A few days ago I was reading through a couple threads on the Giants in the Playground forums, and started to think about one of the problems that we writers, RPG makers, and gamers in general have found with some of the common 'genres' and settings we play around in. I am of course talking about Cyberpunk.
It occurred to me after reading a thread on a setting someone was working on called Earth 2096, and after commenting a bit on it I decided that the Cyberpunk Genre needs a bit of a refresher and scrub down. A lot of the settings are downright identical to each other with just different names for the megacorps running everything, and essentially they seem actually dated: like they came out of the same era that gave us Blade Runner.
A megacorporation is simply a large and powerful corporation. They are a very real thing and while most authors paint them as being evil or malicious, the truth is that many of these extremely powerful corporations are rather innocuous. General Electric is a good example of a megacorproation that you can't really describe as being pure evil. They make engines, turbines, power generators, and so forth... but they don't have a reputation for abuse or exploitation of others like say: Walmart.
The truth is that while megacorporations exist they are neither a new thing or a particularly evil entity. Some may be, others are very staunch in trying to keep themselves in the good light with the public. Google Inc. is probably one of the single most powerful corporations in modern times and yet the vast majority of their products are offered for free to customers. Google Drive, Google Sketchup, Google Search, Blogger, Youtube, and various other development projects. Their profits instead come through the sale of advertisements and acting as a go-between for advertisers and online sites. They're corporate motto is: Don't be evil.
Ironic, isn't it?
This does not mean that violent, dark, and dirty megacorporations don't exist. They certainly do, and there are plenty that have conducted rather morally questionable acts, but the tendency for Cyberpunk writers to make every corporation pure unadulterated evil is wrong.
What a megacorporation is designed to do is make money for its owners... be it a select group of private owners or a massive number of shareholders, that is the entire purpose for its existence. Now, the tendencies and policies of these companies varies depending on the social mores, legal guidelines, and morality of the owners. Japanese megacorproations are rather infamous for having really substantial retirement benefits for example, which has become a major burden with Japan's aging population.
Now, there's a bit of a revolution going on right now when it comes to how our economy functions. Just-in-time manufacturing, real-time distribution tracking, on-demand publishing and manufacturing, and 3D printing are all eroding many of the factors that made megacorporations such a dominate force. Digital distribution has practically killed the recording industry from the 90s while the individual artists are actually making more money then ever.
Retailers are suffering from increasing competition with people buying direct from the distributor or even manufacturer. While this hasn't yet started to hit things like say car-dealerships, it has already decimated many electronic retailers. Best Buy's stock is not what it was ten years ago. Borders has closed leaving only one large book retailer in the American Economy, while Amazon and iBooks surge in market share. The bar for publication has been lowered substantial thanks to Amazon's KDP and Createspace, along with others.
Not to mention PDF sales for RPGs...
Decentralized distribution of digital materials through torrents and so forth is going to dramatically change the landscape for materials that can be bought and sold as digital materials. Copyright law will likely end up be massively overhauled as the effects of the internet hit full force. It will also massively change the nature of the game for those that sell digital media and in the gaming world, with Steam and other similar companies are effectively allowing small-time independent companies the ability to compete with major companies like EA without worrying about competing over shelf space.
The final major change is due to 3D printing and the effects of oil on trade. While current 3D printing is mostly restricted to plastics and paperweights, there are already efforts underway to allow for manufacturing of all sorts of goods through the system. If you can extrude and print silicon, you can print a motherboard. If you can print a motherboard you can print a computer. If you can print a computer, you can print a car (if you've got the materials and an industrial sized printer).
Finished goods are heavy, they cost a lot to move, and while in the current environment the distribution system of the act of shipping them to market is profitable, that will only remain true so long as oil and natural gas do not increase dramatically in price. This time frame is likely rapidly shrinking as current UN estimates predict a doubling of energy demands by 2030, while OPEC estimates indicate that around the same time production will decline as the currently accessed oil reserves are depleted.
The United States may be able to stave off immediate economic problems by shifting over by manufacturing synthetic gasoline from coal (a technology developed by Germany in World War II), but eventually it will become to expensive to move goods and people in the traditional fashion. In response, localized manufacturing through 3D printing will almost certainly rise to dominance, and since anyone with Google Sketchup can design and 'print' a device... well, manufacturers will soon find themselves either shifting into printing companies or out of a 'job' as hordes of independent people will be able to make and sell finished goods and customize them to customer needs and demands.
The future economy is likely to be dominated not by manufacturers and retailers but by ag-business, digital distributors, utilities, 'printing' companies, and material processing companies (mining, refining, and so forth). Generally trade and shipping will be in raw materials and foodstuffs, as finished goods can be more efficiently manufactured by locals.
What effects will the rising cost of oil have?
It will hurt, and hurt badly. Generally people don't change behavior until they're pained... so expect people to continue on as they are now until around 2030 when the combination of rising demand and declining production make gas prices skyrocket. Gasoline prices tend to be more elastic then other prices, meaning that a slight change in supply or demand results in significant changes for the price at the pump. Demand doubling and production beginning to decline will result in an increase in pump prices by about four times the current level, before inflation.
Since currently all international trade is by oil-fueled freighters, this will result in a shocking rise in shipping cost. International trade in finished goods will almost certainly come to a halt (no more Japanese or German cars in America), and the global cost of food will rapidly increase, as it too is expected to double by 2030. This won't effect America as badly since it is a food exporter, but it will dramatically hurt countries that are importers of foodstuffs: Japan, Russia, China, India, and most of Africa. Civil unrest in the regions will skyrocket.
Food prices will not come down unless a switch is made from oil to another energy source for shipping, and as a result expect a large scale decline in the population of countries dependent on food imports. Food prices everywhere will also rise, as the cost of shipping and distribution inside a country will also rise. Expect food to also become more seasonal.
With the increased demand for coal in the United States, I would not expect the '75 year supply' that the coal lobby talks about to last that long, instead it will probably last until around 2050, by which point America will likely be forced to switch to an alternate source of power. My best guess would be a rise in nuclear power (possibly fusion or fission-fusion hybrid reactors) with many people adding to their own self-sufficiency with roof mounted solar panels. Still, I would expect brownouts and power interruptions during the period.
Post 2050, I expect the power situation to begin to even out and oil to largely be replaced by alternate fuels. I'd expect this to come in the form of hydrogen fuel cells as a power source for ground vehicles, nuclear reactors for ships, and perhaps hydrogen-oxygen fuel for jet-aircraft and rocketry. Fusion power, if the containment system can be miniaturized enough, may be viable for direct power of larger vehicles like tanks, APCs, and construction equipment.
Finally food prices will begin to fall as the switch to alternate energy sources finishes. Foreign production of finished goods however will never recover.
What about robotics?
Recently development of robotics has been agonizingly slow, but it's a highly iterative process and continual improvements in computing along with procedural AIs will ultimately bring robotics to the forefront. I expect development to be relatively slow for the next twenty years or so. They'll be a curiosity, and more common in say Japan then other countries. Despite this, probably around 2030 or 2040 I expect they'll reach the 'leg of the curve' which is a saying about technological development.
At this point technological developments will rapidly increase in speed, and while there have been attempts before to introduce robots to the service sector, this will be where they first gain the intelligence and programming to actually be used in the service sector, and constant improvements and developments will push the price down far enough for them to be a viable replacement for unskilled labor.
In short, by 2050 your average fast food restaurant will have one human worker on staff during each shift and around 10 robots ranging from automated cashiers to roombas. Since the restaurant owner will only have to pay one staff member and food prices will be on their way down once again, prices for food and other needs will begin to decline, however as the number of people needed for the service sector declines, I'd expect to see a massive change in the very way the economy functions.
In short, to be certain of having a job that a robot can not do, you need to have a job that requires independent thinking, creativity, or initiative. Managers will be safe, it's just they'll be watching over robots. Anyone involved in designing, testing, or the arts will be safe, and so forth. A lot of repair and maintenance jobs will also be safe from robotic competition, as often times those robots will be the things getting fixed.
This will push people into what I call the 'creative' sector: artists, musicians, programmers, designers, and so forth. With improvements to mining and manufacturing efficiency and the removal of shipping costs, the cost of living will likely drop. This is probably good, because the rate of traditional employment will also decline... Though self-employment will likely rise.
