New Sci Fi: Osiris by E. J. Swift

I've been reading three recently published science fiction works. Each presents a different view of the future of humanity and the authors masterfully create those fictional worlds that are so important to the success of science-fiction novels.  Osiris by E. J. Swift presents a post-ecological-disaster Earth. The action takes place in the eponymous city of Osiris, near Patagonia, where the inhabitants believe that they are the last remnants of mankind. Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 presents a robust, technologically-advanced solar system 300 years in the future with genetically-engineered humans and artificial intelligences at work terraforming and colonizing the planets, moons, and asteroids. When the Blue Shift Comes is a far-future two-part novella by Robert Silverberg and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro . As can be gleaned from its name, this story is about a collapsing universe at the far reaches of time. In Blue Shift, humanity has expanded far beyond our own galaxy and evolved far beyond our current body form over the course of millions (or perhaps billions) of years.

The characters in these three works are memorable - from Osiris' jaded, rebellious socialite Adelaide and firebrand activist Vikram from the wrong side of the city wall, to 2312's genetically altered Swan Er Hong, Inspector Genette (a “small”) and Fitz Wahram (a “Titan”) to the near-immortal Hanosz Prime and Kaivilda Kreidge of When the Blue Shift Comes.

 

Osiris is E. J. Swift's first novel although she has previously written shorter works of science fiction and fantasy. As she describes the book on her website, the novel is “set in a far future ocean metropolis, a failed utopia whose inhabitants believe they live on the last city on earth.”

Osiris is the name of the ancient Egyptian god who ruled the afterlife - the god of the underworld and the dead. The city Osiris in E. J. Swift's novel represents something of an afterlife also. Osiris is populated by the descendants of survivors of a great storm that flooded and destroyed the land masses on Earth. Since there have been no communications from the outside for 50 years, the inhabitants believe that their floating city contains the last human beings alive.

The city Osiris is forceably divided into two parts - the well-to-do society of the East and the “have nots” of the West. Social inequality and oppression are the order of the day - an early scene in the book is the public execution of one of Vikram's friends. 

Adelaide Rechnov and Vikram Bai are two of the more complex sci-fi characters that I've encountered. Osiris unfolds by alternating between their two points of view. Adelaide's obsessive concern is the disappearance of her mentally unstable twin, Axel. She is the only daughter of a prominent ruling family. Her grandfather, The Architect, was one of the city's founders. Estranged from her parents and brothers, Adelaide is the only one in her family who believes that her brother is still alive. Vikram is an activist who hopes for a peaceful improvement in the conditions of the West. Their paths cross when one of Adelaide's brothers offers Vikram an invitation to one of her infamous parties. After some false starts and conflicts, Vikram agrees to help Adelaide search for her brother and she agrees to help convince the governing council to aid the West. As their professional and personal relationship develops, Vikram and Adelaide are caught between sadistic, Gestapo-like “city guards” in the East and desperate revolutionaries in the West. Their fate is uncertain by the end of this first book and the Osiris Project promises to be an ambitious trilogy.  

 

[Next review: Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312]

The God Particle

 

Wikipedia image from NASA

Over the past week, you may have heard increasingly confident statements reported in the popular press that the elusive Higgs boson - the so-called "God particle" - had been found. On March 14, on what would have been Einstein's 134th birthday, Reuters' headline read "Strong Signs Higgs Boson Has Been Found:CERN". Two days later, Forbes' headline read "CERN Now Certain It Has Discovered The Higgs Boson". The particle in question was actually detected last July but scientists were not about to commit to a discovery until they had conducted much more analysis of the data.

So why all the excitement? Well for one thing, experimental physicists and cosmologists had been searching in vain for this particular subatomic particle for almost 50 years. The Higgs boson is named for the British physicist, Peter Higgs, who first postulated its existence in 1964. Secondly, it was the only particle in the Standard Model that had not yet been discovered. The Standard Model of Physics provides the best explanation of how the fundamental particles of matter and the three of the four fundamental forces are related.  As noted on a CERN webpage: "Developed in the early 1970s, it has successfully explained almost all experimental results and precisely predicted a wide variety of phenomena."  Unfortunately one theoretically predicted piece of the model has been missing.  The missing piece, the Higgs boson, was needed to explain why the Big Bang resulted in the formation of the universe...why something was able to be created from nothing 13.7 billion years ago. The Higgs boson is the particle that triggered the Big Bang..it joins and gives mass to everything. Had this particle not ever been found, it would jeopardize the Standard Model, one of the most established and tested theories in all of physics and the Big Bang would become even a bigger enigma than it is.

The discovery of the Higgs boson was made at CERN's Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. This equipment uses electromagnetic energy to accelerate protons in opposite directions to 99.9% of the speed of light through a tube 17 miles in circumference. The collisions of these counter-accelerating protons produce energies close to those believed to exist at the time of the Big Bang.

