plane. That put him ahead of fellow filthy rich pioneers Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Bezos hit the skies Tuesday in his Blue Origin New Shepard rocket and space capsule. Musk, it seems, is playing a longer game. No mere space tourism for him. He wants to colonize Mars.

Some argue that such explorations represent the true spirit of adventure and enterprise. After all, Branson and Bezos didnt just fly in their own vessels; they also paid for them. Others, however, are already singing a different tune, one that dates to the days following the original moon landing. If you dont already know it, now is a good time to acquaint yourself with Gil Scott-Herons Whitey on the Moon.

The preeminent spoken word artist of the 1970s and 80s, and a spiritual and stylistic forefather of hip-hop, Scott-Heron was known for his rhyming take-downs of American hypocrisy and inequality. His most famous song, 1971s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, drew a series of lines between commercialism and genuine social change (The revolution will not go better with Coke / The revolution will not fight germs that may cause bad breath / The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.)

Whitey on the Moon arrived one year earlier, in February 1970, less than a year after the moon landing. Scott-Heron wasnt the only one protesting the space race. In his 2003 paper Public opinion polls and perceptions of US human spaceflight, Roger D. Launius writes: Consistently throughout the 1960s a majority of Americans did not believe Apollo was worth the cost, with the one exception to this a poll taken at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969. And consistently throughout the decade 45-60 percent of Americans believed that the government was spending too much on space.

This was also the age of the Kerner Commission, convened to examine the urban uprisings sweeping the country during the 60s; and the Moynihan Report, a study of African American families. But Scott-Heron didnt need such official accounts. He had a front-row seat to the nations racial and economic inequality. While the U.S. was spending some $28 billion (or $288 billion when adjusted for inflation) to reach the moon, poverty was running rampant back on Earth.

Or, as Scott-Heron put it over a pulsing bongo beat: Was all that money I made last year (for Whitey on the moon) / How come there aint no money here (Hm! Whiteys on the moon).

In other parts of the song, Scott-Heron provides close-ups to go with the overview, how a rat done bit my sister Nell and I can't pay no doctor bill. He then connects the macro view of the space race to the personal: Ten years from now I'll be payin' still. Here Scott-Heron conjures imagery right out of Richard Wrights Native Son, with its vision of Chicagos Black Belt, where rodents are tangible messengers of poverty. It should be noted that Scott-Heron was hardly the only Black person protesting Apollo 11. Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr.'s successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, called the moon landing an inhuman priority.

The song continues to echo through pop culture. In the 2018 movie First Man, a rather melancholy drama about Neil Armstrong, Fort Worths Leon Bridges appears briefly as Scott-Heron, performing Whitey against the backdrop of an anti-NASA protest. More recently, the since-canceled Black sci-fi drama Lovecraft Country used the song for both an episode title and musical accompaniment and commentary on a mystical brand of white power.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, global warming portends all manner of catastrophe, we can't quite get COVID under control, race relations are plummeting and democracy is under attack. Branson and Bezos know this, even in their spaced-out state. Musk, in his quest to colonize Mars, seems all too ready to spend his money, cut his losses and leave all of these problems behind.

Sure, spaceflight has delivered plenty of benefits to humanity but its hard to reconcile that with vain tourism. To paraphrase Scott-Heron, theres plenty wrong down here. Why so eager to fly away up there?

Vognar is a freelance writer in Houston.

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Opinion: Whitey back on the moon? 1970s song is anthem for Americans bemoaning billionaire space race - Houston Chronicle

A host of high-profile websites including UPS and Airbnb went dark yesterday. Screenshot

Good morning and welcome to 10 Things in Tech. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.

Let's get started.

1. A lot of websites went dark yesterday. UPS, FedEx, US Bank, Airbnb, and other major websites saw outages beginning around noon yesterday, but the issue was fixed within an hour. What we know about what happened.

2. Mark Zuckerberg said he wants to turn Facebook into "a metaverse company." The CEO said Facebook will transform from a social media company to the center of the metaverse. That sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, so here's a brief explainer.

3. Reclusive billionaire Larry Page has been hiding out in Fiji for the past year, sources say. The Google cofounder has been off the grid for months - but we found he's been dwelling on islands that have been closed to most travelers during the pandemic. What's Page been doing in Fiji?

4. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk want to colonize space, but both of their ideas have some problems. From thinning bones to toxic plants on Mars, here are the six biggest issues with their plans.

5. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is going to cut its first sample of Martian rock. Within the next two weeks, the rover will use a laser to collect a rock sample that will help scientists search for signs of ancient life. More on that here.

6. More than half of Silicon Valley workers say they would avoid an employer that banned political discussions. Two surveys asked workers their thoughts on being able to discuss politics at work, and found that most employees want that freedom. Here's what else the surveys found.

7. Wally Funk was the only endearing thing about Jeff Bezos's spaceflight. The passengers on Blue Origin's first human flight - a pair of billionaire brothers and a millionaire investor's teen son - didn't quite reflect Jeff Bezos' message of accessibility. Our science reporter explains how Funk was the flight's saving grace.

Story continues

8. A majority of super-rich family offices own or are interested in crypto. Many investment firms of the rich increasingly see crypto as a hedge against inflation, a survey from Goldman Sachs said. Get the full rundown.

9. Disney+ streaming chief reveals his launch strategy and global expansion hurdles. Plus, he gave us some insight into what he looks for when he's hiring (hint: he's looking for "great athletes''). Read our exclusive interview.

10. A tiny-home startup that built a house for Elon Musk wants to crowdfund $50 million from Tesla fans. Boxabl gained national attention when Musk said that he was living in a tiny unit after selling his several multimillion-dollar homes. Here's how the company wants to use that recognition to emerge as a dominant player in the industry.

Compiled by Jordan Erb. Tips/comments? Email jerb@insider.com or tweet @JordanParkerErb.

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10 things in tech: Larry Page in Fiji - Zuck's metaverse - Web outages - Yahoo News