A2Z Challenge 2021

X is for Xenobiology – stranger than Science Fiction…

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  If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel, “Train Wreck”, and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile, if you imagined Xenobiology to be the study of aliens – think again…

When researching the V post on diseases in space, I imagined that Xenobiology would be the subject to mine for information, the word Xeno being from the Greek Zenos meaning Stranger/Alien– but no – that was Astrobiology. Xenobiology has very down to earth goals trying to solve issues of disease right here on Earth – albeit in a very strange way.

Earth life uses the genetic code based on DNA and RNA – nucleic acids that carry information to let us construct our bodies (but also diseases and viruses!). Xenobiology attempts to use nucleic acid analogues, expanded genetic code and non-proteinogenic amino acids. Wait! This sounds like GM – Genetic Modification which some people think is A Very Bad Thing! Well yes and no! The modification of genetic action of cells is so radical that it may include substituting an entirely synthetic genetic mechanism and the aim of that is to make conventional GM safer.

One of the great fears about GM is the “horizontal gene transfer” and its possible effects on humans and the environment. Xenobiology aims to firewall genetic changes by replacing the whole or parts of the genetic mechanism. If you love geeky stuff, go read the Wikipedia article or if you want the layman’s version try this.

In fact, Xenobiology might be a tool in Astrobiology since it sheds light on quite other ways in which life could be structured on alien worlds, but you only have to look to the deepest oceans on Earth to find such alien life chemistry. Down there in the total dark, exist microbes that use chemosynthesis based on hydrogen sulphide instead of the carbon dioxide of photosynthesis – something quite unimagined until their quite recent discovery. If such different life chemistry is possible, why not different gene chemistry?

I don’t pretend to understand Xenobiology but I see that it is a fascinating branch of science and I have given you a signpost if you want to go there…

Posts I wouldn’t normally visit…

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The A2Z Challenge daily extra challenge for today, is to do something different, and one of the ideas is to visit sites you would not normally visit – so here goes…

Diary of the Sunday Visitor is in the category Diary and personal Musings but it is clearly too, a Christian site and the sentiment expressed, is not one I agree with as someone who does not believe in God, but if you do, then this is a great site featuring quotes from the bible each day…

Wilbur’s Travels is exactly that – and the reason I don’t usually go for sites about other people’s travels is because it makes me too darned jealous – especially in lockdown! Which is, I know, rather unfair because really, if something is well written and well-illustrated, as this blog is, then it is worth a read! Go there for a virtual trip…

I have much the same opposition to visiting Genalogy blogs as I do for the previous review but also the same positive comments – Black Raven Genealogy is a well thought out blog that must be a great resource for anyone else connected to this family. As a stranger, I would have been more interested if there was more of the story of the person highlighted but I realise that these details are more difficult to obtain than details of birth, death and place in the genealogy but there is some detail of John Hynes in this post…

V is for Virus and other Lurgys in SciFi…

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 If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel, “Train Wreck”, and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile, on a subject which we have all become unwilling experts…

An artist’s illustration for NASA’s Astrobiology Program. (Image credit: NASA)


There is a genre of Science Fiction known as Microbial Science Fiction – who knew! An article defining the sub-genre also lists some of the prime examples of the genre – although I would have placed the genius of HG Wells in his “War of the Worlds” right at the top of the list. In that book, the Martians who have invaded Earth are finally destroyed not by our less advanced military apparatus, but by Earth germs. Many of the sub-genre’s books have it the other way round, instead of aliens coming to Earth and taking ill, it is either a mysterious illness that falls to Earth or earthmen encountering microbes on their future travels through the universe.

There is a real science- Astrobiology – which attempts to understand the origins of life on Earth by considering it in the widest context of Earth as a planet, in a vast universe, which presumably supplied the raw materials of life at the very least, and perhaps life itself – this is known as “Panspermia” – the seeding of life via comets or some other, unknown mechanism. Not to be confused with Xenobiology which I will look at tomorrow.

