ARE SPACE JOYRIDES JUSTIFIABLE?

Courtesy of Blue Origin

Space tourism is an expensive game, the playing field of billionaires. We witnessed the proof of that in recent weeks as first Richard Branson rode his Virgin Galactic space plane VSS Unity to the edge of space, 53 miles (85 km.) above the Earth on July 11th, and then Amazon’s Jeff Bezos traveled 66 miles up (106 km.) on July 20th in the first of his Blue Origin company’s New Shepard spacecraft to carry humans. The fact that both billionaires traveled aboard the first flights of their respective craft to such heights is either an exceptional testimony to their faith in their companies’ technology or, if you’re a cynic, a powerhouse marketing ploy. Now Virgin Galactic is selling seats aboard future flights at a quarter million dollars each, while Blue Origin may send up two more tourist trips this year at an unspecified price tag (but there are reports of tickets auctioned off at $28 million).

Were Branson and Bezos hailed as heroes? Maybe by some, but there was also immediate loud and high-profile criticism of the joyrides with the predictable message that the money could be better spent helping to fight climate change or any of the other serious environmental or humanitarian crises you could name. And Bezos bombed big-time with his remark before his flight thanking Amazon customers and his (reportedly badly underpaid) Amazon employees for making his flight possible.

So, the question is, are such joyrides by the world’s wealthiest justified?

First of all, as long as capitalism remains our predominant financial system, we’ll have billionaires. In fact, the gap between the planet’s richest and poorest citizens continues to grow. And if money burns a hole in the pockets of anybody who has it, how much more true is that of those who have more than they could ever possibly need? So billionaires will blow big money on big toys and projects that many will consider foolish. If you don’t like billionaires and their lavish spending habits, you’ll have to change the system.

Having said that, is space travel a boondoggle, wasteful and worthless?

Well, the benefits of space tourism might not be immediately apparent (though its supporters hope it will inspire future generations), but it is a means to fund other, more productive, space-related efforts. Branson hopes Virgin Galactic’s spaceplanes can develop into an alternate form of high-speed business travel. Bezos is a proponent of moving polluting industries like chemical manufacturing and energy production off the planet. We already know that many manufacturing processes, including the making of pharmaceutical products, can be done with much greater efficiency in the low gravity of Earth orbit with its abundance of solar energy. That list of potential space industries will grow exponentially as the cost of lifting materiel and personnel out of Earth’s gravity well decreases. And that decrease in cost is why Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX company have put so much effort into developing reusable rocket boosters that can land safely and reliably.

As I’ve mentioned more than once, we need to explore and exploit space beyond Earth.

We owe it to our planet: The more we can move polluting industries out of our fragile ecosystem, and the less we have to ravage the Earth’s surface for diminishing mineral and other resources, the better.

We owe it to our fellow Earth-life: Every day there’s a new story about a species extinction or an environmental disaster caused by humans’ rapacious industrial and agricultural practices. Whatever we can shift out into space, including meaningful numbers of human beings, will reduce the terrible cost being paid by wildlife and vegetation.

We owe it to our fellow humans: Wild animals aren’t the only ones who suffer when climate is altered and green spaces and clean water are depleted. If we could create attractive human habitats in orbit, in outer space, or on other planets, we could make living conditions better for every human being.

We owe it to Life itself: We still have no evidence that life exists anywhere else in the universe. Until we do, we must act as if Earth is the only cradle of life, and right now that cradle is incredibly fragile. Even if we don’t render the planet into an uninhabitable wasteland like Venus through irreversible climate warming, or irradiate the whole surface by nuclear war, life here could still be wiped out by a cosmic collision, a nearby supernova, or a catastrophic event within our own Sun. We have a responsibility to make sure that all of Life’s “eggs” don’t remain in just one basket.

Do these lofty space dreams really begin with billionaires and their expensive toys? The jury is out on that one, but let’s face it, government bureaucracies aren’t the most efficient way to get things done, whereas corporate for-profit approaches do seem to be more productive (provided that meaningful safety regulations are in place).

(If we look to science fiction, especially the so-called “Golden Era” of the early 20th Century, it’s not uncommon to find millionaires and billionaires as the driving force behind space ventures, some of which save humanity. One that springs to mind is When Worlds Collide in which millionaires fund the spacecraft that carries survivors from a doomed Earth when governments refuse to act. Of course, SF probably features an even larger number of billionaires who want to rule the world and wreck the planet, so….)

My own view is that, regrettably, government-driven space ventures can’t be counted on to save us from the threats mentioned above, not just because their bureaucracies are inefficient, but even more so because their funding (and therefore their very existence) is subject to political whims, about the most unreliable force in the universe! If that means our only alternative is to endure the grandstanding of billionaires as a step toward more meaningful progress, I can live with that.