What about Cybernetics?
The thing is, they're already here. Neural interfaces and directly connecting nerves to robotics through implants and chips have already been tested. Google Glass may not be a cybernetic item, but it certainly is getting close to projecting a UI on your eye and connecting your brain to the internet.
I'm going to include virtual reality, gaming, digital economy, and so forth in this subject... because they're closely connected. Traditional wetware cybernetics and full-body prosthetics I think are something that will exist, but will never be as commonplace as we see in say Ghost in the Shell. This is because non-invasive neural interfaces are already being tested.
Instead of implanting a chip, you can wear a wrist band or something like the Google Glass visor. Since these interfaces will be able to feed directly into the nervous system, a fully immersive virtual reality will likely be possible, though it will probably be limited by processing capacity and require procedural coding to reach it's ultimate capabilities. Depending on the rate of computer development, I could see this arriving as soon as the 2030s.
People already pay real world money for digital and virtual reality properties. This is what I like to call the digital economy. Take that immersive virtual reality and include an ability to design your own stuff for the world (ala spore)... Then someone buys it from you. If the virtual reality has a Real Money Trading system, then you made money off producing a virtual good.
Some people have made six-seven digit incomes by doing this in Second Life. Moreover, the more immersive the VR is, the more likely it is that people will spend time and money within it.
What about the Military Industrial Complex?
Perhaps a better question would be: What would war be like in the Future? Current trends indicate increasing levels of automation, and while I doubt we'll ever see a battle-droid army like the Trade Federation uses in Star Wars, drones are definitely here to stay. I suspect that most countries will keep these systems on a pretty tight leash even with artificial intelligence systems. It's likely that drones and even intelligence robots will be programmed to require permission to engage targets, be it an AWACs crew controlling an air battle or a squad sergeant.
Most of the worst conflicts in the immediate future will probably be in the 2030-2050 time period, as the crunch of major economic upheaval, the price of oil, and food prices will lead to desperate actions by a number of different countries. Even normally peaceful nations may feel a need to defend resource claims with force.
Iceland has historically waged a number of 'wars' with the UK over fishing rights in the last century, I would not be surprised if say Japan felt the need to protect their fishing industry from Chinese and Russian competition.
In America, military technology will likely continue to race forward. Already a number of Cyberpunk style weapons have already been tested and seen limited combat use like Microwave area denial weapons. While those weapons have been outlawed by the UN rather recently, I would not be surprised to see further development of the weapon by other countries both as a crowd control weapon and as a means of inflicting torture.
Laser technology and Railguns are slated for deployment by the United States Navy in the next decade. A company you should probably pay a bit more attention to is General Atomics, the developer of the Railgun system for the United States Navy.
A lot of modern defense contractors are relatively small labs with a specific specialty, so I'd be hesitant to introduce a single monolithic entity for Military Industrial Complex (no matter how fun casting Lockheed Martin as villains may be). However there are some large ones as well, like the aforementioned Lockheed Martin: As an aside, did anyone else see the obvious hints in iconography that Stark Industries is Lockheed Martin in the Iron Man Films?
While going from ship mounted to personal use would be a bit of a huge jump for Railgun and Laser technology, I'd say we can expect to see vehicular mounts for Railguns and Lasers rapidly appear by 2030 or so, with the first prototypes of hand-held devices appearing by 2050.
Railguns will be a popular choice for tanks once the technology has been miniaturized enough to mount them in such a chassis, though they likely won't have as effective HE rounds, though this is probably going to be something most troops don't worry about since canister shells came back into fashion.
Another technology that is being developed is particle beam weapons, which have begun undergoing lab tests, and the Air Force has been talking about researching anti-matter.
Then there's the mecha-anime dimension... Power Armor and Exoskeletons.
Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have both created exoskeleton prototypes, and the United States Navy is already making plans to invest in the Lockheed design. They're not alone... as a Japanese company known as Cyberdyne Inc. is working on a commercial exoskeleton for the elderly and infirm (hello full-body prosthetics next, hmm?) Plus Japan has launched some investigation into producing a real Gundam type system.
Of course, those studies said it'd cost $275 million to just make the parts, so I think large scale Mecha will remain mostly in the realm of Science Fiction... The same isn't exactly true for smaller versions or robotic drones. A Full Metal Panic style mecha (the book version, not the anime) with a total height of 8-10 meters will probably end up being the top end of the possible size and weight for such a vehicle, with Ghost in the Shell style designs that blur the line between powered armor and mecha being more viable at 2-3 meters tall, often using large caliber anti-material rifle ammunition for their weapons and so forth.
Overall, pulling all this stuff together we'll probably see the large scale use of powered armor by 2030 by those nations that can afford it, and small mecha around the same time. Before then aerial warfare will be heavily automated through drone fighter aircraft, as IFF systems and AWACS make that theater the easiest to program an AI for.
Next will probably be automation of armored warfare, where a tank platoon might be reduced to two men commanding and coordinating three tanks besides their command vehicle. The last thing to be automated will likely be the infantry, but ultimately I could see combat robots being developed for infantry use, in which case a squad's human component might be reduced to a squad leader and an assistant leading perhaps as many as 8 robots into combat. This could greatly increase the effective size of a nation's standing army while decreasing the number of people it places at risk.
What about Global Warming's effects?
Oh boy... Global Warming's effects and repercussions are a vast topic and one that Cyberpunk tends to fail horribly to understand or accurately describe. Ironically, one of the most common screw ups is a tendency to suggest a growth of desert environments.
Global Warming does not mean desertification! In fact current projections about Global Warming indicate that the global average amount of rainfall is increasing. The problem is where this rain is falling isn't helping much. Flooding and droughts are both on the rise, as the warming world has caused increases in extreme weather.
Tornadoes, Hurricanes, and other storms will become stronger and more prevalent, an effect we've already begun to feel as Tornadoes have begun to appear in parts of the world that have never experienced them before in living memory.
Over the next 100 years there are estimates of a sea level rise of around 30 to 80 centimeters. This will have a much more severe effect in low-land environments, where even a rise of around 30 centimeters would flood large sections of the local area.
However, actual land usable for food production may in fact increase overall, as less temperate zones begin to experience longer growing seasons thanks to increasing temperatures. In the United States, the southern states will experience a more and more tropical environment, while the northern most states will experience more temperate conditions. Overall, I'd expect food production in the United States to shift toward the north and even see large expansions in Canadian food production as well.
There will be areas of decline as well, I expect the state I live in (Nebraska) to have to switch from corn production to wheat as the Ogalla Aquifer is exhausted, since corn is a rather irrigation intensive crop.
Actual ecological effects will probably follow a similar pattern, with temperate species expanding northward while cold-adapted species retreat into the arctic. In addition I would not be surprised to find more tropical species moving further north as well. Jaguars were all but exterminated from New Mexico and Arizona, they're likely to make a come back.
I've heard anecdotal reports that other changes have been observed in wild animal behavior in recent years, especially in the Mountain Lions of Colorado. One person I know from the state said that he's heard talk of the normally solitary creatures forming prides like African Lions in some parts of the state. Behavioral shifts like this could well be indicative of pressures from global warming and suggest other behavior changes are in the works.
What effects will terrorism have in the future?
Terrorism is something that any future campaign setting will have to tackle. The thing is that terrorism tends to be a highly adaptive plague on our planet, if security is tightened making one form of attack more difficult to achieve (like hijacking aircraft) then other possible forms of attack tend to become more viable.
Generally terrorist organizations and attacks take one of three main forms. The first is Domestic Terrorism.
Domestic Terrorism can be just as deadly as even the deadliest of attacks by International Terrorism. Thus far, it has been domestic terrorists that are responsible for the only well documented examples of attacks using chemical weapons, when on March 20, 1995 terrorists released Sarin in a crowded Tokyo Subway, causing 13 deaths and sickening over six thousand.
The organization that launched the attack was also attempting to procure biological agents including Ebola and Smallpox.
In America, the deadliest domestic terrorist attack was the Oklahoma City Bombing when two men parked a van full of fertilizer and fuel-oil outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and detonated it. 168 people were killed and nearly seven hundred were injured.
