It was a sunny morning in early October and the house was astir with activity. Katie and her grandmother Edna were busy slicing tomatoes at the kitchen table for dehydrating. Henry and Ryan were working on a plumbing project in the basement to re-route the kitchen waste water to a rain barrel outside. With the exuberance of an eight year old on her birthday, the small … [Read more...]
The garden school
It was the first day of school for Sakiko and six of the neighbor’s children. Katie stood behind a desk made of two file cabinets and an old solid core wood door covered in a table cloth. The blackboard behind her was as black as a winter’s night except for her name written in yellow chalk. Her students sat in mismatched office chairs around two dining room tables salvaged … [Read more...]
How Saudi oil could start World War III
"I want to go to war with China," said presidential hopeful Rick Santorum in a recent GOP debate, showing the cavernous lack of any good sense that has become his trademark. Nonetheless, Santorum was probably speaking for many Americans who fear that China may soon overtake the US as the world's single great power. By contrast, many of those same Americans probably think of … [Read more...]
Excerpt: Lethal Trajectories
1 The year is 2017, and mankind is on a collision course with the perfect storm of all time. A finger is on the trigger in the East China Sea, and the blast to come will set off a chain reaction of catastrophic proportions. East China Sea 14 September 2017 Ensign Inoue Makita was bursting with energy as he rushed through his battle stations checklist aboard his … [Read more...]
We’ll still have airships and GMOs
It's not the apocalypse. And it's certainly not the Death Star or the planet Tatooine. But The Windup Girl is a compelling vision of our industrial world as it could be in a low-energy future. The Windup Girl By Paolo Bacigalupi Nightshade Books. 361 pp. $14.95. Sci Fi for smart people Many futuristic tales inhabit a world with all the social depth of Dungeons and … [Read more...]