LAUNCH COUNTDOWN

Time is really flying toward the launch of my new novel Naïda and my blood pressure’s probably flying high too, as I scramble to get everything done.

Because of the pandemic, it’s going to be a virtual launch—online only—hosted by my friend and fellow author Mark Leslie (I narrate the audiobook editions of his A Canadian Werewolf in New York fiction series). But all are welcome. It’ll be short and sweet: 30 - 45 minutes during which I’ll give a reading from Naïda and Mark will field questions from the audience. We’ll also be giving away some copies of the book to those in attendance. Afterward, the link will remain available, so if you can’t attend “live” you can still catch it later. Here are the links to join in:

LIVE BROADCAST INFORMATION                                                            

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Mhdym4HzI

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/234583036576020/posts/4550131828354431/

(via Scott Overton’s Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/ScottOverton.author/ )

Meanwhile the ebook editions are available to pre-order from many online retailers, and the print edition is becoming available to order, store by store though Amazon’s print edition is still in limbo because of a (so-far 3-week-old) technical problem. Seriously, Amazon?

I sure hope you’ll seek out the book. Of course you can read a free sample chapter, and it will become available in my bookstore on launch day June 1st. I also hope you’ll love it, and it would be a huge help if you would post a review wherever you buy the book or in your online book clubs like Goodreads.

Wish me luck!

NAÏDA DIGS INTO SOME BIG QUESTIONS

I’m pretty excited about my newest novel release Naïda. It’s now available for pre-order in e-book format from many retailers, with a launch/sale date of June 1, 2021. Print editions should be available to order soon through bookstores, though a technical problem at Amazon has been holding up the print process there for 2 weeks now (seriously—I am not impressed!)

I’ll be doing a virtual launch on June 1st (thanks to Covid) so keep checking this space for the details on that.

You can read a sample chapter here on my website, and I think you’ll really like it.

Naïda is the story of Michael Hart, a scuba diver who discovers an ancient alien artifact at the bottom of a lake, and Sakiko Matthews, an ocean researcher fighting against the acidification of Earth’s seas. But it’s also the story of the alien organism Michael encounters, which makes the novel part adventure, part First Contact story, and even part coming-of-age story. As with all of my writing, I wanted to tell a great story, but also explore some big issues.

For example, if you discovered an undeniably alien artifact and then found that it was still active, what would you do? Who would you tell about it—who would you trust to tell about it? Police? An environmental agency? Who would you go to? I’m not a conspiracy theory fan but, honestly, aren’t we all pretty sure that if we told a military organization about such a find they would wrap it in absolute secrecy (possibly ensuring our own silence in some fashion I’d rather not think about) and try to weaponize it? So, say you tried to share the news on the internet instead to make sure it couldn’t be kept hidden. Or went to some big media outlet. Who would believe you? The number of wackos online is endless—you’d be lumped in with them (except, probably by the military or other covert agencies who would be the first to track you down and proceed as above. That’s not paranoia, that’s just reality.)

Big Question #2: Although Naïda isn’t quite a superhero origin story, there are similarities. Now, superheroes keep their true identities secret so they and their loved ones won’t be attacked by supervillains. But consider a more “real life” scenario of someone suddenly acquiring extraordinary abilities beyond the human norm. Supervillains wouldn’t be my worry—it would be the certainty that, once my condition was revealed, I’d be facing a life as a human lab rat. Whatever powerful organization could get to me first would devote their efforts to learning how I got those abilities, how they work (and how to defend against them) and, most of all, how to make more of me to satisfy any number of possible uses (with spying and fighting likely being at the top of the list).

Tell me I’m wrong.

And I haven’t even touched on how either of the above scenarios would affect a person’s relationships for the rest of their life.

But Naïda the novel does. And lots more. So give the sample chapter a read, and order your own copy. Oh, yeah, and then try to decide whether you envy Michael Hart. Or pity him.

A BRAND NEW NOVEL ON THE LAUNCHPAD!

Creating a novel has its highs and lows. Realizing you’ve got an exciting story concept is one of the highs. Remembering how much work is ahead of you is one of the lows!

Once you reach the point of publishing the novel, it’s a mix of the two: you’re excited about the prospect of people meeting your new baby, and you’re also afraid that it won’t find the audience it deserves.

For now, let’s focus on one of the happy parts: announcing the pending arrival and showing off those first adorable photos to the world at large.

OK, enough of the baby metaphors.

I’m thrilled to announce that my newest novel Naïda is written, revised, polished, edited, and ready to launch. And here’s your very first look at the eye-catching cover. I had no idea how my cover artist was going to come up with a visual analog of the story’s concept, but I think he’s knocked one out of the park. I hope you love it too.

