Featured Links - September 2, 2025

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Swans on the bay

• AI is unmasking ICE officers. Can Washington do anything about it?  "A new twist in the debate over surveillance tech raises tough questions for policymakers." As William Gibson said: "The street finds its own uses for things." 
• Reflections on Katrina: 20 Years Later. "People often ask me: What’s the worst hurricane you’ve ever personally seen? With over two decades in the hurricane and disaster space that’s taken me to the ground (or in the air) for nearly every major U.S. hurricane in that span, including Katrina, the answer to that question shouldn’t come so quickly. But it does."
• Alberta Separatists Say Trump Regime Offered Them $500,000,000 “Loan” To Break Up Canada. "Alberta’s separatist circuit is bragging about a half-billion-dollar “transition loan” they say was discussed with Trumpworld in Washington. Seditious if true..." Even if money has not been offered, there is no doubt that the MAGA movement is coordinating with Alberta separatists. 
• Decline and Fall of the American Empire. "Alliances were what made us great." And Trump has shat on almost all of them.
• Our Preoccupation With Protein Intake. "The data on high protein diets, bars, supplements, and powders will surprise you." Some reliable information on protein intake. 
• What happens to New Orleans’ levees when a Category 4 hurricane hits? "The city’s $23 billion levee system is only rated to withstand a Cat 3." The city is still at risk. 
• How to rescue yourself from choking when you're all alone (video). This technique save your life.
• No, the White House Is Not Getting a 90,000-Foot Extension. "But Trump’s doomed proposal does give us a revealing glimpse into his state of mind."
• Earth's Seasons Are Out of Sync, Scientists Discover From Space. "We present an unprecedented and intimate portrait of the seasonal cycles of Earth's land-based ecosystems. This reveals "hotspots" of seasonal asynchrony around the world – regions where the timing of seasonal cycles can be out of sync between nearby locations." 
• Heat events and domestic violence linked, a new study out of New Orleans finds. This does not surprise me but it's good to have the data to back up the hypothesis.
• Harassment at Antarctic research bases could spell problems for moon, Mars outposts. "Antarctica is an isolated, confined environment similar to those that might be on future moon or Mars bases."  

A Couple of Interesting Book Lists

 I've come across a couple of interesting book lists recently.

The first is from the New York Times which has compiled a list of the 100 best books of the 21st century as "voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book  Review."

I took the time to scroll through the list and found three books that I've read (and a fourth that I tried but couldn't get into) and maybe another half dozen that I still might want to read. Out of the 100 books, I recognized maybe 20. Half a dozen or so were science fiction or fantasy. So I guess I'm really out of touch with the modern literary world (or they're out of touch with what people are reading these days).

A more interesting list was compiled by Esquire: The 75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time. Out of that list, I've read about 35, and recognize most of the rest, though there are a surprising number of titles I've not heard of. (I say surprising considering that most of my reading is science fiction or fantasy and I read a lot of reviews). It's a reasonable list and would make a good start for anyone wanting to get more exposure to the field. I could quibble with some of the choices, but the only change I'd really like to see is replacing William Gibson's Neuromancer with The Peripheral, which I think is a much better book, if not as influential. 

Read Mirroshades For Free

Mirrorshades is a seminal anthology of cyberpunk science fiction edited by Bruce Sterling and first published in 1986. It contained stories by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Greg Bear, Pat Cadigan, and several other well-known writers. 

Rudy Rucker has made the anthology freely available to read online or download as an ebook.

Okay so NOW this FREE cyberpunk collection (which is so old you can see on the cover that it was only $3.50 for a paperback copy), is available as an #ebook download (FREE, I said!) as well as just opening it to read on your device. If you want it in that format, you can go there and try out the two ebook download systems it's offered on, let me know if it's not working. 

It's a credit to the authors and Sterling's editorial talents that these stories have held up so well over the intervening decades. Here's the table of contents.