Cern LHC

The United States was building a collider in Texas a couple of decades ago. Planned to be nearly three times larger than the CERN collider, the Superconducting Super Collider was cancelled because of budgetary problems in 1993. The budgetary problem was its cost of $12 billion, which is less than 2% of the current US defense budget. Funny how we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons systems and wars and then balk at a pittance for fundamental scientific research. Maybe it's about what you can expect in a country where 46% believe in creationism - i.e., that man did not evolve but was created in his existing form about 10,000 years ago and 63% support the death penalty.

On the good news front, about 70% ofAmericans now believe that global warming is happening. Score one for scientific competency.  And Maryland joined the civilized world in abolishing the death penalty - the 18th state to do so.  

 

Death Penalty Map, c.2011 [Wikipedia]

 

 

 

Links

 

A Cosmic Timeline: the evolution of the universe described as if it happened in one year

 

 

The Left Bank Cafe September 2012 post:  Why Does the World Exist?

 



Genius

Some weeks ago, I was in Ft. Myers, Florida. While there, I had the opportunity to visit Thomas Edison's Winter Home and Museum a day before the 156^th anniversary of his birth. The site is officially named the Edison & Ford Winter Estates because the winter homes of both men are there. Henry Ford was a protege of Edison and the two men maintained a lifelong friendship – which included having winter homes on adjoining plots of land in Ft. Myers. The gardens and the estates are beautiful in themselves but the Museum is what really gives you pause to think. Edison's inventions fill room after room. His interests, contributions and inventions celebrated there include those that most of us are aware of - the light bulb, the phonograph, early movie making equipment, telegraphy innovations, batteries, electricity distribution – and some that I, at least, was ignorant of – for example, his botanical experiments aimed at finding a rubber-producing plant that could thrive in the United States and an "electrographic vote recorder". Thomas Edison was granted a total of 1093 patents and the impact of much of his work reverberates globally today. (See the Thomas Edison patent web-page in the inventors section of the about.com website for the complete list.) 

Edison was also an accomplished businessman. His Edison Illuminating Company, the prototype for other electricty distribution companies, began supplying electricity to a one-square mile of Lower Manhattan in 1882. It later merged with other power companies to become what eventually was named Consolidated Edison, one of the largest enrgy companies in the US. Okay, that one was obvious...but he also was instrumental in the formation of General Electric, which in its earliest days was the Edison General Electric Company.

What gives rise to such practical genius? We've all heard Edison's “one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration” definition of genius. Granted perseverance to follow an idea through to a successful conclusion is an essential element of discovery. But I suspect there is more to it than that. Imagination and creativity, intelligence and talent, knowledge and openness to new ideas an understanding of current needs and a foresight of future possibilities – these surely have a role.

Also, what is it about today's situation that makes men of political genius so rare? At a time when insight and boldness are needed, demagoguery and spinelessness rule the day. Are our problems so complex or are we prevented from solving them by the know-nothing's and fear-mongers? Charlie Chaplin had this pessimistic observation: “Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.”

But let's leave on an upbeat note. Here are ten other quotes on genius by people through the ages:

“Genius is eternal patience.” - Michaelangelo

“When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” - Jonathan Swift

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius sees a target no one else can see.” -Arthur Schopenhauer

“God gives talent. Work transforms talent into genius.” - Anna Pavlova

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age.” - Aldous Huxley

“The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.” - William James

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.” - Abraham Lincoln

“To see things in the seed. That is genius.” - Lao Tzu

Hugo Chavez and 21st Century Latin America

Hugo Chavez, the charismatic and provocative leader of Venezuela for the past 14 years, passed away yesterday at the age of 58 after succumbing to his year-and-a-half battle with cancer. He had overwhelming support among Venezuela's poor, whose lives he sought to better, and he encountered great opposition from many of Venezuela's wealthy.

I spent some time in Venezuela in the late '90's – both before and after Chavez' election to the Venezuelan Presidency. In the runup to the 1998 election, his lead was overwhelming. He won easily with the strong support of the country's poorest, who turned out in huge numbers to vote. And there were many, many poor people. The vast hillside slums were visible on the drive into Caracas from Simón Bolívar International Airport, which is 10-15 miles from downtown Caracas. These insubstantial makeshift homes seemed to built on top of one another – a tragedy waiting to happen. As a Venezuelan colleague once remarked, “That all those houses are still standing is a sign that God must exist.” I have never seen anything like it - either before or since.

Progress has been made since he took office in1999 but much remains to be done. After nationalizing the oil industry, the government has been able to pour revenues into projects to alleviate the worst of the conditions. Poverty rates are down from 50% to 32%. More than $300 billion dollars have been spent on social development projects including health care, education, and affordable, government-run grocery stores. Cuban doctors provide free treatment at neighborhood clinics, and university enrollment swelled from 894,000 students in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2010. More than 3 million people have signed up to receive government homes. In the period from 2010 to 2012, about 250,000 of these homes have been built. [Ian James, AP Oct. 4, 2012]

Chavez' support among the “Chavistas” remained strong enough to win a fourth term in 2012 by an eleven point margin – 55-44. Turnout was over 80% for the election. The margin of victory was down from his overwhelming 26 point margin in 2006 but compares favorably to recent US elections. In the US, we haven't seen a President win by more than 11 points since 1984 and we haven't had an 80% turnout since 1876!