Naïda begins as the story of Michael Hart, who discovers a strange structure at the bottom of an isolated northern lake and knows it’s definitely not of this Earth. But he can’t stay away. And that choice will change his life completely, and forever.

As the book blurb says,

It will make him a hero. Or the greatest traitor the world has ever known.

Because he is no longer alone, not even in his own body.

There is another.

Naïda.

The novel is an earnest attempt to explore the trauma of a First Contact, the question of what it means to be human, and to predict one possible future for humanity beyond our home planet. But at the same time, it offers the pure fun of a superhero origin story. I think you’ll fall in love with its cast of characters and get a big kick out of going along for the ride.

Publication date is set for June 1, 2021, barring unexpected delays, and I’ll update this post once the book is available for pre-order. Expect a great price promotion and giveaways too!

So keep watching this space and get ready to meet…Naïda.

WHAT WILL REPLACE CAPITALISM?

Can capitalism continue indefinitely as the primary economic system of our society? Do we want it to?

Continuous economic growth depends on the production and consumption of ever more goods. Yet we know that our planet cannot sustain that indefinitely.

In Amsterdam and a few other cities around the world, experiments are underway into a new way of thinking called doughnut economics coined by a UK economist named Kate Raworth in a 2017 book. It’s the idea that the upper limit of what we can produce and consume is dictated by the limits of our environment: our planet’s tolerance for pollution and resource extraction, especially with the looming spectre of climate change. But there is also a lower limit of what humans need to produce and consume in order to live a healthy life (nutritious food, clothing etc.). The zone in the middle between the “social foundation” and the “environmental ceiling” is the doughnut. The practical applications of this mindset are many and varied, but one example from Amsterdam is grocery store pricing that includes costs normally ignored, such as a product’s carbon footprint. The essence of the movement is to ensure that everyone has a decent quality of life, but by means that are sustainable and don’t overtax the planet.

I can’t say whether or not doughnut economics is the way of the future, but something will have to change, or we and our home planet will have no future.

What does science fiction have to say about the future of economics?

In the near term, it’s possible to imagine new technologies that might extract more resources from trash and recycled materials, or that would make the mining of asteroids financially viable. Those might help capitalism stagger on for a while. In the long term, there are as many different models as there are fictional worlds, confederacies, empires, or what have you.

One of the most optimistic examples of a possible future economy comes from the world of Star Trek. Within the United Federation of Planets (at least by the 2360’s of Star Trek: The Next Generation) money is no longer used. Thanks to “replicator” technology, any form of inanimate normal matter can be produced if there’s a sufficient energy source. So there’s no longer such a thing as “scarcity”—every citizen can have everything they need and, presumably, anything they want. Therefore, accumulating goods is no longer a motivator. They don’t even need to work for a living. Mind you, lots of people do still work, it’s just that their compensation for doing so isn’t monetary. Instead, they’re rewarded by the gratification of achievement itself, by social status and influence (or power, such as commanding a starship). People work for a sense of self-fulfillment, helping others, and simply doing good.

Does that sound like any human beings you know? Yeah, that’s a problem—in our experience human nature just isn’t that selfless. Still, it’s a nice thought.

In what might be considered one of the earliest works of science fiction, the 1888 novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy features a man who falls into a hypnotically induced sleep and awakens in the year 2000 to a United States that’s a socialist utopia. No work for money; every citizen is given an equal amount of credit to buy what they need, everyone retires at the age of 45 with full lifetime benefits, those who work in less attractive or more hazardous fields get more time off, and the reward for superior performance is essentially recognition. Like when your kindergarten teacher awarded you star stickers for good behaviour. Again, Bellamy doesn’t seem to have taken into account the desire to not only “keep up with the Joneses” but surpass the Joneses whenever possible. Hasn’t that always been the problem when trying to reconcile concepts like Karl Marx’s communism with the behaviour of real people? We don’t actually want to be equal to the next guy. We want to have it better than the next guy. And we don’t see an incentive for working hard if everybody—go-getters and slackers—are going to have the same lifestyle anyway.

Many science fiction empires and societies include invented monetary, business, and exchange-of-labour systems, though not that many include economics as a significant focus. In several early stories (from the 1950s) by Frederick Pohl and CM Kornbluth, constant consumption is required to maintain national economies, advertising is a crucial tool of government, and citizens must meet a quota of goods to be purchased. On the other side of the coin (so to speak) the economics of overpopulation and scarcity figure into a good amount of SF. And looking into the far future, just try to imagine the economics of a society in which humans have “uploaded” into digital form, without the needs and wants of physical bodies at all! (See writers like Charles Stross.)