Realistically, and who on Earth would suggest that SciFi should be realistic, what are the chances of encountering microbes that would endanger us, on a new planet such as Hawaii 2 in my book “Train Wreck”? 

The study of microbes includes virology, mycology, parasitology, and bacteriology and in the age of Covid 19, who has not learned the creepy way viruses break into their hosts cells and subvert them to the production of more viruses – so much so that the cell literally bursts – releasing more viruses… How “Alien” is that! However, the bigger picture for viruses is that they are uniquely tied to our DNA gene-based method of reproduction – they run a parallel (arms) race that arguably stimulates our immune system to constantly adapt to the new threat – although if the little blighters didn’t exist – we wouldn’t need to adapt anyway, and does that adaptation help with anything other than the threats posed by viruses? It is a measure of how closely related to other animals we are, genetically, that with quite small variations, viruses can jump species birds/ pigs/ humans. If we reach other planets, viruses may not be one of our problems – other than any we might take with us because the gap between us and aliens might be too big for viruses to jump…


Bacteria and fungi are a different story, they can be opportunistic and whilst not as cell-specific in their preferred home as viruses, they might well thrive on another planet, both the ones we take with us, and ones we might encounter there. – If the Panspermia theory turned out to be correct, it might turn out that through the (panspermia) bacteria, our DNA based evolution and reproduction could mean there are new lurgys waiting for us and quite able to affect us. Here on Earth, fungi, whose original niche in the environment might be, say, a rainforest, is capable of finding a new niche in human lungs, so they are a prime candidate for causing infection by alien versions should they have evolved there.

Our bodies carry so many microbes that for 30 trillion human cells, we have on average about 39 trillion microbial cells making us only 43% human but remember, many of these microbes are helpful to us and we would be very ill if they were magically removed. It is a question of internal ecological balance and sometimes, the microbe balance within our bodies is upset, and then we are ill without the addition of any extra, ill-making microbes. Astronauts usually isolate before missions to make sure they don’t come down with colds, for example – imagine sneezing in your space helmet…

If we transport so much microbial matter about our person, then the very environment of space might upset our microbial balance, zero-gravity, solar-radiation, lack of fresh food – all of these might enhance an unfavourable mutation of microbial DNA – not very sexy for a science fiction plot though – not unless the resulting illness makes its victims go whacko…

And hey! Parasites! Once again, there are examples on Earth that make SciFi plots look tame – read the grisly story of how ant behaviour is manipulated to make them climb grass in order to be eaten by cows as part of the lifecycle of a parasitic flatworm here. Or another unfortunate ant who is host to and eventually killed by a fungus growing out of it. The fungus also exerts mind control to get the ant to find the exact location required for the fungus to thrive…


Of course, much Science Fiction that is concerned with other topics, simply sidesteps the microbial hazard – before the airlock opens on a new world, the computer samples the atmosphere and pronounces it safe in a few seconds or else it is assumed that human medicine will be a match for anything alien worlds can throw at it or else the whole issue is simply ignored. Well I have to hold my hand up to the latter, so far at any rate, I have described Hawaii 2 as an Eden like planet without apex predators of any threat to mankind, let alone any microbial menaces. I suppose that it is not the real subject of the Speculative Fiction of which “Train Wreck” is an example but hmmm…I still have a long way to go, many pages to fill… 

U is for Utopias…

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  If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel, “Train Wreck”, and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile, Utopia is a central theme in the book…


I looked at how the desire for someone to be living a Utopian existence, led us to project the idea onto Scandinavian countries under my entry for S, and how we have eventually discovered that they have feet of clay like the rest of us. But what exactly is a Utopia and must we always be doomed to disappointment?

