Using the panel discussions of the most
recent World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, August 2015, I will jump
off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION
given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This is event #3084. The link is
provided below...
2015: The Year of the Dwarf Planets In 2015, spacecraft visited the dwarf
Planets Ceres and Pluto for the first time. I will discuss what a “dwarf planet
is,” and then take a look at Ceres and Pluto, and how they may help the
settlement of the Solar System. Both bodies look to be reservoirs of large
amounts of relatively accessible ice and, in Pluto’s case, other elements, such
as nitrogen, needed to sustain colonies in space.
G. David Nordley.
I’ve been
reading G. David Nordley’s science fiction for over twenty years and have
enjoyed every minute of it. Often the thing I enjoy most is the “reality” of
his fiction. From his own website: “As a writer, his main interest is the
future of human exploration and settlement of space, and his stories typically
focus on the dramatic aspects of individual lives within the broad sweep of a
plausible human future. Trying to keep up with just what is plausible is a
challenge, but he recycles his research for occasional nonfiction articles. He
continues to write a few pieces of short fiction each year, but is currently
concentrating on novels, with three complete books looking for publishers and
two more in serious production efforts.”
While I’m
probably wrong, I don’t RECALL any of this stories including Faster Than Light
spaceships, interstellar empires, or aliens, though his recent collection AMONG
THE STARS has eight that take place beyond Earth – though without aliens in the
classic sense.
Most of the
time, he wrote about people interacting with realistic technology in the near
future close to home. He’s an astrophysicist by training and an astronautical
engineer by military experience and advanced education, so his grounding in
reality is solid. While I like aliens, I also enjoy thinking about the real
future my grandchildren might experience among the planets and stars.
Tangent to this
discussion, I’ve begun to read the MARS books of Kim Stanley Robinson, and I’m
almost done with RED MARS. In it, there’s much discussion of smashing asteroids
and comets into the surface to help create an atmosphere; and there’s an
important scene where the first ice asteroid skims the air envelope of Mars and
vaporizes, adding water and elemental oxygen and hydrogen to an atmosphere that
is primarily carbon dioxide.
Nordley’s
seminar on the use of Pluto and Ceres – so-called dwarf planets – to create
Solar colonies must have been fascinating, but after reading RED MARS, I
wondered if any of the moral issues raised in Robinson’s book made it into the
discussion. Much of RED MARS is about technological advances playing out on the
surface of the red planet; everything from humidifiers, “pollution gas
generators”, moholes, genetically engineered algae, and super trees, all the
way to the modification of the Human genome to extend life. The book is thick
with technological ideas.
But I think that
the reason it was so popular was that it delved into the moral and religious
issues of Human “manifest destiny”. Certain characters repeatedly question the
rightness of terraforming Mars to Human specifications. Some want Mars to
remain pristine and untouched; others want the technology to be restrained;
others want to slam asteroids into the surface and change everything right
away.
I have no idea
if the argument ever arose here. Given G. David Nordley’s body of work, if the
issue was raised, it wasn’t a major plot point; if it wasn’t, maybe it’s something
we, as a writing and reading community need to “insist” on at gatherings like
this. Maybe it’s something we as writers need to make sure we include, because
Human manifest destiny is an idea I’m not sure Humans, as a species, have
managed to shake. Take the poisonous air of New Delhi (http://qz.com/281251/here-is-why-india-has-no-clue-how-bad-its-air-pollution-problem-is/)
and invisible sunrises in Beijing (http://world.time.com/2014/01/17/sunrise-in-smoggy-beijing/)
as two pieces of evidence backing up my statement.
I hope we talk
about it a lot.
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