Meat And Money

The Ray Kurzweil free newsletter to which I’ve subscribed for many years has two items this week of strong interest to science fiction fans. One deals with an early success in growing meat in a lab – no living animals required. The second addresses the likely future of retailing. Both illustrate that the pace of change in industrialized societies continues unabated, and that one of Kurzweil’s major predictions, that the pace itself is speeding up, is coming true.

Factory grown meat is an old SF future projection standby. I’ve used it myself. Natural selection made us homo saps omnivores (check your teeth), and meat is a part of our nature-developed diet. But we humans are no longer as tightly bound to nature and heredity’s dictates as are almost all other animals; we have far more free choice. A large and steadily growing number of us have chosen to stop eating animal flesh. But that can be a very unhealthy choice, since certain vital nutrients are normally available only in animal tissue. (And our inherited taste buds just plain like! many varieties of meat.) Lab-grown meat, which could presumably be textured, flavored, supplemented by the addition of specific needed amino acids, etc.), can be an attractive alternative. And, moral questions aside, factory-grown meat would eliminate the extremely inefficient present system of raising untold millions of animals each year for slaughter. Most of the immense amounts of grain and other animal fodder saved could be fed directly to people. 

This would, of course, put thousands if not millions of people now engaged in raising, slaughtering, and butchering animals out of business. But some can be trained for jobs in the new meat factories, and the others, hopefully, will find better and less bloody jobs. 

Economic experts call the USA a consumer-driven society. If we all stopped buying anything other than what we need to survive – food, shelter, transportation, health care – the economy would collapse. Probably half or more of us wouldn’t have jobs. Most of us want more than the basic necessities, and the economy supplies us with the money to purchase lots of nice ‘extras’. All that spending adds up to what is commonly called a ‘standard of living’ – in our case a good one, but no longer among the world’s tops We get all those goodies through a system of production and distribution called retail trade. Ray Kurzweil predicts some major changes coming up, where we will be buying many of the gadgets –er, life-enhancing added values -- he talks about here. (For those of you not familiar with Kurzweil’s work, he’s said most of this before, in other forums. Ray is now working as a VP at Google, incidentally, in their creative future thinking department. He should be right at home there.)’ 

Here’s the full original article.

New Story: A Killing In Kind

This week I have a new story up in the third issue of “Fiction Vale”, a very promising new ezine which may have what it takes to last in a crowded and competitive field. The magazine is not free; costs four dollars per issue. It can be downloaded to a Kindle, or most other ‘smart’ devices, including probably your cell phone. You can also read the magazine on your computer, though you first may have to do what I did, visit Amazon and download their free Kindle application. (I have a Kindle, but prefer the much larger computer screen.) I encourage all you devoted Joseph Green fans to buy this issue, not only to read my story but all the others. And help a relatively new worthwhile ezine that is just getting its sealegs. 

On arrival you can learn a great deal about "FictionVale" before  deciding whether or not to buy. Scroll down past the intro material to the list of contributors, and you will see my devilishly handso -- smiling face. In addition to a short bio, each entry has a link to another site or individual blog where the writer can promote himself. Following the list of contributors, they provide a lot of information on the magazine and future plans. It looks to be an interesting venture, and I hope it succeeds.

Two other items of strong interest caught my attention this week. One was on the belated credit being given to Henry Miller, an important but neglected figure in American literature (in my not-too-humble opinion). At first dismissed as just another pornographer, his novels were not allowed into the USA until after Bennett Cerf led the eventually successful fight to get James Joyce’s Ulysses  past the censors (in its thousand-plus pages this great novel included a single appearance of the word ‘fuck’. ) The movie “Henry and June”, which I remember as being quite popular, probably did more to revive Henry Miller’s reputation than any number of book reviews.

The second item I found interesting on Huffpost (and if you are of the liberal/progressive persuasion and don’t subscribe to the free Huffpost, you are missing a lot. Arianna Huffington is one of the few celebrities of whom I know who began her public life as a conservative, then  had the intelligence and moral conscience to morph into a progressive). This one covers a study that seems to establish as fact what I perhaps already dimly sensed – that someone who gets up in the morning with some purpose in mind, the desire to accomplish something he or she deems worthwhile, betters his chances of staying alive. Something to think about, especially if you are retired and have allowed your life to become aimless and without purpose. 