The second major form of terrorism is state sponsored terrorism. In most cases this consists of a country directly funding a group to further its aims. The primary victim of most state sponsored terrorism is Israel, who has been attacked by Hamas (sponsored by Iran), Hezbollah (sponsored by Syria and Lebanon), and the PLO (sponsored by various nations) for decades.
Generally state sponsored terrorism is much more like a typical insurgency then a normal terrorist group. Their attacks generally are of smaller scale then other forms of terrorism, but much more common and almost everyday. Recently, Hamas has used barrages of artillery rockets on Israel, sometimes firing hundreds of them a day to little affect.
The third major for of terrorism is international terrorism. In modern times the idea of international terrorism is embodied by Al-Qaeda, the now all but defunct group behind the September 11th attacks. International terrorism generally is the only group with the resources capable of launching large scale coordinated attacks, however most international terrorist groups act more like an umbrella for other organizations, providing training and logistical support to these smaller terrorist groups.
Al-Qaeda spawned dozens of 'daughter' organizations, some of which have risen to prominence in Yemen and Syria. The most successful of these successor organizations is ISIS, who has taken control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria to form an Islamic state.
Generally international terrorist organizations are held together through ideology or religion.
In the near term, I would expect terrorism overall to rise and fall inversely to the health of the global economy. When times are good, people are less likely to reach for a gun then when times are bad. Israel will no doubt continue to be an epicenter for terrorism of all sorts, but recently other nations have started to get in on the act.
Russia has demonstrated a willingness to sponsor terrorist and insurgent organizations when it suits their interests, so I would expect in the near term to see state-sponsored terrorism continue throughout Eurasia, as Russia tries to use it to leverage the situation in their favor. I would not be surprised to see border conflicts akin to what is currently going on within Ukraine throughout the region.
The situation is going to dramatically change as oil prices and dwindling supplies in the middle east affect the budgets for those organizations based there. Profits for middle east oil companies will likely increase up until 2030 when the costs finally become prohibitive, though it is possible certain countries may begin to run out of oil before then.
This glut of cash will enable terrorists to better arm and equip themselves, and may ultimately allow them to procure chemical and biological agents. An uncontrolled release of smallpox would have catastrophic consequences and possibly create a global pandemic. Considering the growing tendency for people to refuse to vaccinate their children, the vulnerability of the population to some diseases is increasing.
However, increasing travel costs will ultimately cut down on international terrorism around 2030 except through cyberwarfare. The suffering and economic upheaval of the period will make terrorism far more common unfortunately, though it is more likely to be more local then nationally sponsored or international in nature.
Putting it all together... A Likely World War around 2030.
By 2030 our planet will be on the verge of a revolution in technology as the age of oil begins to come to an end. Food demand will have doubled, energy demand will have doubled, and oil production will be on the decline. Nations dependent on food imports will be hard hit as rising cost of shipping and food itself combine to lead to price hikes by as much as 8 times current costs or more before inflation.
Russian expansionism and aggression will have continued. Buoyed up by high oil prices, their economy will likely slam to a virtual halt as the countries dependence on food imports strike home as the very oil prices that buoyed up the economy drive food prices upward. Faced with these problems while still in possession of sizable fuel reserves, Russia turns to its traditional 'breadbaskets' of Ukraine and Poland and either bullies them into better trade deals or more likely invades, possibly using Belarus as a proxy.
Attacking Poland pulls NATO into a war with Russia, which while no super-power is still a powerful military power. In addition, aggressive incidents between Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and American fishing trawlers in the Northern Pacific push Japan to deploy its Self Defense Forces to protect it's fishing industry and primary food supply. This combined with American use of Japanese bases to attack Russia pushes the Russian Federation into declaring war with Japan.
With Russia and America openly engaging each other, North Korea seizes its chance and invades South Korea. While Seoul is all but destroyed, the North Korean army's advance quickly is reversed by the South Korean military. Within months a combined NATO, Japan, and South Korean force rolls North Korea back to the Chinese border.
China, facing it's own food crisis decides to join Russia and North Korea, and begins to put pressure on the rest of the BRICS nations to join in against NATO. (BRICS is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)
India's navy seizes a number of UN food shipments bound for Pakistan and redirects them home as India too is having food problems. Unable to fight another enemy at the same time, NATO and its allies ignore the raids.
Japan takes the Kuril Islands from Russia while America launches an attack north from Korea into Siberia, ultimately to take the Russian oil fields and strategic fuel reserves. Combined NATO and Ukrainian forces stop Russia along the Dnipr in Ukraine while forces in Poland push forward through Belarus. Soon the combined forces of NATO and Ukraine go onto the offensive and push into Russia, aiming to take Moscow.
At this point Moscow will either go nuclear or decide to try and negotiate an end to hostilities. If America has succeeded in taking Siberia's oil fields out of Russian hands, the Russians will likely be in no position to negotiate and China will be looking for a way out as they begin to feel a major oil crunch in addition to a food crisis. With nuclear weapons a possible escalation, ultimately all sides will bow to a negotiated cease fire.
Even after the war ends, many of the causes will linger as the UN food aid system will almost certainly break down. I'd expect popular revolutions in countries that are having the worst time of it, especially if they have an autocratic leadership: Russia will likely have yet another revolution on its hands.
It's a bad time globally in the time between 2030 to 2050 as most of the old institutions of trade and commerce break down.
After 2050, things would begin to stabilize under the new circumstances.
Today, August 8th, 2014 the World Health Organization declared that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is now a 'Public Health Emergency of International Concern'. This represents only the third time that the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a public health emergency, with previous declarations coming from the reemergence of polio and the H1N1 virus or 'Swine Flu' pandemic.
None of these viral outbreaks comes close to the level of mortality of Ebola. From current reports, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is of a virus with around a 55% mortality rate, which while low for Ebola (It has occasionally had mortality rates as high a 90%) is still several times worse then any pandemic virus in recent memory. The Spanish Flu, which is often considered something of a measuring stick for modern pandemics had a mortality rate of around only 10-20% of cases. This is even higher then the Black Death which had a mortality rate of 30-40% of cases.
While there are a number of limiting factors for the spread of Ebola, foremost among them being that it isn't an airborne virus, the continual infection of emergency workers (around 10% of reported cases and deaths) show that despite it being only transmittable through bodily fluids and blood, it is spreading even to those who take the greatest precautions relatively easily. This is because, Ebola is very infectious, requiring only a tiny amount of exposure to be transmitted. It also has a history of being transmittable through aerosol. Considering the speed of the outbreak's spread and the continual cases of aid workers, I'm pretty sure this strain is capable of spreading via aerosol. A cough, a sneeze, and spit therefore become transmission vectors.
With 140 to 150 cases of Health Care workers being infected even with full-body protection (like what's shown above), one has to wonder if it's even possible to really protect doctors and nurses from the disease.
Currently the Ebola outbreak has spread to just four countries (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Nigeria) though the United States and Spain both have taken citizens with the virus back home for treatment. However, the situation is set to rapidly worsen as Liberia's Health Care system has officially collapsed and doctors are fleeing the country to escape the virus. As a result, Liberia's population of 4.1 million people are basically completely unprotected from the virus.
Recent news also lists suspected cases now in Benin and Uganda, increasing the number of countries affected by the disease to six. The total population of these countries is over 240+ million people, with the largest population at risk being that of Niger with around 175 million. One of these suspected cases traveled through South Sudan, so that's another country that may be at risk as well.
Scares have happened all across the globe as fears of the virus have led to incidents at airports and on borders.
The decision to bring home American and Spanish citizens who had been infected, worries me. If the disease is as easily transmittable to health care workers as it seems to be, there is a risk that those who are working at the hospitals where these people are being treated will be infected.
Ebola has a three-week incubation period before symptoms begin to appear. This means that say... someone in Liberia that has been infected decides to flee the country, it will be three weeks before their first symptoms appear. From the diseases onset to even after death (Ebola is actually at its most infectious from contact with dead bodies) he will be capable of spreading the disease. The lower then normal mortality rate of the current strain is actually making the disease spread faster, as people are living long enough to spread it to many others.