• PREFACE
• THE GERNSBACK CONTINUUM by William Gibson
• SNAKE EYES by Tom Maddox
• ROCK ON by Pat Cadigan
• TALES OF HOUDINI by Rudy Rucker
• 400 BOYS by Marc Laidlaw
• SOLSTICE by James Patrick Kelly
• PETRA by Greg Bear
• TILL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US by Lewis Shiner
• FREEZONE by John Shirley (Two Versions)
• STONE LIVES by Paul Di Filippo
• RED STAR, WINTER ORBIT by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson
• MOZART IN MIRRORSHADES by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner
• CREDITS

Some Science Fiction Links

Here are a few articles about science fiction and fantasy.

• Publisher's Weekly reviews John Scalzi's next novel, Starter Villsin. If it's anything like The Kaiju Preservation Society, it should be a lot of fun. And the cover will certainly grab a lot of readers.
• Add June's New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books to Your Summer Reading List. "Start summer off with 42 new releases from authors like Charles Soule, Ann Leckie, Brandon Sanderson, Fran Wilde, and more."
• 2022 Analog AnLab Award and Asimov’s Science Fiction’s Readers’ Award Winners. The results from the readers' polls for the two digest science fiction magazines.
• William Gibson on how he coined the word "cyberspace" (video). "In William Gibson's classic 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, he coined the word "cyberspace" as the "consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators" jacked in to the digital network. In this clip from a 1993 Toronto TV program, Gibson tells how he came up with the term."
• Wheel of Time Season 2 Teases Mystery, Intrigue, and Dragons Reborn. "Prime Video has released first-look images from the second season of its epic Robert Jordan fantasy adaptation, premiering September 1." I am looking forward to the second season. WoT was much better than either Rings of Power or House of Dragons.

The Demise of Twitter and the SFF Genre

I've been online since the 1980s, starting with BBSs and Compuserve. Following that were Genie, Usenet, and eventually FaceBook and Twitter. Of all of those, Twitter has been my favourite social media service. There's nothing else that comes close to it for following things I'm interested in, and of course, that includes science fiction and fantasy. 

I use Twitter to follow authors I like: John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Elizabeth Bear, Mary Robinette Kowal, N. K. Jemisin, Paul McAuley, and several others. I am not sure what will happen to Twitter in the near future, though based on what's happened in the last couple of weeks, I don't think it will be good. I will be very sad indeed if Twitter goes away as it's been a big part of my life the last few years. 

Andrew Liptak has a good article in his latest newsletter about social media, the infrastructure of the Internet, and the science fiction and fantasy fan communities. It provides some much-needed perspective on what's happening now with Twitter. 

In particular, there's been quite a bit of introspection amidst the SF/F community, which has used Twitter as intended: an open square where we can talk about the books we like, shoot the shit, raise issues within the community, and so forth. They're understandably worried: Musk doesn't have a great track record with his online presence, and Twitter's long been a haven for trolls and bad-faith actors who stir up trouble, cause problems for everyone, and it doesn't seem like we have the best role model for dealing with this. Online communities are hard: there are a lot of things that go into it to ensure that users are protected and safe, and that bad habits don't get rooted into the community. The SF/F community has had an up and down relationship with Twitter over the years, but it's been a pretty constant thing, which makes this entire shift so notable.

I think it's safe to say that the Twitter that was around in 2009-2022 is gone, and what remains to be seen is what Twitter of 2022-beyond will look like. A social media platform is a tool like any other — it's just been a particularly useful tool for publicists, authors, fans, and everyone in between, which is why this feels like a real bookend to an era within the community.

The Peripheral: First Impressions

I've made no secret about how much I like William Gibson's novel, The Peripheral. IMHO it's the best science fiction novel of the century to date. So I was more than a little apprehensive when I heard that it was being adapted for streaming; I've seen too many promising projects turn into crap. 

Based on the first two episodes of Amazon Prime's adaptation, I needn't have worried. It's brilliant. 

First, it's true to both the basic storyline of the novel and to the characters, especially that of Flynne, ably played by Chloë Grace Moretz. She's exactly as I had imagined her from the novel. And the other characters are just as well done. The showrunners (interviewed here) have done a great job of both portraying the future setting and technology that Gibson envisions while adding new plot elements that aren't in the novel but still feel just right. 

The show could still go off the rails in future episodes, but I'm very happy about what I've seen so far. And from what I've read on Twitter, Gibson likes it too. 

I am very much looking forward to the rest of the season. If you've watched it, what do you think?