Until next week, and more useless (but I hope interesting) meanderings.

Past Sins Remembered

The First Geosynchronous Satellite ~Image Credit: NASA

NASA began development of new communication satellites in 1960, based on the hypothesis that geosynchronous satellites, which orbit Earth 22,300 miles (35,900 km) above the ground, offered the best location because the high orbit allowed the satellites' orbital speed to match the rotation speed of Earth and therefore remain essentially stable over the same spot. 

In my feckless youth I once made a mathematical mistake, a technical error. Unfortunately, mine became embedded in the public consciousness throughout most of the world, and remains there today. I was reminded of this when reading an on-line European magazine report on a then-recent space launch. The figure they gave for the planned geosynchronous orbit was wrong -- and that's my fault.

It came about this way.

In 1971 I was working for Boeing as a tech writer, supporting NASA's Unmanned Launch Operations Directorate (ULO) on Cape Canaveral. My title was "Project Writer," and it meant I did all the technical documentation for the NASA branch responsible for Atlas-Centaur vehicles. I also manned a console during launches. Two other experienced tech writers supported the Delta and Atlas-Agena branches, and we all worked with the branch that managed the spacecraft. The contractors who built and launched the three vehicles had their own tech writing staffs, and produced different, though sometimes overlapping, launch documentation.

I had worked in ULO for two previous years, 1966 and '67, in the same position, before transferring to Kennedy Space Center to support the Apollo Program. Though operating in the giant shadow of Apollo, and not drawing that much interest from the general public, ULO had continued to grow during my four-year absence. 

The primary growth area was communications satellites, with a increasing emphasis on those designed to operate from geosynchronous orbits. (Which would be called "Clarke" orbits, if this was a just world. Arthur C. Clarke published the first article pointing out that three equidistant satellites in geosynchronous orbit could provide communications to most of the inhabited world; see "Wireless World", Oct. 1945).

"Geosynchronous" means positioned over the equator and moving in line with it, at the exact altitude and orbital velocity that completes one orbit in 24 hours. Since the equator also rotates once during those 24 hours, the net effect is that the satellite appears to remain motionless in the sky. This is very desirable for people sending up data to be retransmitted over a large area, such as television and radio signals.

One of my more rewarding duties as Project Writer was to prepare a little sheet of basic facts on each planned launch of the Atlas-Centaur. Written in layman's language, it provided a fairly complete overview. This fact sheet had begun as a one-page basic list, but when I took over I expanded it to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire mission. It grew very popular, and I was asked to prepare one for Delta launches as well -- though another writer handled all the purely technical documentation. (The Atlas-Agena program had been killed.)

Shortly after I arrived back at ULO, the Atlas-Centaur was scheduled to launch an INTELSAT communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit. When I did my usual study of the voluminous technical documentation in preparation for writing the mission fact sheet, I had my first encounter with geosync orbit parameters. I knew the general operating concepts, of course, but here were the exact figures for this particular mission. The INTELSAT was to be injected into an orbit with an apogee (high point) of about 22,400 statute miles above the Earth's surface, and a perigee (low point) of under 22,200 miles. That was the acceptable range. The spacecraft's own small thrusters would refine whatever orbit was actually achieved to reach the satellite's final height, which was not given.

The general public didn't care that much about preliminary orbital altitudes. I knew they would want the planned final one, which would be somewhere between the apogee and perigee. And I needed to round off the actual figure to the nearest hundred miles. That was as close as most people, and in particular the news media (who had started asking for my fact sheets after they became popular) would ever remember. So, within the range of 22,400 and 22,200, I selected 22,300 miles as the figure for the planned final altitude, and used that.

