(1) Steve Davidson’s ears were burning when he read Neil Clarke’s latest Clarkesworld editorial.
Despite how much I admire what Neil has managed to do over the course of nine years with Clarkesworld, I think his take on the current and developing situation in the genre short fiction market comes from a decidedly glass-half-empty point of view.
I have to be up-front about my reaction to reading that editorial. My initial summation of the points Neil makes is: the market is contracting, those of us who have managed to get somewhere need all the help we can get, so please, don’t try to start a new short fiction magazine.
Were it not for the completion of our first writing contest (for which we offered the minimum professional payment), I’d have been able to largely dismiss the doom and gloom, but the fact that Amazing Stories is now firmly on the path to becoming a regular paying market makes me feel as if I and Amazing Stories are part of the “problem” Neil was addressing.
(2) J. K. Rowling sets her fans straight again.
https://twitter.com/geekdarlings/status/649796080759017474
False theory. https://t.co/c89Erq9hnD
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 2, 2015
https://twitter.com/Riverfeather207/status/649914540574965760
I've never seen that one before. Draco definitely isn't a werewolf (and Snape's not a vampire). https://t.co/TSliADJvyi
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 2, 2015
https://twitter.com/HEIROFSLYTHERlN/status/649915885704970240
Bitterness and old shoes. https://t.co/sbTLoPLDpj
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 2, 2015
(3) The Martian is making a killing at the box office.
Late night receipts showed 20th Century Fox’s The Martian grossing an estimated $56M over three days, putting it on course to be the highest opening film ever in October. However, this morning, some bean counters are scaling back those projections. 20th Century Fox is calling the weekend for the Ridley Scott film at $55M, while others see it busting past the $55.8M made by Warner Bros.’ Gravity two years ago. As the old line goes: It all boils down to Sunday’s hold. Currently, Martian is the second best debut for October, Scott, and Matt Damon.
(4) Abigail Nussbaum commented on The Martian.
When coming to write about The Martian, Ridley Scott’s space/disaster/survival movie about an astronaut stranded on Mars, it’s hard to resist the impulse to draw comparisons. The Martian is perhaps best-described as a cross between Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity and Robert Zemeckis’s Cast Away. Its focus on the engineering challenges that survival on Mars poses for hero Mark Watney, and on the equally thorny problem of retrieving him before his meager food supply runs out, is reminiscent of Ron Howard’s Apollo 13. The fact that Watney is played by Matt Damon (and that the commander of his Mars mission is played by Jessica Chastain) immediately brings to mind Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. The problem with all these comparisons is not so much that they show up The Martian‘s flaws, as that they throw into sharper relief the very narrow limits of what it’s trying to be.
(5) Gary Westfahl gushed about the Martian in “’A Huge Moment for NASA’ … and Novelists: A Review of The Martian“ at Locus Online.
Let me immediately say that Ridley Scott’s The Martian is the best film I’ve seen in a long, long time, and it can be enthusiastically recommended as involving and uplifting entertainment.
(6) Frank Ochieng’s review of The Martian is posted at SF Crowsnest.
As with other Scott-helmed productions, ‘The Martian’ settles nicely in its majestic scope that taps into visual wonderment, humanistic curiosities, technical impishness and the surreal spryness of the SF experience.
(7) “’The Martian’ Author Andy Weir Asks: Why Send Humans to Mars?” at Omnivoracious.
Robots don’t need life support during their trip to the Red Planet, and they don’t need to return at all. They don’t need abort options. If there’s a mission failure, all we lose is money and effort, not human life. So why would we go to the extra hassle, expense, and risk of sending humans to do a robot’s job?
Because scientific study is not the end goal. It’s one step along a path that ends with human colonization of Mars.
(8) And exploring Pluto is proving to be profitable for New Horizons’ lead scientist.
Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission, has a deal with Picador for a “behind the scenes” account of July’s flyby.