 

Featured Links - April 19, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books. "Increasingly, books are something that libraries do not own but borrow from the corporations that do." I have recently reserved a couple of ebooks from the library and found that yes, I can read a book on my phone or tablet. Although I prefer reading on my Kindle, the Libby app doesn't work with Kindles in Canada.
• Why William Gibson Is a Literary Genius. 'Forty years after his breakout story, “Johnny Mnemonic,” the father of cyberpunk remains one of the best writers around.'
• Feds Face Tough Water Choices in Parched West. "The government is trying to decide whether or not to cut water deliveries to Lake Mead to keep Lake Powell's levels up."
• NASA to roll back its mega rocket after failing to complete countdown test. "NASA has options for what to do next, but all will involve schedule delays." The delay could stretch into the fall.
• Study ties solar variability to onset of decadal La Niña events. "Scientists use 22-year solar clock to find an elusive correlation."
• ‘It’s Super Spectacular.’ See How the Tonga Volcano Unleashed a Once-in-a-Century Shockwave. "A new simulation gives a detailed look at a shockwave that circled the planet for days."
• NFTs Are Here to Ruin D&D. "Gripnr wants to put Dungeons & Dragons on the blockchain. Players say real money will ruin the fun."
• 10 Amazon Kindle tips and tricks guaranteed to make you a pro user. I've had a Kindle for more than a decade and there were a few tips in this article I didn't know about.

Featured Links - September 7, 2021

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The west shore of Frenchman's Bay

• How to Turn Your Favorite Web Apps Into Desktop Apps. "Want to access Twitter and Google Chat in a single click? Here’s how to think outside the browser."
• Understanding the E-Reader Global Supply Chain. This may explain why we haven't seen a new Kindle from Amazon in a while.
• ‘Catastrophic’ supervolcano eruption much more likely than previously thought, scientists warn. "Event could affect global climate to the point of ‘tipping the earth into a volcanic winter’, resulting in ‘famine and population disruption’."
• The Global Supply Chain Crisis, as Told by One Stuck Box of Fertilizer. "This is the tale of one humble shipment and its arduous journey across the world. While some of the barriers keeping it from its final destination may be specific to this particular case, the journey is emblematic of the inertia that has gripped global trade during the pandemic."
• To Get To Space, You Must Go Through the Panama Canal. "But before the Webb telescope can take its place in the firmament and the future, it must face hazards more familiar a century ago than in the present, namely a lengthy sea voyage from Long Beach, California to its launch site at Kourou in French Guiana — with the risk of piracy thrown in for good measure."
• Why William Gibson Is a Literary Genius. "Forty years after his breakout story, “Johnny Mnemonic,” the father of cyberpunk remains one of the best writers around."
• The Red Warning Light On Richard Branson's Spaceflight. This was a serious anomaly and the FAA has grounded Virgin Galactic.

Featured Links - August 23, 2021

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• We Asked, You Answered: Your 50 Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade. NPR came up with a good list. 
• Jeff Bezos Instigates Potentially Crushing Delay of NASA Lunar Lander. "Blue Origin is suing NASA over a $2.89 billion contract given to rival SpaceX."
• What is SIM swapping, and how to protect yourself. "SIM swapping is when an attacker switches a victim's phone number to a SIM card they control."
• William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition". A BBC audio presentation read by Lorelei King.
• What’s safe to do during summer’s Covid surge? STAT asked public health experts about their own plans. "Most public health experts surveyed by STAT said they would not go to the movies this summer, not even with a mask."
• Musk Confirms how “Mechazilla” Will Catch and Assemble Starship and Super Heavy for Rapid Reuse. I have a hard time believing that this will work, but I have been wrong about Musk and SpaceX before.
  
  

The TV Adaptation of The Peripheral Is Shooting

 I've made no secret here about how much I enjoyed William Gibson's novel, The Peripheral, which I consider to be the best science fiction novel of the last decade. So I was glad to see this article about the television adaptation being produced by Amazon Prime Video. It is currently shooting in London, where about half of the story is set, and will being filming in Marshall, NC in the fall. 

MARSHALL - The county seat will serve as a filming location for an upcoming Amazon Prime Video show, the show's location manager announced during May 17's Marshall Town Board of Aldermen monthly meeting. 