What about the near future? Cory Doctorow’s 2003 novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom introduces an economy driven in part by whuffie which reflects a person’s social status and influence (picture being able to get the good things in life according to how many likes you have on Facebook). There are also elements of a “reputation economy” in 1999’s Distraction by Bruce Sterling, and somewhat similar concepts elsewhere. I don’t know about you, but I don’t relish the idea of a society where people enjoy greater luxury and other perks just for being publicity whores (oh, wait, we have that already!)

Doctorow’s 2017 novel Walkaway features a “post-scarcity” society in which those who don’t want to participate in a rigged capitalist system run by the zotta-rich just drop everything and walk away. But where the walkaways congregate, most still want to accomplish things, it’s just that work isn’t required to get food and shelter, and rewards aren’t necessarily material.

All in all, capitalism probably isn’t sustainable forever, yet replacements as described in science fiction include any number of post-apocalyptic stories (pessimistic) and some that are perhaps overly optimistic (like Star Trek). A future economy with financial equality, no consumer pressure, and a minimalist lifestyle would require a big change in human nature. But, after all, there are plenty of stories that imagine changing human bodies and brains in innumerable ways. Maybe long-time traits like selfishness and greed can be changed, too.

Conscience engineering, anyone?

STARLINK VS. STARGAZERS

I suppose the course of progress has never run smoothly. Just look at the myriad ways we’ve screwed up our planet and all of its living species while trying to improve the lot of our own.

One of the newest examples is SpaceX’s ambitious plans for their Starlink internet service, intended to bring affordable high-speed satellite internet to even the most remote parts of our nations. As someone who lives in a rural area, poorly served by internet providers, this seemed like a great step forward to me. It didn’t cross my mind that it would conflict with my love of gazing into the night-time sky.

So far, SpaceX has launched more than 700 of their small Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, has permission to launch 12,000, and plans to launch a total of 30,000. That’s a lot of metallic objects whizzing overhead! They call it a “mega-constellation”, and that cutesy name probably fits better than they intended because, just like the original constellations, the Starlink satellites can be seen, thanks to the solar panels they depend on for energy.

Have you ever watched a satellite speed overhead while you’re stargazing on a clear night? It’s interesting—not really an impediment. But what if you were seeing dozens of them like beads on a string? That could get annoying. Now imagine you’re a professional astronomer taking long-exposure pictures of the night sky in hopes of discovering new space objects like asteroids or comets, or learning new information about other star systems. Annoying doesn’t cover it. Infuriating maybe. And that’s exactly what astronomers have been facing since the Starlink launches began. In fact, the disruption may not affect only optical astronomy; the creators of a new radio-telescope array in South Africa complain that the Starlink satellites will broadcast on one of the frequencies they hope to survey in the search for organic molecules elsewhere in the galaxy.

Now, I’m sure none of this was ever intended by SpaceX engineers—the satellites are brighter than expected—and the company is trying some things to remedy the problem. They’ve made the satellites much darker and less reflective (I’ve never seen one, but apparently the first few hundred are visible to the naked eye) and added visors to block the most reflective components, but scientists say these measures aren’t nearly enough. Other possible solutions are being discussed. Meantime the satellites keep going up. And at least two other companies plan to launch large numbers of similar satellites in the coming years.

I’m sure that every satellite ever launched has interfered with some astronomer’s observations, but the Starlink plans elevate the problem to a whole new scale, and it will only get worse. Why? Because now that private industries like SpaceX, Blue Origin (owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos), and others are gaining a foothold in space, Low Earth Orbit will become the new frontier of manufacturing and even tourism. As I’ve said many times, as soon as the cost of launching materials beyond the atmosphere drops below a certain threshold, any number of space-based industries will become profitable, and private companies are steadily bringing that cost down. Everything from pharmaceutical laboratories and medical treatment facilities to hotels and habitats for the aged (and very wealthy!) will be put up there. There will be orbiting factories to produce super-conductive fibreoptic cable, semi-conductors, replacement human organs, exotic alloys and metallic glasses for a huge variety of applications, and who knows what else?

The next step will be staging platforms for deeper space travel, whether to the Moon, the asteroids, Mars, or beyond, since long-range spacecraft will be assembled in orbit and begin their journeys there. Traffic like that will steadily increase, leaving trails of ionized gases across the sky.

Precision optical astronomy based on the surface of the Earth is probably doomed. The writing is already on the wall.

That doesn’t mean the end of astronomy, of course. It will be a case of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”. We already know that telescopes and other scientific instruments can view the heavens with vastly improved precision once beyond the pesky interference of the Earth’s atmosphere. For now, the choice of whether to observe from a mountaintop or high above the ocean of air comes down to cost (and maybe convenience), but before much longer, there won’t be a choice. The sky near Earth will simply be too crowded.