The publisher announced Thursday that the book is called “Chasing New Horizons: Inside Humankind’s First Mission to Pluto.” It’s scheduled for publication in spring 2017. David Grinspoon, a planetary scientist and award-winning science writer, will co-write the book.
(9) Did someone say, “Don’t you think he looks tired?” There are rumors Doctor Who is facing cancellation.
The alleged BBC insider said that “drastic action may be needed” to correct the falling figures. Although a spin-off series has just been announced targeted towards teenagers, the unnamed source said that Doctor Who’s falling ratings are worrying. “At this stage all options are being considered,” explained the source.
(10) But before he goes, the sonic screwdriver may be back —
Doctor Who’s Peter Capaldi has been sans Sonic Screwdriver since he threw Davros a bone in the two-part series 9 opener but will the iconic Who accessory be making a comeback?
Speaking in a video for Doctor Who’s official YouTube channel, Moffat hinted that we might not have seen the last of Twelve’s trusty tool. “I’m sure the screwdriver will show up again some day” he teased.
(11) Short review of “City of Ash” by Paolo Baciagalupi on Rocket Stack Rank.
In a near-future, water-starved Phoenix, AZ, Maria hides from the smoke of distant forest fires and thinks about everything that went wrong.
(12) “A Sunday Review” by Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag at Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog.
The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton. First up: the completely non-spoiler review. Starting almost 20 years after an infamous debate ended the experimental Just City (an attempt to create Plato’s Republic in the distant past), this book shows how the fractured populace gets on without help from Athena and the robot workers she provided. This book is not nearly as unsettling as the first in some ways, but in other ways… whew. It’s a wild ride.
Much more follows in Rot13.
(13) Nick Mamatas reviews A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy on Bull Spec.
Subtitled a book of The Anarchist Imagination, Margaret Killjoy’s A Country of Ghosts is more appropriately a work of anarchist speculation. Structurally a Utopian novel—someone from a society very similar to the statist systems we’re all familiar with travels to a Utopia and is told how things work—we can count this book as a “hard” utopia. There’s no quantum computing or frictionless engine that makes the economy go, and the people living in the anarchist confederation of Hron have found themselves in the crosshairs of the Borolian Empire.
(14) Today’s birthday girl:
Anne Rice was born on Saturday, October 4, 1941.
(15) This Day in History –
- Sunday, October 4, 1931: The comic strip Dick Tracy, created by Chester Gould, made its debut. (Apple Watch was just fiction back then.)
- In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first man-made space satellite, Sputnik 1. The Soviet’s successful launch caught America by surprise and was the spark which ignited the Space Race.
(16) “Pokemon demands $4000 from broker superfan who organized Pokemon party” reports Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing.
Larkin Jones is a hardcore Pokemon fan who loses money every year on his annual Pokemon PAX party; he makes up the shortfall from his wages managing a cafe. This year, Pokémon Company International sued him and told him that even though he’d cancelled this year’s party, they’d take everything he had unless he paid them $5,400 in a lump sum (they wouldn’t let him pay it in installments).
Jones charges $2 a head to come to his party, and spends the $500 he grosses from tickets on a DJ, gift cards, decorations, cash prizes, and a Kindle Fire door-prize. He’s lost money on the party every year since he started throwing them in 2011.
He took up a collection on GoFundMe to pay the shakedown:
The day before the PAX party, Pokemon sued me. Without even a cease and desist.Totally didn’t expect that. I cancelled the party, refunded everyone the 2 dollars I charged to help cover all the prizes I bought for the cosplay contest and smash bros tournament. Pokemon wants $4000 that I just don’t have. I told them I would pay it over a year and they denied that. They want it now with in the next 45 days.
(17) What people in 1900 France thought the year 2000 would like like, from the Washington Post.
There are few things as fascinating as seeing what people in the past dreamed about the future.