My fact sheet sailed through the routine checks by NASA engineering managers without a problem, and was published. The idea of a satellite that could sit apparently motionless in the sky was still very new. INTELSATs, the first satellite system designed to provide communications over the entire world, were receiving a lot of attention. Story after story appeared in the media about the advantages of geosynchronous orbit. And all of them used the figure I had supplied as the correct altitude, 22,300 miles. Within a year or two, it had become the established figure. Everyone, from knowledgeable newsmen to devoted space program fans, used it. Even NASA people doing briefings for the press and public adopted it.

ULO continued to launch vehicles, the only U.S. action around after the last manned flight for Apollo, the Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Among these were several in the swiftly growing area of spacecraft designed to operate from geosynchronous orbit.  And going over the orbital parameters for another one, a year or so after my first, I discovered something.

There is such a physical dimension as a perfect geosynchronous orbit altitude. Few spacecraft attain it or rigorously hold to it, because it isn't that important. A satellite can move slowly up or down in orbit (the only visible effect of not being in a perfect circle) fifty miles or so, without seriously affecting the antennas transmitting to it from the ground, or the coverage area of its broadcast signal. Spacecraft operators don't waste precious fuel trying to keep a satellite at an exact altitude; here, close is good enough.

But the perfect altitude for a Clarke orbit, it turns out, is 22,237 statute miles above mean sea level. (And it is of interest to note that the master visionary, in his "Wireless World" article, called for an orbit with an estimated radius of 42,000 kilometers from the center of the earth. That works out to about 22,100 miles above mean sea level; very close.) That meant I should have rounded off geosynchronous altitude as 22,200 miles above the Earth, the closest hundred. Using 22,300 miles had been a mistake.

By the time I recognized my error, the 22,300 figure had become thoroughly established. Everyone was using it, even engineers and others who were experts in orbital mechanics and knew better. I tried to correct the mistake by using the exact planned apogee and perigee figures on ensuing factsheets, but it was too late. The news media ignored the exact figures, sticking with the incorrect final planned altitude of 22,300 miles.

When I saw the European magazine using the 23,300 mile figure, decades later, I realized it has obviously become a world-wide standard.  It should be 22,200, but tell that to anyone except someone with expertise in orbital mechanics, and you will start an argument.

It's wrong. And it's all my fault.

It's probably also my only real claim to lasting infamy -- except that no one but a few people to whom I've spoken, and the readers of the fanzine "Challenger", which published an earlier version of this article in Issue 20, know the facts

Ah, well.

Science Fiction: Entering the Great Divide

Earth by NASA

As we plunge headlong into a new century, science fiction has entered a period of change so profound and extensive it seems fair to call it a paradigm shift – most writers taking a new approach to producing the literature, so long despised by the cultural elite, that has nevertheless grown into our largest entertainment genre. Today’s writers are leaving the spacelanes, the far voyages, the distant planets, to focus their jaundiced gaze and speculative minds on trends becoming apparent right here on Earth.

Modern science fiction (henceforth SF) got its start as adventure stories for boys, published in a half-dozen cheap magazines around the beginning of the 20th century. Before that came Wells, with serious and often profound novels; Verne, who tried to follow known scientific principles in his popular adventure stories; and earlier, Mary Shelley, with the novel many consider the first real SF, Frankenstein.

With a few exceptions, Verne’s novels were confined to the wonders of science on Earth. Wells also set most of his stories on the ground, though he did write the first important book featuring an alien invasion.

With the introduction of the first pure SF magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926, SF continued a steady expansion outward, to the moon, the planets, and finally, with Doc Smith’s “Lensmen” series and a few others, to the stars. When Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, van Vogt and many more introduced galactic civilizations in the 30’s and 40’s, the (fictional) pathway opened. By 1950 there were probably more stories set in space or on alien worlds than on Earth.

That no longer seems the case. But let me admit here that I didn’t take three months to do a careful statistical analysis of the current field to support this conclusion. Life is too short. My conviction springs from constant reading in the literature, plus checking out a lot of book reviews each month.