The word Utopia was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book of that name  describing a fictional island society in the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South America. The term has come to be used as a synonym for “deluded”, “impossible” or “far-fetched” and it has a counter term Dystopia. The very SciFi picture at the top, comes from a blog piece that argues for the additional idea of a False Utopia – one which initially appears Utopian but hides a dark secret. An example of this would be HG Wells’ “The Time Machine” where the happy, beautiful people living their utopian life above ground, are in fact fodder for the Morlocks who live underground.

The Wikipedia article on Utopias suggests that whilst mainly a literary endeavour, thought experiments if you will, Utopias can be the subject of real-world experiments too but quotes Lyman Tower Sargent who argues that “the nature of a utopia is inherently contradictory because societies are not homogeneous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied”. In other words, to offer equality to all people – a fundamental aim of the Utopian dream – you cannot offer the same thing to all people because they are different.  Lyman Tower Sargent further states “There are socialist, capitalist, monarchical, democratic, anarchist, ecological, feminist, patriarchal, egalitarian, hierarchical, racist, left-wing, right-wing, reformist, free love, nuclear family, extended family, gay, lesbian and many more utopias…”

We tell stories, I believe, as a fundamental aspect of our human nature – a consequence of our big brains. For if we can deduce “Those are lion tracks, they were made three days ago and there was a cub too, so a lone female, with a limp – so wounded…) then we can also put together a story which is completely made up, because both the deduction and the fiction require the use of our big-brain imagination. So in telling Utopian stories, we are trying to imagine a better way to live, one which will reconcile the flaws in human nature and the contradictions those flaws create in the real world.

Are we wrong to keep trying to visualise Utopias? Of course not, our human nature might remain essentially the same but our superficial circumstances change all the time and we must constantly re-envision utopian possibilities…

“Train Wreck” is just another Utopian experiment imagined and described and then traversed to uncover its inevitable flaws and contradictions – but I hope, that in the tradition of HG Wells, my SciFi tale is a good enough story to be worth the reading…

“And now I was to see the most weird and horrible scene
of all that I had beheld in that future age.”

crop from File:The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (Famous Fantastic Mysteries, August 1950).pdf


T is for Terrorism…

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 If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel, “Train Wreck”, and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile, some thoughts on a subject that plays a very small part in “Train Wreck”.

The image above is the nearest I could find to the dream-vision I had that launched the writing of my novel (work-in-progress) “Train Wreck”. Nearest in the sense that it is an explosion on a train in the desert although in my case it takes place on another planet onboard a MagLev train whilst this image is from David Lean’s classic film “Lawrence of Arabia”.

In my book, terrorism is discounted by official sources and the public are told the explosion was due to a gas bottle malfunction. Privately though, government investigators remain mystified by the explosion which they determine to have been a bomb and yet no claim of responsibility has been made and no motive can be imagined…

We do come to learn the motive – not terrorism – but the whodunnit forms the narrative trajectory of the book. Still, I have a few thoughts on the subject of terrorism…

I suppose I first became aware of the phenomena of terrorism during the 60’s and 70’s when the hijacking of airliners – mostly by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)- was a regular occurrence. I remember wondering at the time, why airplanes? If I was a terrorist and wanted to create terror, I would blow up elictricity substations, unguarded and too many to protect, plunging random residential areas into darkness and striking at the heart of a target people rather than some remote group of travellers. (I was not as dangerous a teenager as this may suggest…) The answer to why airpanes was, I suppose, because they guaranteed publicity worldwide. International airflight was still relatively new and glamourous so trains would definitely have been infra dig as a target.

As a result of these activities, the PFLP and later factions such as the PLO, attached the word terrorism to the Palestinian people as if they were the prototypical terrorists – a fiction unceasingly re-enforced by Israeli propaganda. For let us not forget, that if the Palestinians got the idea that terrorism might get you what you wanted, they learned it from the Zionist gangs that commited atrocities such as the bombing of the King David Hotel in which 91 people of various nationalities were killed. The hotel was the headquarters of the British administration and the members of the Irgun right-wing zionist gang infiltrated the hotel dressed as Arab  (Palestinian Arab) workers. If that isn’t ironic I don’t know what is… The attack took place in the run up to the unilateral declaration of the state of Israel which has continued, against its own declared constitution, to steal the land from Palestinian Arabs. 