“France in the Year 2000” is one example. The series of paintings, made by Jean-Marc Côté and other French artists in 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1910, shows artist depictions of what life might look like in the year 2000. The first series of images were printed and enclosed in cigarette and cigar boxes around the time of the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris, according to the Public Domain Review, then later turned into postcards.
(18) Late night TV guests of interest to fans this week.
- Rachel Bloom is on James Corden Friday night.
- Guillermo del Toro is on Jimmy Kimmel Thursday night.
[Thanks to SF Signal, Rogers Cadenhead, John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day IanP.]
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First? Fifth? Both!
Neither!
Oi!
They’d never be so silly as to just cancel Doctor Who. It makes too much money. Personally I love Twelve. Personally, I’m not put off by Steven Moffat either and have no truck with Moffat haters. If it took shaking up the leadership to save the show, I’d take that in a heart(s)beat rather than lose it. It’s too iconic and more importantly too good to lose forever. Peter Capaldi is rightfully Jon Pertwee’s heir, let him be so.
Eh, I’m firmly in the camp that Moffat is a better writer than a show-runner. That’s not even damning with faint praise. They are very different jobs, and it would have been shocking if he was equally good at both.
So bring someone else on. Mix up the tone for next season and concentrate on quality. The numbers will come back.
Really? FIFTH
@ The other Nigel
and with an avatar that’s particularly on point
}tick{
And I refuse to care what order my post shows up since I missed being the f$&@ place! [stomps off grumbling]
We’re in a post-live event viewing, time-shifted, BitTorrented world. I’m sure there are loads of other hardcore fans in the US in particular who can’t easily watch at the appointed time. Doesn’t make the show worth putting on the sacrificial altar, what are you gonna replace it with, Britain’s Still Got Talent?
Sounds like a scare tactic. If I were Moffat I wouldn’t count my job as safe, even if it’s not quite so fair. Ryan H might have a point, I’ve loved his best scripts, but maybe the show needs a better infighter to keep it alive. I’d hate to relive the John Nathan-Turner years.
BLAST forgot to actually tick.
Part of the problem is the Showrunner is expected to be lead writer too. Perhaps we could get Davies back to run Doctor Who, as long as he promises he won’t try to write a closer. That way Moff can continue to astound with his stories.
Damn it, the edit window expired as I was adding content.
Yesterday, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I watched Adam Savage interview Andy Weir on The Talking Room. That was an entertaining interview, and I’ve decided that Andy Weir is someone I’d like to meet. But since both of us hate flying…
Today I re-read The Martian which is a great way to spend the day.
Friday I read The Accidental Tourist by George Deeb. Felt like lots of “Nutty Nuggets(tm)” in that book, but overall I’m not impressed. It read like the “anti-Martian” — every time there was a problem of some kind, the cunning humans or the strangely benevolent aliens managed to make some discovery (in a couple of cases involving major changes to physics) just in time to save the day. Was strangely dis-satisfying. Also included some gratuitous gun-porn that bewildered me (didn’t move the plot forward, and seemed only to be in to tick the box for the ammo-sexuals). Not a win.
Hence re-reading The Martian. Haven’t managed to see the movie yet — hope it stays n theatres for a couple of weeks.
1. One day, when Doctor Who finally is cancelled it will take everybody by surprise because of the consistent failure of rumours-of-cancellation stories.
2. Comparison of The Martian with Interstellar show up what was so unsatisfying about Interstellar. Despite many good qualities it felt false and The Martian feels authentic.
One two three four five, six seven eight nine ten, eleven twelve…
(doo doo doodoo doo doo)
(1) I think Steve makes some good points about newer styles of funding for magazines, e.g. Lightspeed et al seem to have done well in coming in with a different model. He’s certainly correct when mentions that gaming does some really good crowd-funded projects, but there’s also a failure rate that rpg fans are increasingly getting wise to, and becoming more suspicious of campaigns without a reliable runner (mind you, rpg fans can still be blinded by a shiny licence or cool concept, so there’s a fair way to go). I’ve kickstarted Uncanny recently, for example, but would have been a lot less enthusiastic if it didn’t have a track record behind it.