The real space exploration program, in which your humble correspondent spent 37 years (both military and civilian), has reached an interregnum, a long “quiet time.” The world finally has an International Space Station. With a little vision on the part of coming American administrations, new and perhaps highly beneficial discoveries await us. Communications satellites now blanket the inhabited globe, bringing to life one of SF's more accurate speculations, the Internet (and in the process creating a new global community, unplanned, unexpected, and certainly not prepared for). The Global Positioning System, designed and built to serve the American military, also provides the civilian population with the most powerful navigation system ever devised. Weather satellites have lifted forecasting to new levels of accuracy. Earth observers looking down from space greatly shorten the search for new natural resources.

And that’s where we’re going to be for a while. Barring some unexpected (and unlikely) breakthrough in propulsion technology, one that greatly reduces costs, the planned return to the Moon and on to Mars will be a slow and expensive slog. We're lucky that competition from Japan and China (replacing the U.S.S.R. as primary motivating forces) will probably keep the U.S. manned space flight program alive. But the current emphasis is on what space technology can do for the people, right here on Earth, who are paying for it. And that’s primarily unmanned spacecraft.

And SF, which some of us like to believe serves a second purpose as handmaiden to real science (the first purpose is entertainment, of course), is also coming back down to Earth.

The first novel (and we’re only going to cite novels here) to win a Nebula was Dune, by Frank Herbert, in 1965. Dune, plus the long series that followed, featured an imaginary planet with some very unEarth-like inhabitants. In 1966 Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes, returned briefly to Earth, but it was not a clear win; it tied with Samual R. Delany’s Babel 17. After that an occasional winner set the action on the home planet, but the large majority were outward bound -- other planets, other star systems, even other galaxies. But in 1984 William Gibson returned to Earth with Neuromancer, starting a trend toward looking ahead to a planet-bound future.

That trend became more positive in the last decade of the century. In 1991 Michael Swanwick’s Stations Of the Tide explored a distant watery world. But in 1992 Connie Willis went into Earth’s past and won for the time travel story Doomsday Book. In 1993 Kim Stanley Robinson transformed our most likely possibility and won for Red Mars. Greg Bear took on the big jobs by Moving Mars in 1994. Robert Sawyer ran his The Terminal Experiment, biological speculation, on Earth in 1995. In 1996 Nicola Griffith won with Slow River, a stream that flowed only on Earth. The Moon and the Sun, another time travel story (of sorts) also stayed on Earth, to win in 1997. Joe Haldeman roamed the solar system in 1998 with Forever Peace, but Octavia Butler returned to Earth (essentially) in the 1999 winner Parable of the Talents. Greg Bear ended the century in 2000 with Darwin’s Radio, biological SF that never leaves the home planet.

In the new century, the winner in 2001 was The Quantum Rose, by Catherine Asaro, set on a distant planet. But American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, came back to Earth with a winning fantasy (fantasy novels winning Nebulas and Hugos became another noticeable trend, and the large majority are Earth-bound); Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark won the prize on Earth in 2003; Bujold’s Paladin Of Souls searched for answers in a fantasy set on a far planet in 2004; Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman, stayed on Earth but featured some highly unearthly visitors to win in 2005; and Jack McDevitt’s Seeker, set a few thousand years ahead when space travel is common, won for 2006. Vernor Vinge remained on the home planet to win in 2007 with Rainbow’s End.

Nebula Awards are voted on only by active members of SFWA. But the more broad-based Hugo awards are following the same trend. Looking back only a decade in the last century, Lois McMaster Bujold won in 1991 for The Vor Game, in 1992 for Barrayar, and in 1995 for Mirror Dance (the only triple Hugo winners I can recall in a single series). All are interstellar adventures. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, won in a tie with Doomsday Book in 1993, and a follow-on in the same universe, A Deepness in the Sky, won in the year 2000. Kim Stanley Robinson took Hugos for Green Mars in 1994 and Blue Mars in 1997. Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace added the Hugo to his Nebula win in 1998. Out of the ten, only Doomsday Book, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, 1996, and another Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog, 1999, place the action on Earth.