The show, "The Peripheral," is based on William Gibson's 2015  futuristic science fiction novel of the same name.

Bass Hampton, the location manager for the project, debriefed members of the board on the show's plans. Hampton has also served as location manager for films such as "Get Out" and "The Conjuring," according to his IMDB page. 

Hampton said he started scouting locations for the show about a year ago.

... 

According to Hampton, the show is currently filming in London. The crew has already built the ReClaim Madison storefront, just one of the few locations to be used in the production, on its stage.

2021 Locus Award Finalists

The finalists for the 2021 Locus Awards have been announced. "These results are from the February 1 to April 15 voting, done by readers on an open public ballot. Congratulations to all! The Locus Awards winners will be announced June 26, 2021, during the virtual Locus Awards Weekend."

I am impressed by the finalists for the Science Fiction Novel award. It's a very strong list.

Machine, Elizabeth Bear (Saga; Gollancz)

Attack Surface, Cory Doctorow (Tor; Ad Astra)

Unconquerable Sun, Kate Elliott (Tor)

Agency, William Gibson (Berkley; Viking UK)

The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor; Solaris)

War of the Maps, Paul McAuley (Gollancz)

The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US & UK)

The Last Emperox, John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK)

Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

Interlibrary Loan, Gene Wolfe (Tor)

Out of the ten books, the only one that I've read is Agency by William Gibson. I have purchased three others and will probably get a couple more if they go on sale at some point. 

Many of the short fiction finalists are available to read online. See links in the Locus announcement.

2020 Locus Recommended Reading List and Poll

Locus, the newsmagazine of the science fiction and fantasy field, has published its recommended reading list for 2020. The list includes novels, short fiction, collections, anthologies, non-fiction, and illustrated and art books. 

The list is generally regarded as a guide to award nominations. File 770 reports a few interesting things about this year's list.  

The number of Novellas listed dropped to 19, after the 2019 list had 32. (The 2018 list had 13, 2017’s had 26.)

For first time since 2016, one of the recommended books is identified as self-published, (One self-published work made the 2016 list, an art book, and the 2015 list had three.)

Baen broke its drought, placing a book on the Locus list for the first time since 2017 — The Eleventh Gate by Nancy Kress – but only one.

On the list for novels, I've only read one (William Gibson's Agency), but have purchased four more, and there are another half dozen or so that I am likely to read if I ever find the time.  

Locus has also opened its annual poll and survey, which will be used to decide the winners of the annual Locus Awards. You don't need to be a Locus subscriber to vote.

Featured Links - January 3, 2021

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about:

• 8 Fantastic Uses for the Files by Google App. "Files by Google is more than just the best Android file manager. Here are some of the other useful things you can do with it."
• William Gibson: ‘I read Naked Lunch when it was still quasi-illicit’. "The sci-fi author on Cormac McCarthy, and the influence of William S Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut."
• What Is ‘Normal Climate’ Where You Live? - The Answer Changes In 2021. "What's "normal" climate where you live and why is it about to change in 2021?"
• To exhausted healthcare workers like me, Covid conspiracies are a kick in the teeth. "Coronavirus deniers demanding proof of the pandemic in our hospitals are lucky they have never experienced it first hand."
• A Monster Wind Turbine Is Upending an Industry. "G.E.’s giant machine, which can light up a small town, is stoking a renewable-energy arms race."
• MZTV Museum of Television. If you like old TVs, this is the site for you.
• Tony Rice In Memoriam: Punch Brothers’ Chris Eldridge Salutes the Greatest Guitar Hero of Bluegrass. "One of the foremost younger guitarists in roots music pens an appreciation of the man who showed him how it was done."

What I Read In 2020

It was a tumultuous year, and as a result, most of my reading was online news and articles. I am embarrassed to admit how few books I read in 2020. Perhaps I'll do better next year, if there's less political drama from south of the border, and we finally get the pandemic under control. 

So these are the few books I managed to finish this year. 

