Science Fiction to Science Reality: The Post Apocalypse Edition

March 9, 2022 ~ melaniereynolds ~ 11 Comments

Last year I read a lot of newly published books on Climate Change and Psychology. This takes patience on many levels, not least of all due to the fact that I have mild dyslexia. While I may not read as fast as most people, in some ways it feels like a secret superpower because I retain the majority of what I read and can expand upon it endlessly.

By the time this past holiday season rolled I was burnt out on real life doom and gloom and petty manipulations. I needed a return to a familiar space, Science Fiction, but more specifically, Octavia Butler’s familiar writing. I consider Octavia Butler “light reading” much to the amusement of my spouse. Her writing style is crisp and clean. She has the ability to say a lot in so few words and I feel her presence in her words. I get her. I get where she is coming from. I discovered her writing much too late though. If I had found her sooner, I could have potentially met her in person, she only lived 20 minutes away from where I live now.

She’s one of the few dead people allowed to life rent free in my brain. She sits at the kitchen table writing and thinking while William Morris paces back and forth on an ornate blue and cream rug practicing his speeches in the adjoining living room. High up in the corner of a bookcase Ryunosuke Akutagawa curls up like a cat watching everything below and taking notes. My brain is a proper Craftsman-style house. Writers, artists, thinkers, historians, and long-dead family and friends pass through for a visit now and then. Occasionally, the random stranger wanders through too. Only Ryunosuke is amused.

It’s always a party when Kurt Vonnegut shows up. Pat Frank and George R. Stewart prefer coffee on the veranda, but I’m getting carried away.

Where were we?

Oh yes, what can we learn from fiction and in particular Science Fiction. Well, who isn’t familiar with Gene Roddenberry? George Lucas? Or Stephen Spielberg? Can you seriously say their scripts, movies and show have had no influence on the art of science? That they do not act as muses for scientists and engineers? Many of us are still waiting for hyperdrives and holodecks! Do you want to make a Computer Engineer swoon? Discuss The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein or the short stories of Isaac Asimov.

When considering the offerings of Robert Heinlein one has to chew through the sexism. I’m not going to excuse it on the faulty argument that he was “a man of his era.” He wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in 1966 and there were plenty of men “of his era” that were not so blatantly sexist. Still, putting that aside we have a framework offered to us on how to build a resistance movement with minimal causalities and disruptions. By working in “cells” what is similar to creating “partitions” in a computer to keep data corruption and bugs from causing a full-scale shutdown. Redundancy in technical writing is bad, but redundancy in organized systems is good. What else works with cells, bugs and partitions? Trees! Let’s say a branch gets broken and damaged in a windstorm. If the tree cannot adequately thicken the cells in that area to help heal it over, it effectively self-amputates or “partitions” the branch from the rest of the body to prevent the spread of infection by cutting off supplies to the affected area. By reserving its strength, the tree lives another season and regrows the start of a new branch the next Spring.

I once read an article in an Architectural e-zine where an Architect proposed that perhaps the best way to “save” a building in a major earthquake might be by designing rooms(cells) of it to fail. (Presumably, this would help dissipate the force of energy produced by the earthquake upon the total surface area of the structure.) I appreciate the “out of the box” thinking, but how big is this man’s house? How many people have “spare rooms” to let collapse in the event of a major earthquake? I think if you have a bunch of unused rooms in your house it’s too big, and you should consider downsizing.

Octavia Butler imagined our current climate crisis in a book published in 1998 called Parable of the Sower and the sequel Parable of the Talents. Her story takes place in the early 2020’s and fortunately our here-and-now is not as terrifying as the one she wrote about, but some of the themes are eerily similar. We’re all aware of how politics impact our lives. What I focus on though is how individuals and communities shape the impact they have on the world around them. We have within the psyche of the American mind this image of “Rugged Individualism.” It’s represented in the notion “survivalist man” who can do everything and brave all challenges alone. I used to work very hard towards the idealism of the survivalist (wo)man but reading Science Fiction helped me understand that no person can be an island unto themselves for very long. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much of an introvert or anti-social being you thought you were. By the end of any lengthy stay alone in the mountains or in your head you’ll find yourself ready to make friends with anything not trying to eat you.