In 2001, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire continued the swing toward fantasy novels, with Neil Gaiman’s American Gods winning the Hugo, after already taking the Nebula, in 2002. Robert Sawyer’s Hominids kept us on Earth in 2003. Bujold’s fantasy Paladin Of Souls took the Hugo in 2004, as it had the Nebula. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a fantasy set on Earth by Susanna Clark, won in 2005. Robert Wilson’s Spin, which includes space travel, took the prize in 2006, and Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End stayed on Earth to win in 2007.

What I think this means is that SF writers are pulling back from the vastness and openness of interstellar space to return to Earth. The hot science for speculation and extrapolation is biology, not rocketry.

And that’s a paradigm shift.

This new emphasis is by no means a complete change, and probably never will be. You can still find lots of novels set in the starlanes, or on distant worlds. But it seems to me the trend is there, and it’s strong. Whether consciously or not, more and more serious writers are accepting the fact that, for now, we’re stuck in this solar system. They are turning their speculative attention to the effects of the accelerating pace of scientific discovery on our current lives and future prospects – where biology is key. They look ahead to what comes next on Earth, doing what SF does best: constructing scenarios that explore the social and political consequences of scientific breakthroughs, and how these will affect our world. And for some, worrying about a pace of discovery that seems to be spinning out of control (or at least out of their personal control).

The Audio/Visual media, as usual, are following the trail blazed by print. After Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey demonstrated that SF movies could in fact earn big bucks, the race was on. TV had always had its boys’ adventure SF series, but Star Trek in 1966 was aimed at adults. It only endured for three years, but paved the way for three more series that lasted about seven years each. A fifth show, Enterprise, became the first to fade after just a few seasons, indicating either the show was weak or its public had finally become surfeited. Star Trek became one of the most profitable franchises in TV history. The movies followed (though there was a long wait for the first one), and they too proved immensely popular. In both TV and movies, Earth was an important background element, but seldom a part of the main story.

The three original Star Wars movies carried this trend a step further, into interstellar empires and galaxies far, far way – losing any remaining distinction between SF and fantasy in the process. (The Star Wars movies, and a great deal of the Trek movies and TV series, can be called SF only by wrapping them in the famous Arthur C. Clarke saying (this is not an exact quote) that “Any technology sufficiently beyond the observer’s understanding will appear to be magic.”) * Earth was relegated to history, little more.

There have already been some good SF movies set right here on Earth (and not dealing with that counterpoint to human space travel, aliens coming to invade us). Charly, the movie version of Flowers for Algernon, comes immediately to mind, along with the several incarnations of Island of Dr. Moreau and the many unbelievable but great fun adventure movies made from Verne’s books. But with a new Star Trek movie now in the works (the eighth? ninth?) and the three Star Wars prequels finally out, it seems safe to say the emphasis has not yet strongly shifted back to Earth. Only the more nearly pure fantasies (the Harry Potter planned seven movies, The Lord of the Rings trilogy) are Earthbound.

(If this seems like selective choosing of titles to reinforce my thesis, I can only plead that there are so very many movies and TV shows, as there were books, that they can’t all be listed. Also, I’m saying we are now IN a paradigm shift – not yet out the other side.)

SF/Fantasy has become the dominant movie genre – something no SF writer predicted, of which I’m aware (just as no one predicted that a half-billion of us would watch that first step on the Moon’s surface “live” while sitting in our living rooms). Among the large number produced over the past two decades, quite a few set the action on Earth. Most dealt with future possibilities, as a good little SF movie should. Bladerunner and the Terminator series come to mind, though there are many more. But the big box office hits were, mostly, the ones set out yonder, among the stars.

All of this has to tie in with the noted general decline in reading for pleasure, throughout the print media; with the huge shift from books to A/V as the preferred at-home entertainment medium; and with the newest and fastest-growing demand on our scarce time, in all its seductive and widely pervasive glory, the Internet.

Put all these ingredients into a big pot and stir, and what emerges is a renewed interest in me me! ME! – what’s going to happen in my lifetime, on this world I live in, where my kids, if they’re lucky, will get to grow up.

And hey! if you disagree with this conclusion, there’s room enough on my planet -- where you will be for the foreseeable future – for both of us.