Neil Gaiman: The Sandman. I have been wanting to read The Sandman series for some time. I finally managed to read the first five books (Overture, Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House, Dream Country, and Season of Mists) by downloading them from the library and reading them on my Samsung tablet. (I had tried to read the print editions and could not as the print was just too small). I enjoyed Overture the most, because the artwork was so spectacular, and found the stories in some of the third and fourth books hit or miss. I will get back to the series at some point.

William Gibson: The Peripheral and Agency. I decided to reread The Peripheral before starting Agency, and I am glad I did, as I enjoyed it more than the first time I read it. I liked Agency, but it didn't have the impact that The Peripheral did. The ending felt rushed and left me somewhat disappointed. 

Peter F. Hamilton: Salvation. This is the first book in a new trilogy by Hamilton. If you like his books, I'd recommend it, but it's probably not the place to start if you are new to his work; try Pandora's Star or Fallen Dragon instead. I enjoyed it, but was aware that there it would take a long time to get moving. Once it did, I couldn't put it down. 

Ian McDonald: Luna: Wolf Moon and Luna: Moon Rising. McDonald is one of my favourite writers and his Luna trilogy didn't disappoint. I doubt that a lunar civilization would work the way he described, but it's still a powerful and action-packed story. 

Robert J. Sawyer: The Oppenheimer Alternative. This is an alternate history written largely from the point of view of Robert Oppenheimer. It's deeply grounded in historical fact and doesn't diverge too much from our history until about halfway through the book. It's certainly one of Sawyer's better books and should be a must for anyone who likes alternate histories or historical novels, but it's not as much of a thrill ride as his previous book, Quantum Night.

Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernadez: The Old Guard.  I read this after seeing the movie on (I think) Netflix, figuring the graphic novel might be enjoyable. I preferred the movie and never finished the book. 

I tend to have several books on the go at once. This is what I'm reading now:

• Peter F. Hamilton: Salvation Lost
• Joel Selvin: Fare Thee Well
• Farah Mendlesohn: The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein
• Gardner Dozois: The Year's Best Science Fiction, 34th Edition
• Benjamin Dreyer: Dreyer's English
• Michael D. Leimbach: Bringing Columbia Home
• Brian Herber and Kevin J. Anderson: Dune, the Graphic Novel, Book 1

American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s

Science fiction used to be looked down on by the so-called literati, but times have changed. If you want proof of that, then look no further than the publication of American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s by the Library of America. This is a two-volume set containing nine classic novels from the 1950s, a decade where science fiction became something to be taken seriously. Out of the nine novels included in the set, I've read eight, several of them more than once, and I think the "classic" approbation is deserved. 

On the Library of America's website, you can read the introduction to each of the books. The novels and the authors who wrote the introductions (in brackets) are:

• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (William Gibson)
• A Case of Conscience by James Blish (William Morrow)
• The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett (Nicola Griffith)
• Who? by Algys Budrys (Tim Powers)
• Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein (Connie Willis)
• The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth (Michael Dirda)
• The Big Time by Fritz Leiber (Neil Gaiman)
• The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson (Peter Straub)
• More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon (Kit Reed)

The website also includes short articles by editor Gary K. Wolfe about the 1950s that put the books in their historical context, as well as bibliographies and other material by and about the authors. For example, the page on Double Star includes links to audio version of five of Heinlein's stories that were broadcast on the radio show, Dimension X. 

William Gibson's Agency and the Apocalypse

I finally finished reading William Gibson's new novel, Agency, last week. In preparation for that, I re-read his previous novel, The Peripheral, which is a prequel to Agency. 

I had thought about doing a full review of Agency, but I don't have the time or inclination right now. Suffice it to say that of the two books, I think The Peripheral is superior; in fact, I think it's the best science fiction novel of the last decade. It's not that Agency is a bad book, but it didn't hold my attention the way The Peripheral did. When I was reading The Peripheral, I found myself highlighting passage after passage that struck me, and that didn't happen as much in Agency. And the ending felt rushed and a bit contrived. I'm glad I read it, but I doubt that I'll go back to it. 

The Quietus has published a long interview with Gibson that focuses on one of the key aspects of these novels – the slow motion apocalypse that Gibson calls the Jackpot. 