Science Fiction at its root is a cautionary tale of the successes and failures of individuals and groups. A forest and it’s trees. Sometimes the people are represented as alien races or other types of lifeforms, but it is in our human nature to find commonalities in order to relate to things no matter how alien it may appear on the surface. Octavia Butler worked hard to push this boundary to see where our tolerances might lie. Read her short stories Blood Child, Amnesty or the book Lilith’s Brood (Xenogenesis 1-3). Whenever I think my writing or ideas are getting “too weird” Octavia Butler challenges me to make it weirder.

Pat Frank wrote Alas, Babylon in 1959 and gave us an alternative history novel before all the cool kids started doing it. He showed us what living in Florida might have been like had the cold war been a hot one. Like Octavia Butler his writing is crisp and clean. A lot said in so few words. The imagery from some of the scenes in this book still put a smile on my face. I love this book so much that in the twenty years I have been with my spouse only once have I ever threatened him with a tomato, no sorry, ultimatum. “Read this book or divorce me.” He read the book in an afternoon. I made brownies and coffee. Crisis averted.

Finally, let’s close this post with an honorable mention, Earth Abides by George R. Stewart published in 1949. Yes, I know all the books and authors I’m mentioning here are old and dead, but that’s part of the beauty of it. To survive the future, you have to understand the past! A serious disruption in our ability to maintain our resources can put us back by ages. Fictional stories give our minds a playground to explore different theories and ideas of how to solve problems. Some of those solutions are found by going back to the basics and other solutions require us to unhinge our brains like a snake’s jaw and consume ideas we once thought too big to swallow.

There’s a scene in Earth Abides that made me laugh out loud and that is a very rare feat for any book! (I also dare you to make me cry too, while reading David Brin’s The Postman I was mad that I wasn’t more upset about a particular death.) What’s interesting about Earth Abides though is that there is an interracial relationship and a character with Down’s syndrome. It’s the only fictional novel where I can distinctly remember a character with a developmental disability and again, this book was published in 1949!

Whether it’s a Science Fiction, Romance or any other genre the one thing I can’t abide is when an author takes over two pages to describe a computer console or a room. I’m looking at you George RR Martin.

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Links:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-a-virus-exposed-the-myth-of-rugged-individualism/ (March 2022 Issue)

A24 Is Adapting Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower | Tor.com (July 26, 2021)

Nature-Led Black Americans

February 23, 2022February 18, 2022 ~ melaniereynolds ~ 8 Comments

February is Black History Month here in the United States, so I’m excited to introduce to you a handful of Black American who exemplify what it means to be “Nature-Led” and by doing so strengthen the communities in which they live.

Alexis Nikole Nelson, the Black Forager

I first saw one of her TikTok videos on Facebook and immediately fell in love. Who is this? She has so much energy and she’s talking about foraging! Wow! Foraging is something no one talks about in modern American society—well, until now. I l learned a little foraging when I was younger but I never thought much about it. It wasn’t something we talked about. If you had asked, “What are you doing?” I would have said “picking berries” or “picking greens.” “Foraging” sounds like something herbivores do when talking about animals in a Science class.

Now here we are in the post-computer revolution and a young Black woman is excited about foraging and sharing her knowledge with others in a way they can relate too. It gives me hope for the future. We’re all going to need this knowledge if things continue as they are with our current trajectory towards climate change. Octavia Butler, Sci-Fi Author of Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents, would be proud of Alexis Nikole Nelson.