There is a maxim “One man’s Terrorist is another’s Freedom Fighter!” and although terrorism is the underdog’s tool in the assymetric warfare of liberation, the converse statement must be true of government. “One man’s Legitimate Government is another man’s Illegitimate Occupying Force!”

Terrorism was elevated during the latter part of the 20th and into the 21st Century, by the rise of Islamic suicide bombers, recruited by shadowy manipulators who would never put themselves in harm’s way and promising a quick ticket to Paradise to idealistic (mostly) young Moslems. Suicide bombers are not a new phenomena and have in the past been state sponsored – think Japanese Kamikase pilots but the suicide vest allied with the mechanisms for recruiting and grooming suicide bombers in “support of Islam” has reached new levels. Whilst my adolescent musings were of a terrorism that hurt nobody (directly anyway), the latest form of suicide terrorism are designed to cause maximum carnage indiscriminately. 

Does Terrorism work? In the UK, the toies, led by Margaret Thatcher, despite vowing not to talk to terrorists (the IRA in Northern Ireland), were forced to do so once the bombing campaign reached mainland Britain and in particular, the bombing of The Arndale Shopping Centre, Manchester in 1996. The government then entered into secret negotiations( influenced by Jermy Corbyn’s more nuanced approach to the IRA) which eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement. Presumably insurance companies put their feet down and said enogh is enough – negtiate or we will not insure commercial properties. Commercial Unoin itself, lost all its windows in the Baltic Exchange bombing. So yes – terrorism can achieve results if applied to the right pessure point.

Arguably, bringing war, (so often inflicted by the US on countries around the world), in the form of 9/11 to american soil, did not work to make the US question why such an act might have occured and applied more of the same by launching yet more wars in the Middle East which continue to this day, justifying and feeding the military industrial complex.

Israel continues to mislead and brainwash its children into thinking that Palestinian Arabs are the agressors rather than the Zionist project – “truth is the first casualty in war” and I ask you – in Israel, who are the real terrorists?

S is for Scandinavia, Sex and Social Workers…

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If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel, “Train Wreck”, and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile – this post explores some myths about the supposed utopian society of Scandinavia…



When I was a teenager, there was rumour that Scandinavian women were hot! In fact the words Sex and Swedish were almost synonymous, at least as far as women and certainly by contrast to us allegedly uptight British men… 

In recent decades, another myth has done the rounds, that Scandinavian countries were all exemplary utopian societies. Okay so the tax was high but then so were the wages and the social welfare net unprecedented. More recently, this myth has proved to be just that – a myth and newspapers will have to search elsewhere for the next big meme. You can read a quite amusing article on the subject here or an article on why America’s left might be unwise to embrace the idea of Scaninavian utopianism with aspects of Swedish society best forgotten, forced sterilisation of 63,000 people who might have physically or mentally deficient offspring. I will not repeat all the arguments in these two typical articles seeking to revise our view of Finnish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian society but here are a few random facts:- 

  • Danes claim to be a happy people but are second only to Iceland in consuming anti-depressants
  • In Norway, September 2013, the rightwing, anti-Islamist Progress party – of which the mass shooter Anders Breivik had been an active member for many years – won 16.3% of the vote in the general election
  • Norwegians boast of using only renewable energy sources but their wealth comes from selling fossil fuels to the rest of us. (subject of the excellent Scandi drama “Occupied”)
  • Women in Nordic nations deal with high levels of rape and abuse even as the countries lead in gender equality
I think that two issues are raised here, why did we so want to hear about the supposedly utopian Scandinavians with their Hygge and secondly, why is there a gap between the myth and the reality. One thing is about us and the other is about them…