How far can a man go in three-weeks from exposure to onset? Well... Practically anywhere. Some direct flights between infected countries have been closed, but this will not insure the containment of the disease as a person could jump the border, get onto a plane in an unaffected country and fly anywhere in the world. One of the most recent cases flew through South Sudan, and there have been scares involving flights from the Middle East. Moreover, the WHO is estimating that only 25-50% of cases are being reported, making the likely total number of cases between 4-8 thousand at this point.
So far, we've actually been lucky it hasn't spread beyond West Africa, but our luck can't hold out forever and as the Liberia Health System implodes and people begin to flee the disease areas, I suspect it will get worse and fast. Thus far, Ebola has never spread beyond West Africa but if this is something that will hold true in this case?
If we are to have any hope of reversing the New 52
Television and film reach a far broader audience then comics. That is just a simple fact of the business, and for any sensible franchise it’s a good idea to make the comic book, television, and film versions similar enough for the broader franchise can draw people to the comics.
They’re calling it “Batman vs. Superman” but it isn’t… It really is the second title: “Dawn of Justice”. If you look at the overall makeup of the cast that’s been announced you rapidly realize this isn’t a verses movie, at least not in the traditional sense. This is a movie aimed at launching the New 52 version of the JLA into the mainstream. Just look at the announced cast…
Ben Affleck as Batman
Henry Cavil as Superman
Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman
Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor
Amy Adams as Lois Lane
Diane Lane as Martha Kent
Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth
Laurence Fishburn as Perry White
Ray Fischer as Cyborg
Okay, to round out the New 52 JLA we only need Green Lantern, Flash, and Aquaman, think about it… 4/7th of the New 52 JLA is cast for the movie, and it’s obviously New 52 otherwise they wouldn’t have had Cyborg, would they?
Why do I want this to fail? Well because the New 52 SUCKS! Even DC Comics must realize that any gains they managed to get off of their reboot/re-launch have crumbled under Marvel’s response. In April of this year, Marvel re-launched Ultimate and Superior Spiderman and blew the top off the sales charts with reported sales reaching at least 500k units, with some reports putting the figure over 700k, and DC called their 200k unit sales on Justice League of America #1 record breaking in 2011... Don't make me laugh DC. They had over 40% of the market share in April, and while Spiderman #1 was certainly part of the reason the market share ballooned, DC Comic sales during the period are also artificially inflated due to the Batman: Eternal weekly comic that’s going on right now.
There is no doubt that the New 52 has serious problems. It’s full of absolutely terrible editorial and marketing decisions: Cyborg on the Justice League for example, Starfire on Red Hood and the Outlaws, and Raven and Beast Boy having to rewrite their whole history as part of a different group of Teen Titans. The history of some characters has been wiped clean, for others it’s been kept, and some characters have been assassinated by the changes.
I want Warner Brothers and its parent company to start losing money on DC Comics so that it can be cast loose and bought up by someone that actually gives a damn. I want to see the DC Comics editorial staff on the chopping block, either under new management by a band made up of older fans or by Warner Brothers, the house cleaned, the shit they’ve done should be thrown under the bus, and some real good editors and writers lined up to fix this mess.
Right now every single DC Comic story is now too dark, grim, and gritty to suit any of the original superheroes besides fucking Batman. Like a lot of people in the ‘biz’ the people at DC Comics seem to think that darker and edgier is the way to go, and have forgotten that ‘Darker and Edgier’ is where series and franchises go to die.
DC Comics needs to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask if they’re going to grow as a brand by broadening the fan-base or become a niche only known for Batman and Superman. It’s not that they don’t have recognizable characters to sell besides Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman… but that they have destroyed the most recognizable characters that had appeal besides those three: The Teen Titans. As Janelle Asselin put mentioned in an article at comic book resources…
You know who loves Teen Titans? People who enjoyed the early 2000s "Teen Titans" animated show, many of whom are female and many of whom are teenagers or young 20-somethings today. Market research could and does back this up. Graphic Policy's Brett Schenker pulled together the Facebook stats for me for fans of the original "Teen Titans" animated series. Currently in the United States, there are 500,000 self-professed fans of the show on Facebook. 260,000 of those are women. Yes, that's right – more than half. The majority of male and female fans are ages 15-23 with the bulk being 17. This is just a quick review of the potential market for these comics. Say a quarter of those fans actually tried a Teen Titans comic aimed at their demographic -- you're going to have a significantly higher number than the 26,000 copies "Teen Titans" is estimated to have sold in March. One-tenth of those animated "Teen Titans" fans buying a comic would result in a drastic increase in sales. Even if just the 17-year-old fans of the show bought the comic, you've got double the sales numbers. I could keep going, but you get the point.
Janelle Asselin, Anatomy of a Bad Cover: DC's New "Teen Titans" #1
There has been no group that’s been screwed over by the DC Comics editorial decisions quite as badly as the flagship team from the Teen Titans series. Let’s just list what the New 52 has done with these characters…
Dick Grayson a.k.a. ‘Robin or Nightwing’ – A lone wolf throughout the New 52, unmasked in a recent event and faked his death. Is launching a new comic called Grayson where he’s taking the role of a super-spy. Oddly I think this actually might work well as a limited run thing.
Rachel Roth a.k.a. ‘Raven’ – Relaunched as a dutiful daughter of Trigon (No kidding, I guess that means she’s technically evil this time) and is currently part of the Teen Titans lineup. She got the worst costume redesign known to man.
Garfield Logan a.k.a. ‘Beast Boy’ – Relaunched as a part of a team called the Ravagers but is now currently part of the Teen Titans lineup alongside Raven. He started out red for some reason.
Victor Stone a.k.a. ‘Cyborg’ – Relaunched as a founding member of the Justice League of America, though I’m not sure if this is a promotion or not considering he seems to be filling the role of the ‘token black dude’.
Koriand’r of Tamaran a.k.a. ‘Starfire’ – She suffered the worst handling of any of the characters when she was relaunched as part of Red Hood and the Outlaws where she was an emotionless bimbo. Massive firestorms on the internet ensued, but she’s still on the team three years later with only minor fixes. At least she’s not quite as emotionless now, but DC screwed her over really badly. There are massive hints that not only did she have a relationship with Grayson, but that it ended badly and she's still hung up about it... but how the hell all that happened in a timeline without the Teen Titans as we now them? No idea.
Ugh… and now they want their DC Cinematic Universe to use the New 52 as a template? God help us, if Darkseid shows up and it turns out this is Justice League: War or something… This is going to suck for fans, though as I said I hope it fails just so that DC could realize they’d fucked up again.
Now, don’t get me wrong… I don’t hate DC Comics. As I told a DC fan, my views is this… Marvel has better writers and editors; DC has better characters and history.
The New 52 was a gargantuan misstep because it threw those two things away. If superheroes have only existed for five years in the universe (New 52’s official policy on the timeline) then there is no legacy, no history. What’s worse is the decision to try and keep some history with the Batman titles (and only the Batman titles) has essentially broken the universes backstory and caused the need for more retcons then God. If you must reboot, you have to fully reboot.
DC needs to learn you cannot sell your comics based on the legacy of their heroes when you wiped that history from existence. That was the basic idea behind the new 52.
Ironically, as news begins to filter out it seems my hope of this being a complete failure for Warner Brothers and DC Comics are beginning to come to fruition. Just take a second look at the cast they’ve assembled. We’ve got people that are obviously in the wrong damn role for them, I mean Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne and Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, what are they smoking?
The kicker… They rolled back the release date a year, and by chance put it opposite Captain America 3 in 2016. If those two remain on the same release date, Marvel will kill DC. Admittedly they’ll probably hurt each other, but Marvel can afford to lose some money since they have three movies out each year. DC is lucky to have a movie out once every three years.
Well, I've been busy... and among the things I've been working on was 3d models of the ships from VALKYRIE: Into the Heavens. I posted a couple test renders of Daniel Logan's starship earlier, but I've just finished Michiko's...
For the last couple weeks one of the things that have been taking up a great deal of my attention has been the growing crisis in the Ukraine. One of the things that have struck me is that most people simply don't get what's happening. They don't understand it, so after going through masses of news articles and posts from bloggers actually in the Ukraine and Russian Federation. So, think of this post as a compilation of everything that's happened and an attempt to explain the actions of those involved.
So, let’s get started.