I hope these changes won’t entirely spoil the pleasure of lying on your back under the sky on a summer night and wondering at a billion blazing points of light. There are few experiences more glorious.

Astronomers, I feel your pain.

PERSONAL PROGRESS WHILE THE WORLD'S ON HOLD

By now, no one expects anything very “normal” from the year 2020. The past few months have seen me spending most of my time building and doing repairs on the cabins and sheds of the property where I live. That might be normal for some, but I’m a writer for a reason—the only power tool I’m proficient with is a computer! Each day is like a new comedy of errors.

Outside my little domain the world at large is still turning, but in fits and starts. I’m sure parts of your life feel “on hold” while the coronavirus pandemic rages. Even so, things happen. Developments arise.

A lot of the interesting stuff in my life and career recently is thanks to my longtime writer friend Mark Leslie Lefebvre (who writes as Mark Leslie). He’s been keeping me busier than I’d otherwise be, first by recruiting me to be the narrator of his A Canadian Werewolf In New York series, which includes not only the full novel of that name, but also the origin story One Time Around and the sequel novella Stowe Away. They relate the adventures of Michael Andrews, bestselling author and transplanted Canadian in the Big Apple who also happens to be a werewolf, which gives him superhuman abilities in the days around a full moon. When Mark decided to produce new editions of the stories, including audiobook versions, I was happy that he thought of me. Mind you, I was a career radio show host for more than 30 years, and I’ve recorded lots of audiobook-related material. Along with my current writing career, I work as a freelance voice talent.

Mark was not only thrilled by the result but inspired to knuckle down and finish writing the next book in the series. As a lifelong voice talent and book lover, narrating audiobooks is a perfect fit for me, and I urge you to check out Mark’s stuff. (http://markleslie.ca/bibliography/) He’s also publishing another anthology of short fiction called Obsessions from some great writers, and I’ve narrated a couple of stories for it too.

But the voice work wasn’t our only collaboration. Mark and I are both from the city of Sudbury in Ontario, Canada, and both of us learned a lot about writing from fellow Sudburian Sean Costello, a writer of internationally successful horror and thriller fiction often compared to Stephen King. Last month Mark came to us with the brilliant idea of publishing a small collection of stories from the three of us. It’s a treat (no trick) for me to be published with these friends and talented writers, and just in time for Halloween too. Strange Sudbury Stories features ghosts, monsters, and the supernatural, as well as some dark science fiction tales from me. It’s now available in ebook format, with print editions coming any day now (http://books2read.com/strangesudburystories), and if I know Mark, he probably has an audiobook version in mind.

Recording audiobooks for Mark has shamed me into recording audio versions of some more of my own work, so the first example is an audiobook edition of my three-story anthology called BEYOND: The Stars: three exciting stories of space travel.

A solo pilot in deep space risks losing his sanity when his ship is invaded by disembodied thoughts.

A marathon runner on a dangerous desert planet discovers that it may not be uninhabited after all.

The crew of a survey ship encounters a powerful being with an injury that will test their every belief.

Previously only available as an e-book, you can now listen to BEYOND: The Stars in your car, on your bike, or wherever you like. It’s in the pipeline and will be available any day now wherever you buy your audiobooks.

All of this hasn’t left me much time to write, but I have sent a novel manuscript off to my frequent editor in the hope that we can whip it into shape for publication in 2021. I don’t know about you, but I see way too much writing that’s just plain bad because the authors didn’t work with an editor. So I refuse to do that, even though it means I can’t crank out half a dozen books a year. I hope you’ll feel that my books are worth the wait. The SF-thriller The Primus Labyrinth is available everywhere and is being compared to Michael Crichton’s work (one of the greatest compliments you could give me). The next one is an alien contact tale that’s almost like a superhero origin story. I can’t wait for you to see it.

In the meantime, I can’t say I’m looking forward to Winter, but at least the snow will bring an end to my construction attempts and give my battered thumbs a rest!

PREDICT THE FUTURE? FOLLOW THE MONEY

Can we predict the future by studying the past?

Some insist that history is bound to repeat itself (especially if we don’t learn from it). It also teaches us a lot about human nature, which we can use to extrapolate future behaviour. But sometimes developments come along that really shake things up and send us off on a whole new tangent.

One of my summer reads, a book called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, is a real eye-opener. It’s a hugely ambitious history of the human race from our beginning to the present day, but not a list of dates and facts. Instead it seeks to explain why homo sapiens rose to prominence instead of other human species like Neanderthals, and how we got to where we are from our humble origins. It especially charts the most significant changes in our history, and analyses their impact, from the births of spoken and written language to the rise of modern thought, the Agricultural Revolution, Scientific Revolution, Industrial Revolution, and more.