Taking the point about the Scandinavians first, and reading between the lines of several articles, some things happen because governments devise them in top down programmes such as high tax to pay for high social security and other things come from the grassroots up. In a book called “Made in Sweden: how the Swedes are not nearly so egalitarian, tolerant, hospitable or cozy as they would like to (have you) think”, Elisabeth Åsbrink, an acclaimed Swedish journalist writes “Sweden has a very strong self-image of being a good country,” Asbrink said. “It’s in the tradition of Sweden to put itself forth as a moral role model.” and later in the book, “As soon as welfare is based on all citizens contributing,” Asbrink writes, “those who are not considered contributors become a problem.” Hence the enforced sterilisations and anti-immigrant attitudes. Hygge, it seems is a residue from traditional values that don’t stand up when the people are threatened by new influences from new people.

Before you think I am swinging too far the other way and painting the Scandinavians too noir, (and Scandi noir has given us some great dramas – why are we so fascinated with gruesome crime?) – no! They are just human like the rest of us! It seems that human nature allows us to befriend strangers from other places as individuals whilst simultaneously feeling threatened on a group, welfare or cultural level. To pay high taxes for a great social welfare net but not then be so willing to share it. Margaret Meade, the anthropologist, said that rather than the burying of dead, she saw the beginning of civilisation as being when we see evidence of healed broken-bones – evidence that we not only had time and resources plus the knowledge of how to set bones, but the will to support a fallen comrade. (The story of this quote is told here and here) This would appear to be an issue which is always in the balance in human nature depending perhaps, on the availability of resources…

So why did we want to believe in the myths about Scandinavia? Perhaps it is human nature to think that the grass must be greener somewhere and so all us uptight English boys, lacking as we did, either the, climate or the  surf-culture of Beachboys California, fantasised about embracing the nearly in reach,uninhibited, blonde, Swedish sex-goddesses and later in life we wanted to embrace the supposed values of Hygge as we sat surrounded by our not always soft and cuddly IKEA furniture. There is indeed a post-modern irony in the Swedish “death thrash” band naming itself “Bleeding Utopia” (pictured above).

“Train Wreck” is about a Utopian experiment on a planet where a completely fresh start with a handpicked population are not threatened by mass immigration or poverty and their society has been carefully structured in cantons equating to the earliest tribal size of mankind – a size at which everyone knows everyone else in each community and – so it is thought – policemen are therefore not necessary. But can you root out and socially structure away, the worst aspects of human nature? The private demons of greed, envy, hubris and the things that cause dysfunction such as sexual abuse? Hawaii 2 may or may not need policemen but it may well need Social Workers… Our central character, Jack Gulliver is like someone who accepted at face value, all the myths about Scandinavia of the last decade, and is now travelling through the less palatable circles of existence on Hawaii 2 with his guide Stig. Where will it lead and who planted the bomb on the train and killed Jack’s wife…? 

R is for Rockets, Ram Jets, and Re-usability…

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  If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile – is a little more about an issue that is at the heart of the book…

Hawaii 2 has a very unusual problem in my book “Train Wreck” – you can land on it, but you can’t easily take off again, at least not without some Strar Trek type Sci-Fi Magical technology. Yes! Yes! I hear you repeat Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” and I accept that science is coming up with some pretty magical things like Quantum entanglement, but I don’t see anti-gravity drives coming along any time soon and I am not going to go along with magical thinking – especially as it would deprive me of my Plot!

The problem I had back in Chapter 2, was that this technological problem with Hawaii 2 is quite complicated and I didn’t want to lose the reader straight away but at the same time, it is a central premise of the book – how to tell it or show it as we authors are supposed to do! Well I broke it up into sections told by different characters and even through in a SEX SCENE – one which was also very pertinent to the plot and in no way gratuitous (don’t you just hate that!).