How it Began – the Maidan Protests
The protests that ultimately toppled the government of the Ukraine began on November 21st 2013. It began as a response to then President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a trade deal with the European Union in favor of a 15 billion dollar loan from Russia. The protests were fueled in large part by economic stagnation, obvious government corruption, and perceptions that Ukrainian integration into the European Union would make their situation better.
The size of the protests rapidly increased to over a hundred thousand people in Maidan Square in Kiev. Then on November 30th, Yanukovych unleashed riot police on the crowd.
Early in December, Kiev was rocked by a series of riots in response to the attack on the protests of November 30th. A number of the opposition parties throughout Ukraine began to build Headquarters of National Resistance throughout the countryside.
On January 16th, the Parliament of Ukraine passed a series of Anti-Protest Laws in Ukraine designed to force the protesters to disperse and giving more authority to President Yanukovych to suppress the protesters. Throughout this time, the official line of the Party of Regions (which was led by Yanukovych) was that the protesters were made up of foreign agents, fascists, and anti-semites. A line which has since been repeated by the Russian media and Pro-Russian television stations in the Ukraine (especially the Crimea).
These actions caused the protests to further radicalize as both the riot police and protestors began to use more and more force in clashes. Thousands of Ukrainian protestors held Maidan Square and began to fortify the location, constructing massive barricades assembling home-made riot shields, and molotov cocktails. They tore cobblestones up from the streets and hurled them at the riot police as they continued to fight to control the square.
The police used water cannons, molotov cocktails of their own, tear gas, flash bangs (often wrapped with nails and other improvised materials to turn them into grenades), and there are reports that even at this stage there was unauthorized use of shotguns. In addition to the normal police forces, the Ukrainian government deployed the Berkut (Golden Eagles) which in many ways were the evolution of the KGB inside the Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
As the conflict drug on, the protestors demands increased as they were radicalized by the oppression of the government, moving from demands that Yanukovych accept the EU trade deal to demands for government reform, the removal of the anti-protest laws, and President Yanukovych's removal.
Throughout this stage of the Crisis, Yanukovych was in communication with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. Yanukovych's response to the protests continued to escalate. Pro-Russian and Pro-Yanukovych forces began to take more and more extreme actions. They raided Red Cross aid centers and hid a bomb in a package labeled as medicine, destined for the activists. Finally, on February 18th, the protests exploded into violent revolution.
The Ukrainian Revolution of 2014
On February 18th, Yanukovych began a dramatic escalation and crackdown in an attempt to end the protests. Public transportation in Kiev was frozen and a de facto imposition of a state of emergency put in place. Berkut troops and riot police were deployed in mass, and an attempt to break through the barricades using a couple BTR armored personnel carriers on February 19th failed. In addition around 30 protesters and police died in the clashes as the first reports of widespread use of firearms began to crop up.
Then on February 20th the Berkut Police opened fire on the protestors, over seventy people died as a result. This use of force caused what remained of Yanukovych's credibility to evaporate. It was clear to many that Yanukovych was exercising power like a dictator. Across the globe people were appalled by the events in the square. The next day, Yanukovych was forced to sign a deal to bring about early elections and rolled back the anti-protest laws.
Yanukovych fled to Moscow soon afterward, the Berkut police that had been fighting the protestors fled as well, with many of them running to the Crimea. The Ukrainian Parliament declared the post of president vacant (since he'd fled to Moscow) and selected Oleksandr Turchynov to the post of acting president. Yanukovych has claimed that he's still the president of the Ukraine and the actions of the parliament were illegal (technically they were, but since when has that stopped a popular revolution).
Seems pretty straightforward, a popular protest turned into a revolution. Brace yourself, things are about to take a turn toward the surreal.
The Russian Response
AKA… how to invade a country without invading a country.
The Russian Federation gave safe haven to Viktor Yanukovych and refused to recognize the new leadership of Ukraine as legitimate. Thanks in part due to Russia portraying the Euromaidan protesters as fascists and Nazis (as an aside, Russians seems to use the word fascist in politics in much the same way Americans use the word communists) organized by Western subversives, many of the ethnic Russians living in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine feared that they would be targeted for their ethnicity. While no such discrimination or attacks have taken place, fear of such attacks remains alive thanks to continued misinformation from Russia and the Ukrainian parliament attempting to remove Russian as one of Ukraine's two official languages.
Russian diplomats refuse event to speak with their Ukrainian fellows.
In addition the Ukrainian authorities ordered the disbanding of the Berkut special police, many of whom have fled to the Crimea where the new Pro-Russian mayor of Sevastapol has reformed the Berkut. It's likely many of those former members have also joined the various 'Russian Self-Defense' groups that have propped up throughout the Crimea.
Using this as motivation, the Russian Federation began flying in troops to Sevastapol in the Crimea. The port is home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet and Russia has leased the port since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On February 27th, armed men (equipped as Russian Special Forces) stormed the Crimean Parliament. Since then a number of votes have been supposedly passed by the parliament, including one making the leader of the Crimea a man whose party received less than 4% of the votes in the last Crimean Parliamentary election. Multiple members of the Crimean Parliament have reported being threatened, or not voting for the various measures that have been put in place.
Armed men wearing masks and uniforms without insignia have surrounded a number of Ukrainian military bases around the Crimea. Their professional uniforms, equipment, and bearing are consistent with soldiers of the Russian Federation. In addition to ground troop movements the Russian Black Sea Fleet has launched a number of ships, and scuttled three decommissioned ships to blockade Ukrainian ships in their harbors. One of the ships scuttled was the Ochakov, a Kara-class Missile Crusier.
Russian Provocations and Ukrainian Restraint
Since February 27th, the Russian Forces on the Crimea have continually harassed Ukrainian units in their bases. For example: Belbek Airbase, a Ukrainian airfield near Sevastapol has been occupied by Russian soldiers. In a show of extreme restraint on the part of the Ukrainians, the base staff marched on Russian positions unarmed while the Russians fired warning shots into the air and managed to negotiate back access to the base. At another base the Russians smashed through the gate with a truck and hurled flash-bangs, but the Ukrainians refused to open fire. Elsewhere Russian or Pro-Russian forces have opened fire on border patrol aircraft, fired warning shots at international advisors, and beaten Pro-Ukrainian protesters in Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea.
It wasn't until today, March 14th, that these provocations seemed to incite the Ukrainians to some resistance, when a dueling set of protests in Donetsk clashed, resulting in the death of one Pro-Russian protester. Overall it has been the Pro-Russian protesters that have been more violent throughout Eastern Ukraine, as footage of one Pro-Ukrainian rally in the Crimea revealed an angry crowd beating those that showed their support to Kiev.
The Crimean Referendum
On March 16th, the Crimea is supposed to have a referendum on requesting annexation by the Russian Federation. While in normal circumstances I would see this referendum going down in defeat, a look at the ballot and how the voting is going to work makes it clear that no-matter what the results of the vote will be a request for Russian Annexation. Why? There is no way to vote no on the ballot.
The ballot has two questions and two check boxes. The first question asks if you wished to vote for Crimea being annexed by the Russian Federation, if yes you check the box. The second question asks if you wish for the Crimea parliament to revert to an earlier constitution which would give them the authority to ask for annexation without a referendum, which they asked for already... hence the referendum. A ballot that leaves both boxes empty will not be counted, nor will a ballot that has both boxes checked. In short, the Crimean population is not going to be able to say no.
Considering only 58% of the Crimean population is ethnically Russian, and there is no guarantee the ethnically Russian would vote to be part of Russia, any legitimate referendum could easily fail. The Crimean populace, historically, would much rather be independent of both Kiev and Moscow, unfortunately they've not been given that choice.
What Does Russia Want?
This is the million dollar question of the Crisis. What does Moscow want? If they're hoping to reinstall Yanukovych, I think their chances of success are about zero. Even in the Pro-Russian provinces he's despised. If they're trying to force Ukraine to bend to their will, I think they'd too be disappointed.
No, there is more going on here, I think. For one thing, Putin is terrified of seeing a democratic revolution in Moscow. Many of the very same problems that plague Ukraine have plagued Russia. A protest or popular uprising is something that Putin has moved to swiftly crush before with mass arrests and force. I think Russia sees a European aligned Ukraine as a threat, much as how China views a united western Korea as a threat. They want a buffer and client state between them and NATO.