One of Harari’s key assertions that had never occurred to me is that, before the rise of modern science in the 1500’s, most people on the planet were encouraged to believe that all significant knowledge was contained in the foundational books of the main religions and the teachings of the ancients. What wasn’t revealed in those just wasn’t important to know. The findings of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and many others changed that, especially when they led to improvements in technology. It gradually became accepted that learning about how the universe works wasn’t just worthwhile, it could make life better for humans. Similarly, most people had believed that the human condition was stagnant, or even declining, including the distribution of wealth. The size of the world’s “pie” didn’t change, so for you to get a bigger slice you had to take it from someone else. Then came the “discovery” of the American continents and many other previously unknown lands offering huge wealth in conjunction with still more technological improvements, and suddenly there appeared the concept of progress: that the world pie could actually grow and benefit everyone (except the native people of those places, of course).

Enter capitalism. After all, scientific research and exploration are expensive. Those with the capital to pay for it want to see concrete (ie. profitable) benefits. That will continue to be true in centuries to come. Which means that science will advance in areas where there’s money to be made.

We’re already seeing the space travel business pass from the hands of governments to private industry because companies like SpaceX can profit by providing space delivery services not only to NASA but also to everyone who wants to put a satellite, or anything else, into orbit. Since many chemical processes can be easier to carry out under zero gravity and with extremes of heat or cold (or are much safer accomplished far from human populations!), expect to see laboratories and chemical factories in space. The availability of abundant raw solar energy outside the atmosphere is another plus (and a potential industry of its own once it can be safely beamed to receivers on Earth). Future mining of the Moon, the asteroids, and the moons of other planets is something we’ve long assumed will happen. Entrepreneurs eager to carry out such developments are only waiting for the cost of space launches to drop below a certain level, to make the ventures profitable.

Space tourism is a fairly safe bet as a coming attraction, but also expect orbital or Moon-based health spas and retirement homes for those to whom gravity, weather, or unfiltered air have become undesirable. For those of us with insufficient incomes for an actual presence in space, there will at least be a lot of virtual experiences available, driving moon buggies, skating across planet-size ice rinks, or surfing Saturn’s rings. In fact, painstakingly accurate virtual experiences of every kind imaginable will be a growth industry for many decades to come.

The transportation industry has hit a speed bump with Covid-19 (and future pandemics) making it unwise to pack large numbers of people together, but new solutions will be found, and soon the race toward ever faster and pervasive travel will resume. Maybe it’ll be with individual pods linked like train cars travelling in vacuum tunnels. Or drones big enough to carry a human. Or maybe I’m wrong, and only goods will be transported over long distances while humans become accustomed to increasingly realistic virtual travel and social interactions.

Scientific progress isn’t only about space or speed, either. Genetic engineering has already made vast amounts of money for drug and chemical companies, and will only get bigger. Progress in medical science affects everyone, curing diseases, chronic illnesses, and hereditary health problems until life expectancy soars toward immortality. And there’s no question that drug and medical care can be very profitable (note that it will not be profitable for anyone to discover a permanent cure for anything, so don’t expect it. Profit lies in making customers pay for ongoing treatments!) And, like it or not, genetic modification will extend to humans, first for medical reasons but eventually for fashion and entertainment, because there is money to be made. Giant corporations will keep lobbying governments to relax rules against gene editing, cloning, transformative surgeries and the like, while aggressively persuading the masses that it’s what they want. From picking the characteristics of your children, to enhancing your physique with artificial muscle or mechanical accessories, to making you look (and smell) like your favourite celebrity or animal, it’s only a matter of time.

There’s another commodity side to genetic engineering: creating made-to-order creatures. Scientists have already been working to recreate extinct species like woolly mammoths, but you just know that mini-dinosaurs would be big sellers, and the new creations won’t be confined to real species. Chimeras out of legend, or pure fantasy, will be brought to life. Imagine the smile on your daughter’s face when you give her a real unicorn for her birthday!

(As for how we’ll treat the life forms we create, or any alien forms we might encounter, just remember the millions of Africans once condemned to lives of slavery, the billions of animals treated like mere raw materials by agribusinesses today, and the wild species we’re driving to extinction. Everything will depend on which is more profitable: cruelty or kindness. Humankind has a long history of turning a blind eye to the plight of others if that suffering benefits us.)