But here in the blog I can share a few pictures and additional facts…

At the top, is a video of the Apollo 11 moon mission launch – or to describe it another way, three astronauts sitting on top of a massive bomb with their fingers crossed… Before the moon race between the USA and the USSR, the Americans had been experimenting with the Bell X2 Rocket Plane which was launched from a bomber as high as it could carry it and from whence it’s own rocket could carry it to the edge of space. 

This was only a one-man test device but it points to the better way to get into space which has been resurrected by Virgin in its commercial offering seen below. Virgin aim to take very rich people (who must still be very fit) into low orbit spaceflight and who is to say that this might not inspire the very rich to appreciate and save the planet a little more…

The proposed Virgin Galactic Spaceship and Mother-ship combo

You can that a major difference between the respective mother-ships, is that the later model, is jet-powered and this is why there is a problem with Hawaii 2. You may remember the disruption to air travel “In 2010, an eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland sent clouds of ash and dust into the atmosphere, interrupting air travel between Europe and North America because of concerns the material could damage jet engines. More than 100,000 flights were grounded, stranding millions of passengers.” see the full story here. I happened to be visiting Iceland at the time and there was a distinct possibility that we might have had to be bussed to another airport to avoid the plume of very fine volcanic dust that was capable of banjaxing jet engines. The fine material was produced by volcanoes beneath ice fields melting the ice and explosively rendering the output into unusually fine dust! Hawaii 2 has so many volcanoes in just this special circumstance, that to follow the mother-ship route back to space is impossible. Rockets are uneconomical (and dangerous) so what other possibilities are there?

One route to saving money was to compromise by making the space vehicle re-usable and thus the Space Shuttle was born. An even larger rocket with extra boosters tied on, the Shuttle was a “lifting body” or rather a controlled falling body that could fly back down to earth. The programme ran long enough for flights to become almost commonplace and with familiarity, contempt for safety led to two disasters in which all crew were sadly lost. Spaceflight is dangerous…

The Space Shuttle had a large cargo bay and famously launched the Hubble Telescope (and later repaired it) but the real commercial bread-and-butter of commerce in space, consists of launching much smaller satellites and using a re-usable rocket is making this much more economical too. Elon Musk has eschewed taking rich tourists into space for more lucrative commercial payloads -developing the Space X rocket which you can see not only landing upright but landing on a boat – such precision! Elon Musk’s ultimate goal is to send a mission to Mars…


The last possibility for getting into space is one I dealt with in an earlier post, – the Space Lift (or Elevator if you are American). G-is-for-gravity-well-and-greening the desert and whilst this idea relies on technology or rather – materials we do not yet have, many believe it could be possible…

So there you have it, a concise guide to the challenge of getting into space should you choose to accept it…
I promised you Ramjets but hey! It’s in the book “Train Wreck”!




Q is for Questions – Dear Reader…

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 If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters. I always planned Q to be an opportunity to question YOU, Dear Reader, so please answer one, all or none of the questions below…

  1. Do you or have you read science fiction?

  2. Who are your favourite Science Fiction Authors?

  3. Have you read any of this author’s book “Train Wreck” here on this blog?

  4. If you have, then what stands out for you?

  5. What do you not like – don’t be shy…

  6. One of the chapters introduced the topic of childhood sexual abuse, given that the book is an examination of a utopian society, were you surprised/shocked to encounter this topic in a science fiction genre and do you think it good or bad to cross boundaries?