That is one end result, I don't think we'll get. However, the crisis and actions Russia is taking in the Crimean make me think that Russia is trying to secure what they see as the most important part of Ukraine for themselves... Sevastapol. In addition, the actions that Russia is taking against the Ukrainian troops and ships seem to me to be designed to try and convince them to defect to the Pro-Russian government now installed in Crimea. There have been rumors of demands that Ukrainian ships surrender, and I wonder if another goal for the Russians is to take back the portion of the Black Sea Fleet seceded to Ukraine during the 1990s.
It's official, I'm pissed. In 2010, I decided that my hometown was one of the most backward and idiot places on this Earth. Just a few days ago, they confirmed it once again.
You see, my hometown is Fremont, Nebraska. You may have heard mention of it in the news this week. What I'm about to say is the truth, at least so far as I see it.
Fremont, Nebraska is a cesspool. 59.7% of the voting public in the town are either bigots or fools, and I'm becoming more and more certain that it is the former rather than the latter. They’re probably both.
The Town
I live within a stone's throw of the Metropolitan Building (the building where the city council actually meets). The area is officially considered a 'blighted area', a term used to get federal assistance for local improvements. What is telling is that while I wouldn't call the neighborhood really 'good' it wasn't what I'd call 'blighted' or 'bad' at least not until recent years.
Economically, Fremont is in a rut and has been for a long time. While unemployment here has been stable at around 4%, a look at the town shows that this is a bit of a misleading statement. The largest employer in town is Hormel, a meat packing plant that sits south of town, but besides the meatpacking field almost all the local jobs are various service sector jobs - especially in fast food. The downtown has become partially dependent on federal grants for improvements (though the only improvement I've seen has been special handicap useable sidewalk ramps). This isn't to say the local government is without money. They seem to have no problem having one of the largest police forces I've ever heard of for a town of 26,000.
We have a waterpark, a mall, a YMCA that's truly enormous, a college, and so forth. Overall that seems pretty good, at least from a quick cursory glance. The truth is that if you scratch beneath that surface the town is pretty rotten. The one part of that list I just gave that I can't really complain about is the local YMCA.
Fremont has long been controlled by a select group of older and wealthier families, people that have over years and in some cases generations accumulated wealth from all sorts of local businesses. I wouldn't call them fat cats or 'big players' as they're basically nothing in the overall scheme of things outside of the town itself. Among the many objectives this group has had was real-estate development, especially to the east of town.
It’s not an unusual thing for smaller towns to have people like this. My father liked to refer to them as the ‘Real-Estate’ Mafia.
Since I was in middle school I've seen a number of different ploys to get the city government to pay for basic infrastructure to make real-estate development easier. Among these ploys was the construction of a new Middle School over a mile outside of town, followed by the construction of the water-park.
Fremont Splash Station has a long history, if people here cared to remember it. I can't remember who had the original idea, but certain members of the community here decided they wanted a water park in town. After a couple years of campaigning for it, a bond issue was brought up for vote and promptly shot down.
Then things got a little crooked... You see, at the time Fremont had two pools. One of them, Memorial, was a massive pool equipped with slides and a capacity that dwarfed the second pool... Ronin. Soon after the bond issue for the water park failed, something odd happened... Memorial pool was shut down and the land it was on sold to the YMCA, which began to build a large indoor skating rink on the location.
Then Ronin, the only remaining pool in town was suddenly massively overcrowded during the summer. If that wasn't enough a study showed that Ronin was beginning to show its age, despite being significantly newer then Memorial. Suffice to say, ultimately... Fremont Splash Station was built across the street from the new Middle School.
It's never really been that popular or even profitable as far as I know. I think I’ve been there less than ten times since it opened.
When the new Middle School was opened one of my sisters ended up among its first class. I remember her telling a story about how when the first snow fell, hundreds of field mice flooded the school, taking cover from the cold out in the corn fields that surrounded the school inside the building. Among other problems there were massive traffic snarls getting to and from school, often times taking over an hour to get in and out at the start of the day.
I'll have more on the insanity of Fremont Nebraska Schools later... They deserve their own section.
I mentioned a mall, what I didn’t mention was any stores in it. This is because the Fremont Area Mall is practically empty most of the time. The most common reasons for anyone to visit the mall are to go to the movie theater inside or to the Chinese restaurant inside, Imperial Palace.
There’s even a store front in the mall that lies empty, and has for years.
I should note this restaurant is owned and operated by immigrants. I mention this because if you list all the start up small businesses in Fremont, most of them are either created by immigrants or created to serve immigrants. Almost all the other job growth in town seems to be provided by corporations and franchises.
This does not look like a quiet community or a nice suburb to Omaha. It looks like a town slowly transitioning from a ‘bedroom’ community of retirees into a slum of sorts. Keeping immigrants out will only accelerate this decline, as they are one of the driving factors for business creation in the town.
The College
I have a Bachelors degree in English from Midland Lutheran University, the college in town. My father worked for twenty-five years as a professor of business and economics from the school before being forced to retire. I know the faculty, or at least I did… The school I went too and graduated from in 2008 no longer exists. Oh there may be a few faculty members left and some staff, but the school I went to no longer exists. It’s now Midland University, a transition that was made under the current Nebraska senate candidate Ben Sasse.
My father has the early stages of Parkinson’s, a condition that was only detected last year. The year before that, Ben Sasse pressured him to retire. There are few people in this state that have gathered the enmity of my family quite as much as Ben Sasse.
I laugh at the idea that Sasse is anti-establishment. Have you seen his background? The man got his Bachelors from Harvard, and went overseas to Oxford in England. He owns property in Washington and worked as part of the Bush Administration. In short, HE IS THE ESTABLISHMENT.
Midland has long suffered under incompetent administrations, whose various schemes would backfire on the College, usually with severe fiscal problems. I for one am just glad he will soon be gone from the place and therefore can’t cause any more damage to my school.
The Schools
I had some great teachers growing up. People like Terry Boeck, Fred Robertson, Mrs. Shanks, Justin Bigsby, Mrs. Dodd, and Mr. Campbell. Most of them are gone now, retired… moved on, and one of them is even dead.
Terry Boeck liked to say he was ‘older than dirt’ and he was what a Middle School level Social Studies teacher should be. I will admit that my grades weren’t the best in his class, but then I was a complete twerp in Middle School. He liked to challenge the students in class, using his own knowledge to contradict most of what his students thought. In short, he would have been the absolute best possible government teacher.
He’s dead now, but one story he told me still sticks with me. It really shows just what is wrong with Fremont. When we were talking about the Civil Rights movement, he told the story of how the very first black family in town was run out of town by a mob.
They’re all gone now or moved on to administrative positions. Those few that still are in the classroom are a rarity, working alongside people that’s skill at teaching are apparently becoming more and more lackluster.
Did you know we have a debate and English teacher that is married to a registered sex offender? I’ve heard reports that the superintendent’s wife, a high school teacher, manhandled a kid? My younger sisters tell about how most of their teachers leave school immediately at the end of the day, unwilling to stick around to help students or supervise clubs.
Next year, all students will be let out an hour early on Wednesdays so that the teachers can stay for consultations or something… No wonder our test scores are so catastrophic. It’s insane.
The Bigots
Then, an older gentleman in a checkout line gruffly told her to speak English when she was talking to her kids in Spanish. And a clerk at a thrift store told her they didn't have bathrooms for brown people, she said.
Omaha World Herald, February 13th, 2013
Nathalie Martinez, 24, of Fremont Nebraska works as a Dental Assistant. Above is what she told the Omaha World Herald happened after the 1st vote on the anti-immigration ordinance. When I first heard this, I was horrified, but not surprised. The atmosphere here is toxic in its view on Mexicans. I remember my best friend for many years talk about ‘thieving mexicans’ and so forth. All that talk made me uncomfortable, and I didn’t speak out.
Now I have to.
All American Immigration laws have been motivated by racism. The very first limit on Immigration was the Immigration Act of 1917, which explicitly barred Asian Immigration. The next major act was the Immigration Act of 1924, which set a quota system where only a limited number of immigrants could enter the United States. The way the quota was calculated set it up so that it was derived by the ethnicity of current US residents. As a result, it dramatically slashed the number of Irish and Southern European Immigrants, while largely leaving English immigration alone.
