Posts Tagged ‘Science Fiction’
RadCon was in town last week (RadCon, in the Tri-Cities, Washington. . . near where the Hanford Site is located. . . get it, RadCon. . . oh, never mind). I hauled both of the youth over to the Red Lion in Pasco to participate. They’re not into cosplay, and didn’t show up in costume, though my daughter did buy some steampunk-themed welding goggles. She also expressed an interest in the folks in neo-apocalyptic garb including respiratory protection. We saw several folks wearing half-face air-purifying respirators (I started telling her that the cartridges with the magenta stripes on them meant they were for filtering radioactive substances except tritium and noble gases, but stopped when I noticed that her eyes started glazing over), and one young woman in a faux-U.S. Army helmet, World War II style and faux-World War I full-face canister respirator (what most people would call a “gas mask”). I said she could have one for her birthday if she’d like.
The mixture of lectures, vendors, game rooms and people wandering about in costume made for a pleasant venue. It was clear that my kids (kids, hah – they’re close to adults now) were in their element there – my son pondered attending a lecture presented by some science-fiction authors about writing about time travel; over the years we’ve had several discussions regarding the nature of time travel, after I had given him a copy of Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace. Later, both of them sat in on a lecture on character development. In that one, my daughter asked a question about how to make a whiny, angst-ridden, emo character interesting. The participants struggled with that for a moment, until my son chimed in “like Anakin”, which provoked groans and chuckles from participants and the panel alike, but got the point across.
I couldn’t participate as much as I would have liked, since the whole work-life balance thing isn’t going so well right now. However, I attended a talk on protecting ourselves from collision with near-Earth asteroids. . . talk about a major environmental problem that is being almost totally ignored . . , which included on the panel Larry Niven, looking like the stereotypical grandpa of the “you kids get off my lawn” variety. I quickly got bored and didn’t sit through the whole session, since it was focused on the cool technologies that in theory could be deployed to save the Earth from asteroid impaction. I’m into cool technology as much as the next geek, but there’s the practical side of me who’s interested in hearing about the societal and technological changes involved in putting us on the path to achieve such a deployment (. . . boring. . .), and when are we going to pull our heads out of our asses and get on with it. . . . Sorry, this isn’t intended to be a rant. But the list of Manhattan Project-sized projects on the to-do list (manage climate change, achieve energy independence, preserve biodiversity, keep big rocks from dropping from orbit onto our heads) is starting to add up.
Attending a science fiction and fantasy con prompted me to think about the stories I’ve read with an environmental health theme. There’s Norman Spinrad’s short story Carcinoma Angels, where the hero is a cancer victim who uses guided imagery to direct his own molecular and cellular defense mechanisms and save himself, but can’t wake from his drug-induced trance; John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, with it’s unsubtle message about unsustainable lifestyles including a scene in which hallucinogenic chemical warfare agents leaching into groundwater from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal make people in Denver crazy; Cordwainer Smith’s short story The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal, with a planet where being female is carcinogenic, a foretelling of life with endocrine disruptors including a frank description of homosexual lifestyles (you see, everyone has to become male in order to survive. . .). While it doesn’t harp on the subject, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy does mention the problem with space travel of astronauts accumulating potentially life-shortening radiation doses, though he pulls out the plot device of anti-aging drugs to offset that problem and keep his characters into the multi-generational story. I did enjoy the Mars Trilogy with it’s themes of ecological economics, and using the mission to Mars to give aerospace defense contractors something to do other than build implements of destruction. Maybe this whole topic could be a workshop at next year’s con.