I encourage you to follow Alexis Nikole Nelson on TikTok, Facebook or whatever your preferred social media is. To learn more about her read this great interview found on NPR:

Meet Alexis Nikole Nelson, The Wildly Popular ‘Black Forager’ : Code Switch : NPR

^{Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com}

Ron Finley, aka Gangsta Gardener

I first heard about Ron Finley’s garden in South-Central Los Angles years ago as part of tv news segment. He started his garden revolution in 2010. Having stayed in the community he grew up in he fought and won the opportunity to garden in the parking strips throughout his neighborhood. A neighborhood that has for years been a food dessert/food prison for people of color. This is how it starts, this is how you change things for the better in your community. You can’t wait for City officials or someone else to do it, you have to be willing to step up and take action yourself. If something is important, you make time for it.

Ron Finley: A guerrilla gardener in South Central LA | TED Talk

The Ron Finley Project

^{Photo by Svetlana Obysova on Pexels.com}

Aaron Shepard, Robotics Engineer, Scuba Diver, & NASA intern

I literally just discovered Aaron Shepard while watching a short Brut video on Facebook about how animal responses perceived as being “cute” are actually responses to stress and a terrifying ordeal for the animal. There’s nothing “cute” about terrorizing any living lifeform for amusement.

Aaron Shepard on Twitter: “Repeat after me people : “I will not touch ocean animals unnecessarily for social media clout” Thank you… https://t.co/wKsorJi983″ / Twitter

Portrait of John Washington Carver, Tuskegee Institiute

John Washington Carver, Agricultural Scientist

Finally, when it comes to historical contributions, the work of John Washington Carver (c 1864- Jan 5^th, 1943) simply CANNOT be overlooked by a site such as this. He was born a slave, persevered through multiple hurdles to get himself college educated and became one of America’s most distinguished Scientists. He introduced us to the idea of crop rotations and compost to improve depleted soils. In tandem with helping the environment, he also worked to improve the lives of poor farmers by recommending highly nutritious rotation crops such as peanuts and sweet potatoes at times when the fields needed to rest from cotton production. He also provided recipes for his food recommendation through “Bulletins.”

History & Culture – George Washington Carver National Monument (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

Biography books on John Washington Carver are available at most U.S. libraries.

More to Explore:

Gardening while Black: How some are redefining relationship to land (usatoday.com)

7 Contributions of Black Farmers to Agriculture — Poughkeepsie Farm Project

In their own words. A booklist:

10 Outdoors Books by Black, Indigenous, POC Authors | Field Mag

My sincerest thanks goes out to any and all persons, living or dead, who endeavor to restore the health and well-being of their communities; be they human communities, animal communities, plant communities, soil communities or water communities. We are all part of a greater community, the sum of life itself on planet earth. We can choose to nurture that which is around us or we can destroy it with our indifference.

Adaptation & Transition: Climate Change Is Here

January 6, 2022 ~ melaniereynolds ~ 8 Comments

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change, that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats.
Charles Darwin

A common theme among Science Fiction novels and the apocalypse genre in general is that few people can rarely survive alone for any great length of time. I plan to expand on this notion in a future post citing some of my favorite novels and how they provide the “burden of proof” in a future blog post. The settings may be fictional and fantastical, but often times, the behaviors of those that walk within the worlds are not.

For decades we have talked about how human-driven climate change was speeding up global warming. That future is here now. I’m tired of seeing articles claiming this or that event is “unprecedented.” It’s time to adapt to radical shifts. You can do it. I believe in you. Anyone can be an agent for positive or negative change in our societies. I’m asking you to fire up your neurons and muscles to be a catalyst. You don’t need permission. We must break out of bystander shock. We, myself included, have been waiting for someone else to be in charge and take the lead because there are so many climate issues. It’s time to pick one and get to work. We can’t wait for “experts” in any given sector to make the changes we need done now. It will take all of us. What legacy do you want to leave behind?

~~Somebody should do something.~~

You should do something.