  7. Would you like to live on Hawaii 2 and if so why?

  8. If you have been following the book – would you like to receive the rest of the chapters when they are finished? (If so please leave an email address…)

P is for Politics, politics and the Pan Human Federation…

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 My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge was to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), was to consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. I had 12 chapters already written at the beginning of the month but my day job has taken too much time and I have only completed another two. So although I hope to complete some more chapters before the end of April, I will continue with these posts for sure. If you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the book then please leave an email in the comments…


Political party, politician, playing politics, isn’t politic -we all use the word and its adjuncts frequently, but when I came to consider the politics of Hawaii 2 in my book “Train Wreck” – I realised that I didn’t know what the real definition or etymology of the word was. Of course, Wikipedia was there, itself a form of political example since anybody may edit a definition and this has famously led to tussles with some items being repeatedly re-edited. Here then, is the definition from their very excellent article:-

“Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, ‘affairs of the cities’) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status…”

The  article goes on to refine the understanding of the word “politics” usage – “limited” referring only to the process of governance whilst “extensive” meaning a total view of life as it is lived, as in a feminist view of the power relationships between the sexes as in the statement “The personal is political!”

Another dichotomy over the meaning of Politics is the Moral/Realist schism. Aristotle believed that every societal dispute could be settled by discussion and never by recourse to war – an ethical approach which is strongly exemplified in Utopian ideas. Political Realists like Machiavelli and Hobbes, thought that might is right, although Bernard Crick argues that “politics is the way in which free societies are governed. Politics is politics and other forms of rule are something else.” (My emphasis).

The way I think of politics is this, there are essentially only two positions, those who believe that everyone is born with equal rights (even if differences between people sometimes mean offering them different things to fulfil that equality) and those who believe that some people are intrinsically better than others. For example, the belief of Native Americans that the land could not be owned and the view of immigrant settlers that it could, represents a conflict which was solved by political realists – the settlers ran the Native Americans off the land, and confined their non-ownership of land to small reservations. It is hard to see what kind of alternative, politically equitable settlement could have been reached between two such different peoples with their totally different political philosophies and that would have allowed a peaceful disposition of the land – in any event, power won.

In most societies, where differences in wealth, power and equality exist, my two political positions can be called Left and Right respectively, but in a utopian society, set up to avoid just such differences, there would be no need for Left and Right and true equality should prevail – Hawaii 2 is just such a utopian society.

In Ursula le Guin’s masterpiece, “The Dispossessed” – there is a similarly utopian society but what emerges is that even within a system of political equality, there can emerge a tyranny of the majority. Convention becomes oppressive and gossip, (charitably defined as a force for social cohesion) its enforcer. We do use politics with a small p to describe the machinations and manipulations, pleas and accommodations that occur between individuals and their immediate neighbours and no amount of utopian philosophy can totally eliminate certain aspects of human nature, envy, pettiness, jealousy.

The canton system of local government that exists on Hawaii 2 is described in Chapter 10 and representatives are sent to a planetwide government body and they in turn send representatives to the Pan Human Federation that is a forum, but not a government of the three worlds which humans have colonised Hawaii 1, Arctane, and Hawaii 2. But at the canton level, every member of the locality must attend at least three out of every six meetings and so the people govern themselves rather than being governed by elected representatives – something which can give rise to a class of self-interested politicians whose motives can diverge from those who they represent…

Without giving too much of a spoiler, I may hint that the solution to the mystery of “Train Wreck”, involves politics, but whether with a capital P or a small p remains to be seen…

O is for Oil in Science Fiction…

humanist55

  My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge was to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), was to consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. I had 12 chapters already written at the beginning of the month but my day job has taken too much time and I have only completed another two. So although I hope to complete some more chapters before the end of April, I will continue with these posts for sure. If you have been following the novel and would  like to receive the balance of the book then please leave an email in the comments…

Oil refinery at night looking very futuristic…

This post considers the oil industry and whether it would exist in any future setting.

If we had the chance to start over on some pristine planet (such as Hawaii 2 in my book “Train Wreck”) would we have an oil industry.