He also mentions that they’re doing a 1940 “Best of Amazing” for the Retro-Hugos, to which I can only say shutupandtakemymoney.
Another “state of short SF” reaction comes from Charles Payseur at Quick Sip Reviews (which I’ve only just discovered, but would recommend for good short SF reviews) who was saying that Novel readers don’t overlaps with short readers much, because novel readers are getting what they want from novels, whereas short readers are those who aren’t and so have gone exploring in short.
(3) to (7) I guess The Martian is out! I really liked it. Spoilerific comment thread here .
(9) I also doubt Who is in trouble just yet, but the ways of the Beeb are strange and unknowable. Right now they’re crushing Saturday night with their Strictly/Who combo. Incidentally, I wasn’t expecting a second two-parter in a row. Possibly with Capaldi in his second season they’re feeling a bit more confident.
(11) I wasn’t particularly struck by City of Ash, although I’ve yet to read The Water Knife so perhaps it works better in context.
Oh, totally forgot, it’s about 7 hours to go on the Hugo Longlist Anthology Kickstarter. 3 novelette audiobooks have now been added, and we’re about $500 off another one.
@Mark
I think nearly all of Who are 2-parters this year, apart from two connected single-episode stories.
I think I read that it is all two-parters this season – that is the ‘thing’ this time around.
I have long felt that one of the problems with Who is the episodes need to be strictly whatever-length rather than 42-minutes or 84-minutes. Lots of nearly good episodes are rushed and lots of longer/double episodes feel padded out at the end. Some stories need to be 30 minutes and some 50 and so on. Given the mercurial structure of an episode thye often fail to be the right length for their slot in the schedule.
Moffat has certainly tried to experiment with different lengths during his tenure (from the short online “prologues” and stand-alones to the episodes themselves being anywhere between 42m and 1hr+) but the rigid demands of the tv schedule have hampered him.
Modern schedules are starting to loosen up a lot more (especially at weekends) as the talent shows expand and contract all the time, but it’s still not enough to deal with new forms. Old media is very bad at adapting – and tv is still rather too wedded to the notion of overnight ratings being any sort of guide to success.
@Mark
Thanks! I lost track of when it was ending and hadn’t backed it yet.
Though it looks like playing with what being a two-parter means is also going to be part of the thing — the indication in this one that the next part may take place largely in the past being one example.
Looks to me as if someone’s heard the rumour that the next season of Doctor Who will be one of Specials – similar to the one Tennant did before he left. They’ve then conflated that with cancellation panic and come up with a non-story.
(For US readers, Doctor Who has been scheduled against a major sporting event in the UK for the last two weeks which has led to its overnights being abnormally low. Consolidated figures are much more healthy.)
More two-parters could be a good thing, but I agree with Camestros that Who hasn’t always made the best of them. One problem is that the traditional cliffhanger is usually to be found introducing the third act, but that leaves us with a second episode that’s all third act and therefore needs to be padded out with either extra running-through-corridors, or longer The-Doctor-says-clever-stuff-to-the-bad-guy.
Given the money the BBC is alone making on Doctor who tchotchkes and the like, killing the golden goose seems like a really silly idea.
Granted, eventually, Doctor Who in this incarnation will end. It’s inevitable. I’d just be surprised if it happened now or soon.
Also inevitable: If DW did end on television, then in 10 years, tops, it will be back again. It’s a show that I really think could be rebooted for as long as there is television drama.
I want to see The Martian. Then I read Gary Westfahl’s little squib and I want to see it somewhat less. I don’t know which is worse: “best movie I’ve seen in a long time” making me suspect he doesn’t see many movies or the sheer deadliness of the word “uplifting.”