These restrictions were largely unchanged until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which basically set up the current system. A system which I think is one of the most idiotic ones in the world. There is a national quota of immigrants allowed into the United States, something that I'm sure would shock our founders. After all, they're the ones that made it so being born in the United States automatically granted citizenship, no matter how much certain people want to pretend that they didn't.
The act was initially vetoed by President Truman, but I think we call all do well to remember what he said then in his Veto Message:
"Today, we are 'protecting' ourselves as we were in 1924, against being flooded by immigrants from Eastern Europe. This is fantastic... We do not need to be protected against immigrants from these countries–on the contrary we want to stretch out a helping hand, to save those who have managed to flee into Western Europe, to succor those who are brave enough to escape from barbarism, to welcome and restore them against the day when their countries will, as we hope, be free again....These are only a few examples of the absurdity, the cruelty of carrying over into this year of 1952 the isolationist limitations of our 1924 law.
In no other realm of our national life are we so hampered and stultified by the dead hand of the past, as we are in this field of immigration."
Who are we to deny the liberty we have to others who strive for it by moving here? How can we deny the Mexican fleeing drug violence in their homeland? How can we deny the Muslim woman fleeing the persecution of Saudi Arabia? A quota or waiting list is a denial, no matter how much these native bigots try to spin the truth. Yes the Immigration Act of 1952 is a law, so were the Black Codes. I say the illegal immigrants who came here to escape are heroes.
By acting to enforce it, by saying... You must follow this unjust law. YOU, THE VOTING CITIZENS OF THIS TOWN HAVE DECLARED IN A LOUD VOICE THAT: WE ARE BIGOTS AND RACISTS. You are the villains here, and may you burn in hell for your persecution of your fellow man!
Last night I finished uploading my latest work to Kindle and Createspace, bringing out my fourth book. That's right VALKYRIE: Into the Heavens volume #2 is out!
Get it now at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HV5HSPM
If you’re a fan of science-fiction anime, manga, and light novels you’ll probably like this story. It features a cast of characters from across the globe which can only grow in the future. It’s a light novel, so it’s short but that doesn’t mean it does not pack a punch. It's the sequel to VALKYRIE: Candidates so be sure to grab that one first.
Synopsis: 2163, the war between Earth and the Ixo drags onward. The pilots of Project Valkyrie are sent to 2 Pallas, an asteroid in the inner solar system to defend a science station working to trace the Ixo attacks back to their homeworld.
The four teenagers that pilot the next generation ships known as Interceptor Frigates are all but swallowed up by the Valkyrie program as engineers and technicians try to improve upon the designs after each engagement. Despite all of the stress of deployment, Daniel Logan and Michiko Hoshimoto try to find ways to relax amidst the chaos and keep themselves from becoming a danger to each other and the rest of the project.
The four teen pilots of the new 1st Interceptor Squadron are quickly thrown into battle against the Ixo as the alien fleets continue their relentless assault on Earth. As the Ixo introduce a series of far larger and more powerful vessels into the war, the teen pilots of the 1st Interceptor Squadron find themselves being thrown into the midst of a struggle between titans.
50,000 words, Rated T (Suitable for teens, 13 years and older, with some violence, minor coarse language, and minor suggestive adult themes.)
I know I haven't been posting much recently... The reason for this is that I've been really busy. I've just finished the second installment of VALKYRIE: Into the Heavens and I'm working with an offer from Tate Publishing on the first book of the A Fox's Tale series in print (for free, when normally they have people pay them to publish). Not to mention working on the cover for VALKYRIE: Pallas and a new cover for A Fox's Tale: The Warden's Daughter.
But none of that is what I wanted to actually blog about.
A couple weeks ago, seven scientists released an open statement that was rather alarming, or alarmist depending on your point of view. Basically what they said was, in order to stop climate change that all fossil fuel power plants should be shut down and replaced by nuclear power plants. Not following through would result in catastrophic climate change.
This is an extreme response... it's understandable if they think that not doing it will result in dramatic climate change, but one thing that will never stop so long as human beings build camp fires is carbon dioxide releases into the atmosphere. Human beings create CO2.
Stopping climate change is impossible, managing it is possible. One thing that many people don't know is that right now there is an international forum going on about the subject... After the recent super typhoon, the Philippine delegation has been screaming at them to do something.
Anyway, for a writer... especially one working in Science Fiction, it's a good idea to both understand climate change and its repercussions. As I think I may have said before, climate change by itself is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean if you want a good example of positive climate change, imagine terraforming Mars. Earth itself could certainly be made more habitable for human kind. There are huge swaths of our planet that really aren't ideal places for us humans to live.
Secondly, it's important to consider what the climate would be like in a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years into the future if you're writing during the time period. This means you have to know what possible results of dramatic climate change are. Things like, climate zones, growing seasons, and so forth would all be affected, but here are some things that I think would be interesting to consider.
1.) The Great American Desert - Before it was settled, the Great Plains region was often times called this. As climate changes begin to affect us it's possible that the old name might return as the tropical and arid zones advance further away from the equator. This may not actually reduce the amount of food production as warming of the Dakotas and Canada's would probably result in their crop yields increasing.
2.) Drunken Forests - A result of the thawing of permafrost in the taiga reasons (Alaska, Canada, and Russia), trees in a Drunken Forest lean as their roots rot or are released from the permafrost. Ultimately this process will cause them to die and rot. This is already going on in those areas.
3.) Polar Forests Return - An extreme result from warming of the planet would be the return of the polar forests. For those of you that are not familiar, Antarctica has not always been a barren ice desert. During the Mesozoic era it was a heavily forested area despite being dark for large swaths of time during the winter months. If you wanted to counter increased carbon levels, planting a polar forest as the continent warms would be one way of reversing the trend (though the penguins wouldn't be happy).
Last night I finished the process bringing my third (and a bit delayed) book series to Amazon. That's right The Greatest Game is here!
Get it now at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G1SXJSU
If you're a fan of alternate history, dogfights, fighter pilots, or the X-wing series, I'd recommend the book to you.
Synopsis: Volume One of The Greatest Game Light Novel Series.
1934, the Great War enters its twentieth year. The Weimar Republic of Germany has managed to secure a separate peace with many of its foes, after walking out of the Versailles Treaty fifteen years earlier, but Britain and France remain determined to bring Germany to heel.
In the face of foes devoted to the destruction of their nation, Germany has been forced to use every resource. Teenage men and women, children born under the shadow of war, now take up the same cause of their parents. For most the war is a dirty grimy conflict fought in bunkers and trenches, but for a select few the War is the Greatest Game.
Most see it as a sport fought by gentleman in the air, the knights of the sky, but they don’t understand. Up there, the war is more personal. To bring a plane down, one man must shoot another or destroy the machine that keeps him aloft. There are no radios, there is no quarter, and there is no mercy.
There are only hunters and the hunted.
Erik Weissmann spent his youth looking up at the skies as fighter planes swept after each other. Now he is learning to become one of them while a new threat rises in the East. The question remains, will he be a hunter, or the hunted?
44,000 words, Rated M (Not suitable for children or teens below the age of 16 with non-explicit suggestive adult themes, references to some violence, or coarse language.)
Finite World: Welcome to the 21st Century
Week 2, Month 11, Episode #16
Not too long ago I stumbled across a rather disturbing graph, which like many rather disturbing pieces of information sent me into a plethora of research, that eventually led to a number of conclusions. Normally my short panic attacks are offset by information that makes the graph's information rather... well, inapplicable.
Not this time.
What graph did I see? Well it was a projection of oil production which basically said that production would plateau at current levels until beginning to drop around 2020. By 2050 production is projected to fall to roughly 2/3rds of current levels and drop to 1/3rd of current levels by 2070 or so.
Okay, so we're at the peak of oil production and we're probably pumping more out of the ground now than we ever will in the future. What's that to panic about?
Well, oil demand is not a plateau like production. The emerging economic juggernauts of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have growing demands for oil, and while some of these nations have domestic supplies (Russia) or are heavily invested into alternate fuel sources (Brazil), most of these powers need oil to continue to grow.