Since the time of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has taken a strong, and often misguided, interest in Latin American affairs. From the 1890's onward, we have often intervened more than 50 times – usually on behalf of capital and business interests as well as on behalf of right-wing dictators and military or para-military forces. A listing can be found at theYachana.org website but I'll just refresh you memory of some of them here:

• 1898 – seized Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain
• 1907-12 – intervened in Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Cuba to protect “US interests”
• 1914 – began a 19 year occupation of Haiti
• 1925 – Marines sent to suppress a general strike in Panama
• 1954 – CIA directs an exile invasion in Guatemala after newly elected government nationalizes unused US's United Fruit Company land. This support continued for decades ultimately resulting in 200,00 deaths
• 1961 – CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba fails with the sanctions against Cuba begun in 1962
• 1973 – CIA-backed coup ousts democratically elected Marxist president in Chile
• 1980's – interventions to support rebels against left-leaning governments in Nicaragua and El Salvador, including CIA-directed “Contra” operations

With oil-rich Venezuela going the socialist route, it was inevitable that the US would oppose Chavez.

Whether or not the United States knew of, or was involved in any way with, the “47-hour coup” that tried unsuccessfully to remove Chavez in 2002 is a matter for debate. An investigation conducted by the U.S. Inspector General at the request of US Senator Christopher Dodd, requested a review of U.S. activities leading up to and during the coup attempt. The OIG report found no "wrongdoing" by U.S. officials either in the State Department or in the U.S. Embassy but it also concluded that: "It is clear that NED [the National Endowment for Democracy], Department of Defense (DOD), and other U.S. assistance programs provided training, institution building, and other support to individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster of the Chávez government." [Wikipedia]

 

Although he has been a burr in the side of United States policy, Chavez considered himself a friend of the American people. Venezuela was the first to offer the United States help after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Chavez offered money and personnel to help in the relief effort. The Venezuelan state-owned CITGO Petroleum Corporation offered $1 million in aid. Since 2005, CITGO has helped low-income Americans with a home heating oil program that has so far subsidized or donated $465 million worth of heating oil to people in 25 states and the District of Columbia. At today's prices near $4/gallon, the current value of the donated or subsidized oil would be over $1 billion.

So, fourteen years on from Chavez' “Bolivaran revolution”, where does Latin America stand? Where does the United States stand in relation to its neightbors to the south? Since Chavez' election in 1998, left-wing presidents have been elected in twelve Central and South American countries. Besides Venezuela, the people of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay, El Salvador and Peru have seen fit to join the “pink tide”, as it has been named by some journalistic pundits. Only Honduras and Paraguay have moved to the political center since then. Without a return to blatantly illegal interventions in the internal affairs of Latin American countries, the United States will not be able to regain its influence over Central and South America. And that's a good thing. How much more consistent with our own stated democratic ideals would be an approach that allows Latin America nations to develop in the way the majority of their people think best. Of course, there remains the ongoing injustice being perpetrated against Cuba more than 50 years after Fidel Castro took power there and 45 years after a wounded and captured Che Guevara was executed by Bolivian Special Forces in an Andes village. Is it politically possible for this injustice to be ended? President Obama, secure in a second term, has a unique opportunity to do this but whether he has the political will is uncertain.

Venezuela is reeling after the death of its President and its status as a democracy will be put to the test in the Presidential elections scheduled to be held within 30 days. Right now the talk is of unity but Venezuelans have been stocking up on gasoline and food. The major question is whether any other candidate will have the power to draw poor voters to the election booth. (Come to think of it, this is eerily similar to what will be facing a post-Obama Democratic Party in 2016.) In any case, even an opposition candidate may have a difficult time undoing all of Chavez' policies even if he or she wanted to.

Other Interesting Stuff

The population of 12 “pink tide” nations plus that of Cuba represents 2/3 of the total population of Latin America (400 million out of 600 million).

The 2004 award-winning film The Motorcycle Diaries relates the journey of 23-year old Ernesto Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado through South America. As he encounters the poverty and social injustices of 1954 Latin America, Ernesto begins reformulating his political beliefs.

Poverty in the United States is nowhere near that of Latin American countries. Still the disparity between the richest and the rest of us has been growing for the past three decades and promises to remain high. When you have 5 or so minutes, you should check out thisYouTube video that has gone viral with more than 3 million views.

 

The toll of American interference in Latin American countries is not to be measured solely by its interventions. For decades, the US Army School of the Americas trained Latin American students in “counter-insurgency” techniques. Among its graduates can be counted former dictators and military leaders in many Latin American countries. The SOA was re-christened in 2000 as WHINSEC – The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. While not as off the deep end as its predecessor, WHINSEC continues to face criticism. Now here's one place we can save tax dollars. Shut it down. The School of the Americas Watch is an organization that is dedicated to closing this infamous institution.  And just so you don't think this is the opinion of just “pinko” organizations..My Catholic grammar school teachers were of the RSM order (Reverend Sisters of Mercy).  There is a short article about the SOA on their website: "The School of theAmericas: Its History, Funding, and Global Influence."