And today’s big Who news:
http://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/doctor-who-the-war-doctor
That’s right, a Big Finish War Doctor series. 4 boxes of three stories each, with an 8th Doctor endcap/prequel, coming out between December 2015 and 2017.
@Jim Henley
I’m not sure what sense of “uplifting” Westfahl is deploying, but if you’re concerned about a “feelgood” sense then I would say the movie was no more or less “feelgood” than say, Apollo 13 was.
I’m not really sure what Westfahl’s point was, actually. He seems concerned about it being made a bit more US-centric and pro-NASA than the book, but the former is an inevitable result of a Hollywood adaption, and the latter seems to be firmly based in the book.
John Hurt. Big Finish. War Doctor audio adventures.
It’s a cool US$100 for the downloadable complete bundle (preorder), but I am so close to SU&TMMville right now…
[ticky]
In some ways, City of Ash works better than The Water Knife because there is less opportunity to question the assumptions. In both stories, it’s clear that climate change has caused America to go into steep decline, but in The Water Knife, you learn that somehow China has grown stronger. In City of Ash, the disaster that has hit Phoenix is just a part of the what-if–you don’t really question why. But in The Water Knife, Bacigalupi lets us know that California used the courts to keep water for agriculture; obviously it beggars belief that the government would allow cities to die just to supply water to subsidized agriculture. There’s more like that. The Water Knife is still a good story, but there are a lot of suspension-of-belief challenges in it.
So, in a funny way, I think it helps to read City of Ash without reading The Water Knife.
5 x 6 !
To me, the lower ratings for Who seem to be related to their decision to make Capaldi’s Doctor like Colin Baker’s–outright rude, bombastic, and cruel to his companion. My wife outright gave up on Season Eight because she just couldn’t stand how mean Capaldi was to Clara. They’ve softened him a bit for this season, so she’s back on board, but I think Season Eight was a bit of a mistake in that regard.
That said, Doctor Who is never going away for long. The Wilderness Years proved that you could take it off the air for fifteen years and still have it come back as a smash.
(Also, I have to say I think that Jo Rowling is awesome and amazing for continuing to engage with the fans and sharing her headcanon with them long after many people would probably have gotten a bit tired of the whole thing. Yay for her!)
Why? It seems reasonable that when there is a water shortage, food production is the first priority for water use. And current rules regarding the Colorado river say that in case of a shortage, Arizona and Nevada have to cut back, California gets to keep its full share of the water.
Is there any particular reason the showrunner needs to be a skiffy person? Because managing a long-running show may require rare skills. To that end, I suggest the beeb head hunt a show runner from a certain other long running British show.
(I would not necessarily be opposed to Craig Charles being the next Doctor, but it would be best if his Doctor didn’t end up in an out of control TARDIS along with the ghost of a prat and a snooty android)
@Bookworm The rest of the US provides plenty of food. California supplies a lot of fruits and vegetables, but that’s only because of the subsidized water. The rest of the US would easily pick up the slack if California quit producing food entirely. I doubt the US would even stop exporting food.
But the biggest factor is that people in cities vote. Very few people live on farms (and most of the farms are agribusinesses anyway). In a crisis affecting actual city dwellers–a crisis far, far smaller than what Bacigalupi describes–Congress would pay off the farmers and vaporize the entire water-rights system. Otherwise, they’d be replaced by people who ran on a “no more water-rights” platform.
Sure, money can influence politicians, but only up to a point. On something the public really cares about, money is helpless. Bacigalupi, in effects, asks the reader of The Water Knife to believe that ultimately the public just didn’t care. In City of Ash, we don’t learn how it happened, so we can accept it as part of the what-if. But The Water Knife asks too much.
I say put Dan Harmon in charge of Doctor Who so we can finally have that Inspector Spacetime crossover we’ve all been waiting for.
Have you seen his series Rick and Morty? Rick is pretty much the Doctor gone wrong.