You are not too old. – The entrepreneurs over 70 taking the business world by storm | Winning new business | The Guardian

You are not too young. – 6-year-old makes history as Georgia’s youngest farmer – ABC News (go.com)

You are capable of great things. – 12 Disabled Scientists Who Made the World a Better Place | Mental Floss

What you do now matters.– Why your ‘personal infrastructure’ decisions actually do affect the cl (fastcompany.com)

This post was originally supposed to be an exciting review about a book I bought called:

Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos By Jem Bendell & Rupert Read

I tried to plow through it until the end, but eventually gave up. It’s dense reading with a lot of footnotes. When you write a book you have to know who your audience is. I wish the Authors had focused on whether they were writing for a General Audience or people already in the field of Climate Science., otherwise you risk alienating one and offending the other. They would have greatly benefitted by hiring an outside Editor improve the format, organizational structure and style. A good book engages readers. It’s about more than proper spelling and grammar. They clearly have expertise in their field of study, but I don’t have time or patience to be lectured by a book.

The Premise – A Snapshot

We can agree that climate change is already here and that global societies need to stop arguing about its existence and severity and start planning to transition into more adaptive societies. I like the framework of the 4R’s on page 73. That Deep Adaptation requires:

Resilience – “How do we keep what we really want to keep?”

Relinquishment – “What do we need to let go of in order to not make matters worse?”

Restoration – “What can we bring back to help us with the coming difficulties and tragedies?”

Reconciliation – “With what and with whom can we make peace as we face our shared mortality?”

Part of what made this book so hard for me to read is that I couldn’t get in the right headspace for it. I’m preparing to jump into action mode. I’ve been researching climate-related issues since 1997. It’s only recently that I’ve asked myself, when is enough researching, enough? Am I going to keep “researching” until I’m dead? Then it would have all been nothing! I’m ready to move from research phase to action station. I want to start making a bigger impact starting now.

Two good books have recently helped me take the next steps:

Good Work: How to Build a Career that Makes a Difference in the World By Shannon Houde

This book will give you ideas on how to make your current job more sustainability-focused or reassess and rewrite your resume into finding a career within the field of sustainability.

Any job can be a Nature-Led job and any career can take on issues of sustainability and climate action. You don’t have to throw your existing life in a dumpster and start over. Transition and adapt in a way that works for you. Work with the skillset, networks and opportunities you currently have. Pick up new skills as needed. Turtles can be surprisingly fast when they’re in the their element. Don’t burn yourself out trying to be a hare.

My only gripe about this book is its heavy reliance on using LinkedIn as a tool.

Climate Action Challenge: A Proven Plan For Launching Your Eco-Initiative in 90 Days By Joan Gregerson (And Optional Workbook)

This book gives me so many ideas I can hardly write them down fast enough in my eagerness to get to the next chapter. This book will ask you to build a team in order to succeed in your goal. At first I was intimidated by the idea, but then I thought about all the wonderful people I already network with that I would want to join me and that would be willing to join me. Some of them have already helped me branch out into meeting other ideal candidates. I had so many “coffee dates” in September and October I felt like I was peeing straight caffeine. Then the holidays hit and slowed everything down. Now I need to map out my next steps and proceed.

For four years I’ve tried working with my local City government on issues of Sustainability and Disaster Preparedness and Response only to be ignored. I’m done being nice and asking for permission. I’m fed up with the lack of action and transparency. I’m planning to build a nonprofit organization that applies pressure from the outside forcing them to respond. It seems I’m not the only one unhappy with the performance of my local City Council though. We just had an election in November and nearly every incumbent Council Member was voted out. I will address the new Council Members in an effort to work together, but I’m ready and willing to proceed with or without them. I’m planning to document my successes and failures in hopes that they might help others.

Special Note: I‘m not able to visit each and every person’s blog as often as I would like, but please know that I’m inspired by many of you in a variety of ways! Thank you for being you, for being here and for all the big and little things that you do!