“There’s never been a culture that had a mythos of apocalypse in which the apocalypse was a multi-causal, longterm event.” William Gibson speaks in the whisper-soft drawl of a man who for a long time now has never had to speak up in order to be heard. Though a certain edge had crept into our conversation by this point, watching him stretch out on the leather chaise longue of this hotel library (“my second home,” he calls it, as we make our way up from the lobby), it struck me that few people are able to seem at once so apprehensive and yet so intensely relaxed about the prospect of the end of the world as we know it.

“But if we are in fact facing an apocalypse,” he continues, getting now into the swing of this particular riff, “that’s the sort we’re facing. And I think that that may be what makes it so difficult for us to get our heads around what’s happening to us.”

When I met Gibson back in early February, the slow-cooked nightmare of the coronavirus was still very much in its infancy here in Europe. The word ‘pandemic’ had not yet been uttered by the World Health Organisation and nor did it come up in our conversation. But it does appear in Gibson’s (2014) novel, The Peripheal, the first part of a trilogy split between two timelines: one taking place before and one somewhat after an event known as the ‘jackpot’. “No comets crashing, nothing you could really call a nuclear war,” future Londoner Wilf Netherton explains of this ‘jackpot’. “Just everything else, tangled in the changing climate: droughts, water shortages, crop failures, honeybees gone like they almost were now, collapse of other keystone species, every last alpha predator gone, antibiotics doing even less that they already did, diseases that were never quite the one big pandemic but big enough to be historic events in themselves.”

Even if you don't read The Peripheral or Agency, I recommend reading this article. Gibson has hit a nerve with his concept of the Jackpot. It hasn't quite hit meme status, yet, but it is now a term that's become part of our culture. 

The Peripheral Is On Sale

Bargain alert. The ebook of William Gibson's 2014 novel, The Peripheral, is on sale (Amazon and Kobo) for $2.99. If you haven't read it, now's your chance. 

IMHO, it's the best science fiction novel of the last decade. I just finished re-reading it, so that's a current and informed opinion. 

I hope to do a combined review of it and his new novel, Agency, which I am now reading.

It Looks Like the Jackpot May Have Started

I've been re-reading William Gibson's excellent 2014 novel, The Peripheral, in preparation for reading his new novel, Agency. One of the ideas in The Peripheral that is especially striking right now is the Jackpot, which (as described in Wikipedia) "begins in the middle of the 21st century as a combination of climate change and other causes, followed by a series of droughts, famines, pandemics, political chaos, and anarchy. 80% of the global human population dies off. "

So now here's a long and well-researched article from Australia about the current state of climate change and its likely effects over the next few decades. It makes a good case for thinking that we are at the beginning stages of the Jackpot. 

Schellnhuber, one of the world’s leading authorities on climate change, said that if we continue down the present path “there is a very big risk that we will just end our civilisation. The human species will survive somehow but we will destroy almost everything we have built up over the last two thousand years.”

Schellnhuber said in a recent interview that the IPCC report stating we could stay below 1.5°C of warming was “slightly dishonest” because it relies on immense negative emissions (pulling CO2 out of the air) which was not viable at global scale. He said 1.5°C was no longer achievable but it was still possible to stay under 2°C with massive changes to society.

If we don’t bend the emissions curve down substantially before 2030 then keeping temperatures under 2°C becomes unavoidable. The “carbon law” published in the journal Science in 2017 found that, to hold warming below 2°C, emissions would need to be cut in half between 2020 and 2030.

Steffen told Voice of Action that the three main challenges to humanity – climate change, the degradation of the biosphere and the growing inequalities between and among countries – were “just different facets of the same fundamental problem”.

This problem was the “neoliberal economic system” that spread across the world through globalisation, underpinning “high production high consumption lifestyles” and a “religion built not around eternal life but around eternal growth”.

Given the current state of world affairs, I do not see any likelihood that we can cut carbon emissions by half in ten years. So then we are faced with a wild, downhill ride.

Steffen told Voice of Action he believes collapse “will likely not come as a dramatic global collapse, but rather as overall deterioration in many features of life, with regional collapses occurring here and there”.

“For example, it appears that the USA is entering a long period of decline in many aspect of its society, with a potential for a more rapid collapse in the coming decade,” said Steffen.