@Jim Henley
I saw it last night and I’m frankly surprised at how down some of the reviews are. It is an excellent movie and it really only suffers from the same issues as the book; being incredibly shallow and lacking any deeper examination, but being funny and exciting enough to pull you through the piece.
And the visual storytelling is amazing.
@Greg Hullender:
Some of this is wrong and some of it is just arguable, but even there I think you have to call ties in favor of the author. Working kind of back to front…
1. The US Constitution was written to overweight rural vs. urban interests and it continues to do that. The very structure of the Senate is Patient Zero here, and it has a knock-on contribution to the makeup of the electoral college.
2. Even when it comes to the House, cities are underweighted, with more voters crammed into districts vice rural regions. This, more than gerrymandering, is why the GOP (the rural/exurban party) has a lock on the House of Representatives until at least the 2020 census, and why the GOP held the House in 2012 despite Democratic candidates in aggregate winning a majority of votes cast.
3. I remind folks that in 2005 we watched a US city be destroyed on live TV and made only the most partial, dilatory and elite-friendly efforts to save/rebuild it. See also the current bunch picking over the bones of Detroit.
4. US cities are where those people live.
5. Given time, other US states could replace Californian agricultural production, yes. But this is hardly an instant or painless switch to make. California’s human and physical infrastructure is configured to grow, harvest and transport about as much agricultural produce as it puts out; other states are likewise configured to do the same for their own level of agricultural production. Eliminating the one and scaling up the others is not something you effect just by throwing a switch. This point is often made in the context of climate change. In theory, growth bands shift and, say, Poland can grow oranges now even though it can no longer grow wheat, and Greenland can grow wheat (or whatever) where before it could only grow taiga. In practice, Poland doesn’t know shit about growing oranges and Greenland is clueless about wheat and trees take time to fruit anyway and probably that taiga had a value Greenland knew how to realize.
6. In the part not quoted, you were IMHO too blithe about the political power of agribusiness. I refer you to what’s left of the Everglades and the massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico for their own views on the matter.
Boiled down: it wouldn’t be pretty, and it sounds like the author’s speculation is not facially ridiculous, to say the least. So the author has to carry the day.
The Martian is currently sitting at 93% fresh on rotten tomatoes so I’m certainly going to see it. used to be I trusted the bbc Film 20xx reviews but not since Winkleman took over. Mark Kermode on BBC News 24 gave it very positive review though.
@Greg Hullender
It is not a rural/urban fight, its a fight between California and Arizona. And it seems plausible that Arizona will lose just as they did in the last water dispute with California.
BTW, Anathem e-book is on sale today for 1.99.
James Moar on October 5, 2015 at 9:28 am said:
Dan Harmon on Time Travel:
So I don’t think we’ll see a Harmon-run Who anytime soon.
And Rick And Morty was an evolution of a cartoon parody of Back To The Future titled “The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti”
It’s on YouTube / Vimeo, but be aware: Calling it crass or vulgar is kind of an understatement.
@Dex So N3MBERS in space? 😉
(I say that as someone who would have kept watching Numbers indefinitely.)
((Also, I’m not sure I put the 3 in the right place there.))
@Jim Henley, on the political dimension, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
For New Orleans, there was nothing anyone could do, short term. Long term, much of it has in fact been rebuilt. For Detroit, no one could really identify a simple cause of the problem. So I don’t think either one compares to the hypothetical Phoenix in the stories, where the problem is water, pure and simple.
As for it being expensive to relocate agriculture, we’re in complete agreement. It is indeed something climate-change deniers are too quick to minimize. Here’s a good article on the topic.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/05/3646965/california-drought-and-agriculture-explainer/
However, the billions it might cost to relocate agriculture pale compared to the trillions of dollars written off with the destruction of major cities. It’s like cutting off a leg rather than dying of cancer. Bacigalupi has chosen to tell the tale of a people who opted to die.