Firstly – this begs the question, would there be oil on other planets?
There is, in geology, a Principle of Uniformitarianism which says, in a nutshell, that processes that can occur in one place and time, can occur anywhere. So that means that all planets can evolve according to the same rules and whilst they might be different due to their size, composition, and distance from their star, all things being equal, a planet like Earth could very well exist and support carbon-based life forms including those that lead to the formation of oil deposits. If there are tree-like forms, there will be coal, if there are plants, algae and bacteria equivalents (and there almost certainly will be – at least bacteria) in seas, then there will be oil. In the course of Earth’s geological history, there have been many different ages – long periods of stability then sudden changes to quite different climate and conditions. Certain ages favoured the creation of coal (the Carboniferous period) and others that of oil as that organic material sank to the bottom of the oceans and was eventually buried and transformed into oil.

Secondly and more importantly, would we want or need to use that oil if we found it?
Crude oil is a thick, sticky substance – it can be seen at the surface at the La Brea tar-pits where it has trapped and preserved many hapless animals over time. When refined, broken down into it’s constituent parts (fractionated), crude oil yields a plethora of chemicals, from the lightest, most liquid such as petroleum and kerosene, it yields lubricants (oils), through the substances used to make plastics, to the bitumen we use to make tarmac roads. Which was handy for the evolution of the age of the motor vehicle – crude oil gave us the fuel, plastic for components as well as the material that binds the roads vehicles run on.

When I was a boy, oil reserves were synonymous with “energy” reserves, but now that we understand the consequences (unintended), of burning all those fossil fuels, we are having to regard oil as “stores of locked up carbon” – the burning of which, release carbon, as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, back into the atmosphere. This is not new – humans have been contributing to climate change for millennia by cutting down trees either to burn for fuel, or to clear land for agriculture since trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere and lock it up.


In “Train Wreck”, the Earth, original home to the human race, now scattered across three planets, was destroyed as a habitat by a combination of climate change and other forms of pollution. The colonists are painfully aware of what human activities are capable of doing to something as large as a planetary ecosystem and ecological sciences are some of the most advanced that they carry with them to their new homes. Hence the greening of the deserts on Hawaii 2 by using tree planting and irrigation to produce a self-sustaining climate change of a positive kind!

So back to the question – if they found oil deposits on a new planet, would the use them? Well the plethora of chemicals found in oils have so many applications beyond simply using them as fuel that it is hard to resist the idea of using them. Other things besides internal combustion engines need lubricating and plant oils do not always meet the specifications. Burning fossil fuels to a limited, could be off-set by planting trees. Plastics are not he devil, but some of the uses of plastic are! The phrase “Unnecessary Plastic Objects” has never had greater resonance as we start to see micro-plastics turning up in the oceanic food chain (of which we partake) and even in the deep oceans.

If motor vehicles had not been invented at the beginning of the 20th Century, then our cities would not have sprawled such that, for those living in the suburbs, life without a car is difficult. on a new planet, planning could obviate the need for cars which besides their polluting fuels, are a huge waste of resources and more energy just to produce. But we have always had vehicles and I hardly think the new ecology of future planets would involve a return to donkeys and horse-drawn carts! What are the alternatives? Motor cars began around the same time as universal electrification, but electric cars were not a missed turning on the road to the present. In fact even in the present, electric cars are still at the expensive new tech stage and the pressure to create better batteries is intensifying – eventually they will become better and cheaper through greater mass production. But just as control of, or access to, the best oil resources has led to wars and defined the political geography of Earth in the 20th Century, so access or control of the Rare Earths needed for the new tech may occupy a similar place in the 21st Century. China recognised the possibilities of the deposits within its territories and developed the industry so that it now supplies 55% of the world’s current demand. It turns out that these “rare” earths are actually quite common at the bottom of the deep oceans but you can imagine the environmentalist alarm at the suggestion that mining those would obviate dependence on China…

So there you go, the skinny on oil in science fiction because I cannot remember any science fiction book which referred to oil production (please correct me if I am wrong) – generally speaking, science fiction writers prefer futuristic magical thinking – flying cars, for example, that defy the laws of physics as we currently understand them. It has given me peculiar pleasure to use “Principle of Uniformitarianism” as a tag…