Samuel Alexander, a lecturer with the University of Melbourne and research fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, told Voice of Action that the coming collapse would not be a single black or white event.

“With respect to civilisations, what is more likely is that we have entered a stage of what JM Greer calls ‘catabolic collapse’ – where we face decades of ongoing crises, as the existing mode of civilisation deteriorates, but then recovers as governments and civil society tries to respond, and fix things, and keep things going for a bit longer,” said Alexander.

New SF&F Books for June

The publishing industry is still functioning (sort of) and books are still being published. Here's a list of SF&F books being published in June. 

These are the ones that look interesting:

• Broken Genius by Drew Murray. FBI Agent Will Packer is called in to investigate a murder at a comics convention specifically because the victim has ties to Will’s pre-bureau career as a tech CEO. He soon discovers that shadowy Dark Web operatives may also be involved in the crime. (June 2)
• Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles by Ellen Datlow. Josh Malerman (Bird Box), Garth Nix, Richard Kadrey, Kelley Armstrong, and more contribute to this collection of 18 original horror stories inspired by movies and TV. (June 2)
• Devolution by Max Brooks. The author of World War Z returns with this account of “the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre,” a fast-paced tale of Bigfoot terror—told via diary entries, interviews, and other sources—that unfolds deep within a remote Pacific Northwest forest. We’ll have an interview with Brooks up on io9 later this week. (June 16)

Not on the list, but worthy of special mention is Robert J. Sawyer's The Oppenheimer Alternative. The ebook has been available since April, but the official release date is today, so you can get your hands on a paper copy should you prefer that format. I have it and will get to it after I finish reading William Gibson's Agency. 

Interview with Robert J. Sawyer about The Oppenheimer Alternative

SF&F author Robert J. Sawyer has a new book coming out, The Oppenheimer Alternative, an alternate history set in the dawn of the atomic age and featuring Oppenheimer and his scientific cohort as lead characters. I have the book but haven't read it yet (I need to finish William Gibson's Agency first), but if it's anything like Robert's last few books it will be both highly readable and grounded in history and science. 

File 770's Mike Glyer has a long interview with Sawyer about the book. 

MG: The Oppenheimer Alternative is grounded in your extensive research of the history of physics and atomic weaponry. I recognized some of that history but it was only quite late in the book that I recognized the science fictional departures — the alternate history. Are they present throughout, or is your goal to take readers inside the Manhattan Project as it happened?

SAWYER: The point of departure from what is established fact occurs in chapter 14 out of 57, when Edward Teller and Hans Bethe start arguing about their conflicting solar spectrographs, Bethe’s from 1938, which seems to show the sun undergoing carbon-nitrogen-oxygen-cycle (CNO) fusion, and Teller’s from 1945, which seem to show it undergoing proton-proton fusion.

But I actually don’t call the novel an alternate history; I think of it more as a secret history. None of the events it portrays are contradicted by what we know actually occurred. Instead, I’m filling in the gaps in the record. And gaps there surely are. As I mentioned above, Oppie was responsible for the notion of black holes. As Freeman Dyson wrote:

“As a direct result of Oppenheimer’s work, we now know that black holes have played and are playing a decisive part in the evolution of the universe. He lived for twenty-seven years after the discovery, never spoke about it, and never came back to work on it. Several times, I asked him why he did not come back to it. He never answered my question, but always changed the conversation to some other subject.”

And when Oppie was hauled before a security-review board, Deak Parsons, his second-in-command at Los Alamos really did go ape, declaring, in reference to President Eisenhower:

“I have to put a stop to it. Ike has to know what’s really going on. This is the biggest mistake the United States could make!”

In a bit of bad luck for Parsons — not to mention Oppie! — Parsons keeled over dead the next morning before he got in to see Eisenhower.

Even Oppie himself alluded to something huge going on behind the scenes. He really did say:

“There is a story behind my story. If a reporter digs deep enough he will find that it is a bigger story than my [security-clearance] suspension.”

So I set out to tell that story: the tale of why Oppie never commented publicly again on his astrophysics research, of the truth about what was really going that Parsons took to his grave, of the “bigger story” Oppie referred to.

There’s a thorough discussion of what’s real history and what’s my invention on my website: https://sfwriter.com/ffoa.htm