Don’t forget that profit can also include political advantage and power. The exploitation of the Americas and elsewhere led to European empires that soon surpassed the largest economies of their time, in India and China. It’s also important to remember that much of the wealth of recent centuries came from the discovery of wholly new materials like aluminum and plastics, and new technologies like electrical generation and global communication. The parade of new discoveries will continue as humankind reaches outward and more money is pumped into the science pipeline. Money will be made from things we don’t even know exist yet.

All in all, science fiction writers will be well-advised to plan out our imaginary worlds and empires based on a clearly established framework of trade goods and profit margins. Science depends on investment, which depends on capitalism, which depends on consumers who buy goods and services. (Although it’s also true that, where there’s no existing market, advertising will create one!)

In closing, I’m compelled to point out one more thing to the capitalists reading this:

Saving the planet can be a money maker too! Think of it as “preserving your capital”, “protecting your market”, or just “ensuring future growth”.

Right now, that’s the most important investment of all.

COMET NEOWISE: PAST AND FUTURE VISITOR

Even if the Covid-19 crisis didn’t have everyone in lockdown desperately looking for distractions, Comet NEOWISE would have captured a lot of attention because it’s the first easily seen comet since Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. You may have made the effort to see it yourself if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, most recently a little after sunset in the northwestern sky below the Big Dipper. The comet itself is a small smudge and to the naked eye the tail is actually easier to detect if you’re not looking straight at it. The view is a lot more impressive through binoculars or a small telescope, although what really makes the whole thing noteworthy is knowing that what we’re seeing is a 5 km-diameter ball of slush trailing a plume of gases that extends millions of kilometers through space. Its orbit takes it more than a hundred billion kilometers from the sun and requires 6800 years to complete. So it’s the scale of the thing that’s mind-boggling, rather than the actual visuals themselves.

With the huge span of time involved in NEOWISE’s relentless course through the cosmos, it’s impossible to resist thinking about conditions on Earth when the comet last passed our way, and what our little blue planet will be like when it returns about the year 8863 CE.

Humans of circa 4800 BC didn’t know anything about the physics of astronomy, but they would have been much more familiar than we are with the stars in the night sky. The appearance of a comet would have been big news, and could have been seen as a portent to any number of events (disastrous or auspicious, depending on the needs of the local astrologer). But the entire human population at the time was probably less than forty million. The first Agricultural Revolution was in its late stages, meaning that tribes of hunter-gatherers had largely turned to living in small villages in set locations rather than roaming the countryside, raising a few domesticated animals and crops like millet and spelt. In China, people had begun to fire pottery in kilns and may just have begun experimenting with metals like bronze. It would be another few hundred years before the predecessor of Indo-European languages began to be spoken, and nearly a millennium before the Sumerian culture developed the first written language.

Advances in technology, language, and social organization occurred gradually over the next four thousand years until the Industrial Revolution brought an explosion of change in the late 1700’s CE. The last 2 ½ centuries have seen much greater change than the 6 ½ millennia before them. With that in mind, is it possible to forecast what our planet and our race will be like the next time Comet NEOWISE streaks through the night skies?

Climate modelling tells us that if we humans hadn’t interfered by pouring megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Earth would have begun to slowly cool on its way toward the next ice age. The human race has survived a number of ice ages in the past, though with a much smaller population to feed. But now that ice age has been diverted or postponed. In fact, the coming centuries will be a very difficult time because of too much heat, with melting ice caps, rising sea levels, expanding deserts, and seriously acidified oceans. The climate changes we’ve triggered will force us to adapt in order to survive, and that adaptation could take many forms. We might need to biologically engineer our bodies to store and use water more efficiently, withstand higher heat, and digest more hardy forms of food plants (cactus burgers anyone?) Or we might need to move underground and inhabit colonies in vast caverns or silos (like in Hugh Howey’s Wool stories). There’s not enough water in Earth’s ice caps to flood the whole planet as portrayed in the 1995 Kevin Costner movie Waterworld, but we might still choose to live on the oceans where we could produce lots of food via algae farms enriched by cool, nutrient-rich water from the ocean depths. Or we might even be forced to leave our home planet and either exist in giant space habitats in orbit, on the Moon, or within hollowed out asteroids (none of them likely to support large numbers of people), or set out to find other habitable worlds around other stars (Mars is the best option for a colony within our solar system and it’s not a good one—the technology to make it human-friendly within a reasonable timeframe would be better put to use in mitigating the effects of climate change on Earth). Who knows where the human race will live by the year 8863?

Potential futures are not all gloom and doom by any means. Consider the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trek universe, to be founded in the year 2161, and the multi-species habitats of Babylon 5 in the 2250’s. These include (mostly) peaceful coexistence with alien species too. Mind you, as much as I’m a devoted fan of Star Trek and heartily approve of its generally positive outlook (dependent on advanced technology, especially reliably fast space travel) there are a lot of other elements to take into consideration when predicting the path that the human race will take.

