The future
I found Ben Bova's The Precipice in the local library a week ago. I started reading it, and it felt kind of bland, just like the author had taken a checklist of new science fiction items and ticked them off while writing. 'Climate change? Check. Moonbase recently gotten independent? Check. Nanotechnology? Check.' and so on. I've read some of Bova's Sam Gunn stories before, and I liked it, but this wasn't too hot. By coincidence,
gridlore had read this just before me and he said it got better, so I think I'll finish it.
This got me thinking about colonization of space. Charles Stross wrote about colonization of space in his blog in June, and as usual, he wrote very well. He's main point is that we haven't even colonized the Gobi Desert, so why do we dream about colonizing Mars? Well, why haven't we colonized the Gobi Desert? Obviously it'd be difficult to found an independent colony there, but as he points out, at least we can breathe the air there. I think it would be an interesting project to try to make an independent colony in a desert, of course starting with good planning and funding. My hunch is that it'd take only little money compared to many other stupid projects around the world, but an economic analysis would of course be one of the first things to do.
Antarctica might also be a good place, but it has more restrictions and it's harder to reach. I could, in principle, hop in a car now and drive to Gobi - of course driving through Russia in the winter isn't the smartest idea in the world, even if I wouldn't be invading them. There're lots of things preventing me doing this whole colonization, one of then being too rooted here with my life to really change it. I hope somebody would, though.
You wouldn't have to do enclosed things like Biosphere 2 tried to do. Just make a colony which can feed and maintain itself in the desert, for example 20-30 people. It can't be that hard, can it? (Probably it's much harder than I think, but it's still easier than making a colony on the Moon, on Mars, whatever you've got.)
Oh, and that Bova book isn't the worst checklist book I've read. I read Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn at the same time as I read Ochoa's and Osier's The Writer's Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe and they felt pretty much like the same ideas, often in the same order in both books. That Hamilton book was fine, but I ended up Bookcrossing them away - read them twice but couldn't bear reading them a third time.
gridlore had read this just before me and he said it got better, so I think I'll finish it.
This got me thinking about colonization of space. Charles Stross wrote about colonization of space in his blog in June, and as usual, he wrote very well. He's main point is that we haven't even colonized the Gobi Desert, so why do we dream about colonizing Mars? Well, why haven't we colonized the Gobi Desert? Obviously it'd be difficult to found an independent colony there, but as he points out, at least we can breathe the air there. I think it would be an interesting project to try to make an independent colony in a desert, of course starting with good planning and funding. My hunch is that it'd take only little money compared to many other stupid projects around the world, but an economic analysis would of course be one of the first things to do.
Antarctica might also be a good place, but it has more restrictions and it's harder to reach. I could, in principle, hop in a car now and drive to Gobi - of course driving through Russia in the winter isn't the smartest idea in the world, even if I wouldn't be invading them. There're lots of things preventing me doing this whole colonization, one of then being too rooted here with my life to really change it. I hope somebody would, though.
You wouldn't have to do enclosed things like Biosphere 2 tried to do. Just make a colony which can feed and maintain itself in the desert, for example 20-30 people. It can't be that hard, can it? (Probably it's much harder than I think, but it's still easier than making a colony on the Moon, on Mars, whatever you've got.)
Oh, and that Bova book isn't the worst checklist book I've read. I read Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn at the same time as I read Ochoa's and Osier's The Writer's Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe and they felt pretty much like the same ideas, often in the same order in both books. That Hamilton book was fine, but I ended up Bookcrossing them away - read them twice but couldn't bear reading them a third time.