Increased demand with current production levels results in higher prices, and historically small fluctuations in demand or production tend to result in significantly higher fluctuations for price. In short the tap is running dry and there's more people waiting in line.
The driving force behind the BRICS group is the People's Republic of China, who sees further economic development as the key to future political stability. The last time we had an emerging economic power dependent on oil facing reduced supplies, well... Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
All of this isn't an immediate concern, but by 2030... well, it will be. A very rough calculation I made came up with a price for a barrel of oil being around $600 by 2030. If gas prices fell in line with that increase, we're talking about $20.00 a gallon for gasoline in fifteen years. This will no doubt spur efforts to either increase production (ha! ha! ha!) or find means of stretching our resources to fill the gap between supply and demand.
Synthetic oils and gasoline can be produced from coal (this is very similar to Oil Sands in terms of how it's done), as the United States has a coal industry that likes to brag about their 75 or 100 year supply of coal in this country, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how we'll make up the gap between supply and demand here. Unfortunately shifting demand from one hydrocarbon fuel to another will just mean that 75 or 100 year supply of coal isn't going to last that long.
Like the United States, China has vast coal reserves and will likely use them to compensate for the rising oil costs. Russia will ride the oil wave enriching itself on it's own production of the more and more valuable fuel. Brazil will likely double down on their ethanol production and use it to compensate for increased demand for oils. South Africa is already investing in their own oil and coal supplies and will likely ride it out much as Russia will. India will be faced with a crisis as their own demand rises, as they don't have the local supplies of other nations.
Outside of BRICS, Japan will face problems as new hesistancy to utilize nuclear power will likely have them falling back on oil and natural gas as power sources, both of which will need to be imported and force Japan's already painful cost of living to skyrocket. Most of Europe is dependent on natural gas for heating and power, and as vast as those global reserves are they're not inexhaustible.
Ultimately those measures will only extend so far, and by 2050 we'll likely be facing an energy crisis across most of the globe. As the price of oil increases, so does the cost of shipping across the globe by conventional power (nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines can ignore this). Increasing costs of trade cut deeply into the economics of all the powers as globalization begins to unravel. In the largest countries it becomes prohibitively expensive to ship goods between states and provinces, throwing a wrench into the organization scheme of modern national and global chains.
The rising price of shipping will have painful consequences as nation after nation will be unable to afford to import food from the major producers of the world (the United States, Ukraine, and so forth being the major producers), faced with famine and starvation at home, nations will lash out against their neighbors hoping to obtain food or energy sources. Global Hunger will dramatically reduce the population, as it becomes more and more impossible to supply the needs of far flung nations from those countries that produce major surpluses.
The 21st Century will be a century filled with conflict as demands for finite resources grow stronger. The BRICS will challenge American dominance as they struggle over those resources. When they finally dry up completely, our society will be looking at an extreme crisis looking for alternate means of supplying energy, creating plastics, transporting food and other goods.
Non-hydrocarbon fuel and energy sources will become the norm. Aircraft design will revert to propeller systems as the cost of jet fuel overwhelms the air lines, and ultimately the use of small scale fission, hydrogen fuel-cell, or other nuclear propulsion systems will become commonplace on aircraft and ground vehicles. It's possible that high efficiency ion engines could also be used for aircraft. Solar power will see limited use as the average home requires around 150 square feet of solar panels to fill it's energy needs at 100% efficiency with no clouds and constant daylight.
It is likely that the development of a Hybrid Nuclear Fusion-Fission reactor will be pushed as a means of both eliminating Nuclear Waste from fission power (as it uses spent fuel rods from fission reactions as fuel) and the development of smaller fully contained and crash proof reactors will be heavily invested in, especially by Japan.
By 2100 I expect Earth's Economy to be vastly different then it is now. The changes to society that the great squeeze of the oil crisis will wrought over the globe will likely dismantle most trade as we know it, and while they may be reestablished, it's likely that decentralized production will be the rule rather then the use of a factory in China to make toys for Toys 'R Us in New York. At the same time technologies like 3d printing, robotics, and networking will replace a number of industries. Much of the old social structure will be upended, as the move away from industry to decentralized manufacturing will leave the upper class holding the bag. At the same time the unskilled laborer will find themselves without a real purpose as such work can most easily be accomplished by robots.
Trying to figure out how such a society would work is interesting... maybe I should write a book.
Against Conventional Wisdom: Said…
Week 1, Month 11, Episode #15
About two weeks ago, I spent some time with a friend of mine (who has been helping me proof and copyedit my books) discussing one of the rules that is regularly being hammered into new writers, and my disagreement with the conventional wisdom behind it.
That rule is quite simple. Instead of more descriptive and specific dialog tags you should use ‘Said’.
Now, to understand this rule and the reasoning behind it you have to know what I mean by the term dialog tag, and what said effectively means to a reader.
A dialog tag is the short phrase before a line of dialog that tells the reader who said it. That’s it. That’s all. In most cases it means phrases like: She yelled, he said, she muttered, and so forth…
Now, I understand why this is made as a rule in so many handbooks and so forth. It basically comes down to this simple fact. Most people use ‘non-conventional’ dialog tags improperly or use phrases that aren’t dialog tags as dialog tags.
As one of my professors said, “Just try and say something while grimacing, you can’t.”
And he’s right, you can’t. You can’t swallow and say a line of dialog. The problem isn’t that the phrases and their basic arrangement is wrong, it’s that people are using a comma instead of a period. I admit that even I fall into this trap often enough on my drafts, but instead of doing as most of my advisers suggest (use said) I simply changed it thusly…
She shrugged, “What can I do?”
-Becomes-
She shrugged. “What can I do?”
I don’t like ‘said’ as a verb. It’s an extremely neutral term with neither positive or negative weight nor meaning. Its meaning and purpose can be explained quite simply.
In a novel we write:
John said, “I hate the word said.”
To do the same thing in a script or play, we write:
John: I hate the word said.
Said is essentially a footnote to tell the reader who is saying the dialog. That is all, and considering that most dialog does not exist without some sort of action being done by the speaker (stuff that actors add all the time to their performances to give it nuance) there is often very little reason to use a dialog tag in the first place.
While a play doesn’t usually have large amounts of direction for the actors for facial movements (since those are usually added by suggestion of the director or the actors themselves) a novel needs those directions. Consider the following dialog.
She said, “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
She sighed and shut her eyes. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
She slammed the milk down. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
Without the use of this direction, the tone of the line is extremely flat. Instead of a character you’re left with a talking head. Now since structurally changing speakers in a line of dialog is done by creating a new paragraph, there is no need to use said on every line either. There’s a rather famous short story by Hemmingway where the last page is nothing but a conversation between two characters. If I remember right there’s roughly a dozen lines of dialog.
Said is used once or twice, and there are no other dialog tags.
This is an extreme example, but I think you got the idea.
Now, why is it then that we’re told to use ‘said’ so often by books and advisers? Well it’s to prevent us from making a grammatical or syntax error.
Essentially, and this is one of those more theoretical elements of writing that most people don’t get, all the actions that appear in a sentence happen at the same time. That’s why when you have a sequence of events in a story ‘then’ becomes a word that appears with almost alarming frequency.
When you have a line of dialog like…
She swallowed, “What do you mean?”
She’s swallowing at the same time that she’s saying the line. It doesn’t work. Now, I know my professor Tim Esaias really dislikes swallowing and blinking as actions, but eh… Sometimes it fits the situation.
To placate him, it’s usually swallowing a lump in someone’s throat but whatever. Anyway, the right way to write that is just to put a period in place of the comma and walk away. Since moving from one sentence to another implies the passage of some time (Immediately is also another word that creeps into action a lot to imply the fast movement of time for this reason) this makes it perfectly acceptable.
Well, if you can stand swallowed as a verb (sorry Tim). Which means this is the correct way to say that.
She swallowed. “What do you mean?”
I have to say that there is one place I feel said is a good word to use. That place is when the lines are being delivered in a cool, level, or perhaps even somewhat detached manner. As a result this means said works great for things like briefings, news conferences, and prepared speeches.
Now, I’ve got to finish up my next book… excuse me.
Work Continues... I added some pretty detailed lenses to the the 'cockpit' canopy, something I didn't bother with the first time around. Looking cool so far.
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