In just one generation, we’ve seen incredible progress in communications and information technology that results in new social challenges every day. The Covid crisis itself is an example—a sudden shift toward self-isolation creating social interaction that’s (for now) almost exclusively online. Back in the 1950’s SF writers like Arthur C. Clarke and others depicted future societies in which people rarely left their homes and only interacted remotely via holographs or ubiquitous wall displays. For all we know, the coronavirus may have triggered a wholesale change that will only accelerate.

Then there’s bio-engineering: within the coming century, we’ll have the ability to preselect almost every characteristic of our offspring and make any number of radical changes to our own bodies. Whether out of necessity, or at the whim of fashion, the physical form of humanity will change, and by 8863 it could change a lot.

And that’s if we still inhabit a physical form at all. If futurists like Ray Kurzweil are right, within the next few centuries we’ll find ways to transfer our consciousness into digital form, and either inhabit mechanical bodies, or choose to live in entirely virtual worlds within ultra-powerful computer networks. By the 89th Century we will have left silicon circuitry far behind and discovered how to use the atomic structure of any ordinary matter as digital media—we could inhabit the very rocks, trees, and grasses that make up our planet.

And don’t even get me started on Time Travel!

So when you go out tonight looking for Comet NEOWISE, think about the stories it could tell about the last time it toured through the inner solar system, and take a moment to imagine what our world could be like the next time it comes. Earth and its neighbourhood might be a very different place.

THREE GREAT SFF BOOKS YOU'LL RECOMMEND TO FRIENDS

This is the season when voting begins for one of the preeminent awards in Canadian speculative fiction, the Aurora Awards. Though I take many of the awards in the entertainment world with a huge grain of salt, literary awards—especially in the science fiction and fantasy genre—do capture my interest. And Canada has some terrific authors, well-deserving of their worldwide recognition. I haven’t read all of the Aurora-nominated works yet, but I’m working my way through them, and while award nominations don’t always guarantee authentic greatness, I felt compelled to recommend three excellent novels published in the past year. Give them a look—you won’t be sorry.

The Quantum Garden   by Derek  Künsken

The Quantum Garden is a sequel to Künsken’s The Quantum Magician and continues the story of the new sub-species of humanity called Homo quantus—humans genetically engineered to have brains that can act like quantum computers. Belisarius Arjona’s con game in the first book has now thrust the Home quantus into the spotlight as potentially valuable military assets, and the key to saving the lives of his whole race lies in the past, where the best of intentions go badly off track.

Künsken’s descriptions of Homo quantus, time travel, and the complex politics of his universe are thorough and fresh. His skilled plotting and crisp writing move the story along quickly. The novel is strikingly ambitious but in Künsken’s capable hands it’s an impressive success. If I have to include any caveat, it’s that quantum physics is mind-bending territory, and while I think Künsken makes it as accessible to non-mathematicians as anyone can, the book will still be a daunting ride for some. But if you’re up to the challenge, I highly recommend it.

The Gossamer Mage  by Julie E. Czerneda

After a long, successful run in science fiction, Julie E. Czerneda has turned her talents to fantasy as well in recent years including The Gossamer Mage, a story of a land steeped in magic now threatened by an evil force that threatens to consume it. The mage Maleonarial, living as a hermit, is forced to confront his own role in the growing peril and try to stop it, but in this world every use of magic bears a high cost to the vitality and lifespan of the mage. Especially when your ultimate goal is the overthrow of the Goddess herself.

As always, Czerneda’s worldbuilding is creative, rich, and detailed. The language and writing are beautiful. This is a book to sink into, enjoy its textures, and recall with pleasure like a favourite myth.

A Brightness Long Ago  by Guy Gavriel Kay

Over many years and many books, Guy Gavriel Kay has created a literary niche of his own, writing fantasy that could be historical fiction—especially medieval history—except the lands his characters inhabit never existed. They are much like real places and times in Earth history, though, and are evoked so richly that you might find yourself jumping on Google to find them.

In A Brightness Long Ago the realm is Batiara where city states compete, and sometimes war against each other using mercenary armies, especially the two led by bitter enemies Folco d’Acorsi and Teobaldo Monticola. The encounters of these two affect every part of the landscape. A cast of memorable and endearing characters weave their way through a complex plot that hinges on many fateful coincidences but scrupulously avoids predictability. Kay is a master at these kinds of stories, and A Brightness Long Ago doesn’t disappoint. If you’re already a fan of Guy Gavriel Kay, you’ll love it, and if you’ve never read his work before, this is an excellent introduction.