@Bookworm, all those laws you’re talking about are Federal laws. Congress could extinguish all water rights at the stroke of a pen, if the President would sign it. The most unbelievable bit in the whole book is when Nevada blows up a water project in another state based on a court ruling and yet no one in the country does anything about it.
Much later in the book, a character observes that the US is broken but it does still exist, and that there are some things that would merit a Federal response. He really can’t have it both ways.
Anyway, The Water Knife is not a bad book, but there are a bunch of things in it that do strain suspension of disbelief. They don’t ruin it, but they do diminish it.
The rest of the US provides plenty of food. California supplies a lot of fruits and vegetables, but that’s only because of the subsidized water.
Ever see the rice fields? Or any of CA north of Stockton? That’s where the water is being moved from, to supply the irrigated areas that have been planted in the last 20 years – mostly the market for almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates, which belongs to pretty much all one company. (I recommend UC’s Field Guide to California Agriculture, in their Natural History series. There’s a lot more agriculture than you think.)
@Will R.
I never watched NUMB3RS (I think that’s the correct title) so I can’t make a comparison. But with the novel of ‘The Martian’, Weir seems to deliberately avoid having Watney contemplate the immensity of his solitude by distracting him with the rest of the crews’ left behind media, entertainment, video games, etc. There seemed to be to be a choice made at a character level but unspoken that Watney would simply focus on things problem by problem and ignore the larger picture as much as possible.
So, compared to something like Gravity or Apollo 13, it is immensely shallow as a look at the emotional and mental reaction of people under the wholly unique stressors. But because it was intentionally thus, it seems flawed to compare them.
I think you probably go for a meditation on loneliness, solitude and the like with the basic plot of The Martian. Elide the science and engineering, and go for the intensely personal. That could be a bleak and harsh book to read.
Weir chose to tell a different story.
@Greg Hullender
I think you might be writing Jim’s point off too quickly. California economy is a lynchpin of the US. You knock out the agriculture business, you put that economy at risk, which in turn puts the US economy at risk. You’re also talking about a massive population and outside of New York, likely the highest concentration of corporate money and independent wealth. You put California’s influence up against Phoenix, and Phoenix loses.
As for New Orleans, the reason why New Orleans was allowed to drown was because the flooding never touched the primary oil and gas linkages from Henry’s Hub and the Gulf, and it minimally disrupted the seaways. Which is where the money is. If you think it has been largely rebuilt, I’d suggest talking to some of the people who live in the various parishes that have been worst hit. It’s still a shambles in a huge number of ways, and being used as social experimentation by corporate interests in the way reconstruction is handled.
Killing off a city that isn’t a massive financial or influence hub is completely plausible.
@Dex I actually liked that about the book. It was refreshing, even if a bit cartoonish at times. OTOH, looking today at smiling astronauts halfway to the moon on Flickr, I have to say, these folks tend to have that ability to dissociate emotionally when needed. Because otherwise, how the heck would you do it?
It was a moment I liked in Interstellar–when Cooper has to reassure Romilly, who is thinking about empty space being 2mm away outside the ship. Romilly gets to have our reaction.
But it absolutely makes sense in the Martian story to tamp all that down. Watney alludes to actual reactions often enough to make clear he is having them.
1. California has 53 representatives in congress, Arizona has 9. Any law that Congress passes regarding water rights would be more likely to benefit California than Arizona.
2. While water rights are partially governed by federal law, there are also other laws involved.eg a treaty with Mexico requires the USA to provide a certain amount of Colorado River water to them.
3. Abolishing water rights totally would not favor Arizona, it would favor the upstream states of Utah and Colorado.
Water shortages in Arizona are a currently well known and discussed issue. Everyone knows this is a serious long term problem, especially with the continued population growth. The plans of dealing with it are a mixture of real action (more reclamation plants) and wishful thinking (rain will fall.) In my opinion, the federal government won’t let a major city fail falls into the wishful thinking category, it may happen, but you can’t rely on it