Why We Keep Inventing the Apocalypse

Location: Perfect June Day, Not a Zombie in Sight

What follows are a few reflections culled from a longer non-fiction piece I hope to publish in Richmond's alternative weekly, Style. Lately, I've been thinking of our nearly pornographic interest in the End Times. I've noticed over the years in Second Life how popular post-apocalyptic settings have been. They are also very popular in games. And while I've not read scholarship on this subject, I wonder about the continuing popularity among college kids of Cormac McCarthy's The Road in both book and film (see image above) versions.

I tend to prefer stories of rebuilding and survival, such as James Howard Kunstler's "World Made By Hand" novels or the second Mad Max film The Road Warrior. These sorts of invented worlds are a minority: of contemporary doomsday TV series, it seems that only "Revolution" is about the urge to remake the world after it falls apart.

So what makes these bleak futures the current staple of Hollywood, computer gaming, and so much of printed science fiction?  With series such as "The Walking Dead" a sub-genre of SF has gone mainstream. It's a recent phenomenon, too. In my copy of Brave New Worlds: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, editor Jeff Prucher finds that decade gave us the earliest coinages of the terms “post-apocalyptic,” “post-catastrophe,” and “post holocaust.” Not by accident do those neologisms parallel perceptions that America had entered a gradual decline. As the Rust Belt shed jobs until Detroit very much resembled a set from “The Walking Dead,” I find it curious that instead of the positive escapism that something like “Star Trek” offers, we went dark and largely have stayed there. Even George Lucas got bleak in its trilogy of prequels, a story bleaker than even the acting of Hayden Christensen as the young Darth Vader.

That's as far as I've gotten. Do post-apocalyptic settings give us freedom we lack in day-to-day life? Let us imagine a clean slate and a new start? Or are they just fun as hell, McCarthy's jet-black work excepted?

When a World-Builder Dies

Location: Marooned in a Campaign that Ended

Last week, Gary, a dear friend of 40+ years, passed away. He was a gamer of the old-school sort, and he'd been running RPG campaigns since the late 70s.  I'd never really joined him for MMO play, so my encounters were weekly "Nerd Nights" with dice, character sheets, rule books, and a great deal of unhip humor. Gary was a consummate world-builder, as all good game masters should be.

As Gary's health declined in recent years, his "runs" became a bit more formulaic, based upon TV shows, films, or even the online game Mass Effect, and they all got a lot darker. To be honest, much of the fun was gone at times, and non-player characters often rushed in for a deus-ex-machina finish.

Without Gary's presence, what becomes of the characters we players have nurtured over the years? And what of his voluminous notes and maps for various settings, from a vampire-haunted New Orleans to a bleak fantasy setting where, a millennium before, a Sauron-style figure won the final war between good and evil?

As the population of paper-and-dice gamers ages, the questions of "what to do with their invented worlds?" will arise more frequently. There's an academic point to be made here, but I'm in no mood to theorize. In Gary's case, we others in the gaming group have decided to honor his memory by keeping his worlds alive, at least for a time.

We will work to finish current story lines for a few campaigns and, in the bleak fantasy world noted, to finish the setting off by seeing how the characters fare, all rebels against "The Graven One" who has oppressed an entire continent for 1,000  years. Then there is a sprawling project called "Spaceship," in which Gary and I developed a science-fiction campaign of epic scope, spanning two galaxies with 5,000 years of backstory and focusing on the fates of the twin galaxies' alternate Earths. My half of that epic will continue, though without Gary, it will be a somewhat lonely venture.

In spite of the challenges, I'm looking forward to it. And somewhere beyond the veils of reality and illusion that separate this world from whatever else exists, I suspect that Gary is mightily pleased with us.

Dream On: Space Travel Musings, 2012

Location: Chair-bound, looking up

There was a time when pundits predicted hundreds of thousands would live in Earth orbit or further up the gravity well by the year 2000. The Dream did not last much beyond Richard Nixon's cancellation of the last three Apollo missions, but from time to time it crops up again.

The latest incarnation comes from the Space Island Group's vision for their company. To quote:

By 2020 more than 20,000 men and women will be working aboard these orbiting Islands, and 10 million more high-paid specialists will be supporting them on Earth. That 20,000 number will double each following decade. . . .SIG's larger stations will grow their own food, recycle their air and water, and have their own onboard engines and guidance systems. Water mined from asteroids by "Space Island" will be converted into hydrogen and oxygen rocket fuel by sun-powered converters, letting these Islands travel throughout the inner solar system. Metals mined from asteroids will let the stations grow without bringing materials up from Earth.

What will Space Islanders find on these asteroids and on the planets they visit? Will they find life where its now least expected? Will they find remnants of past visitors? What incredible structures will they build in space, freed from the gravity chains of Earth? 

 I want so hard to believe this possible, as I did in the 70s when I read Gerard K. O'Neill's book The High Frontier.

Why do I feel gun shy? It could be that the last time a visionary group promised me world-changing wonders, it was Linden Lab and the potential of Second Life. Like Spooky Mulder in the X-Files, perhaps I do want to believe. But as with the childish hopes for Apollo's legacy and adult ones for virtual worlds, I do feel the pull of SIG's promise.

And, frankly, reject it. These sorts of wild projections only lead to a new generation of disappointed teenaged geeks. At the same time, one can be a bit more optimistic about goings-on for the High Frontier:

• Space X's plan to launch their Dragon Spacecraft to the International Space Station
• China's upcoming Shenzhou 9 mission
• Sir Richard Branson's plans for the maiden voyage to suborbit for Spaceship Two
• Planetary Resources' deep-pocketed plan to mine an asteroid.

As I watched live at NASA, however, the Space X launch was aborted, just as the ignition sequence began. We will have many such disappointments, and worse, on our way to what NASA liked to call "our destiny in space."

At least the spacecraft did not blow up, and Space X's team worked quickly and professionally. Today, they got the rocket into orbit and I wish them stunning success in reaching the ISS. As a firm that operates more like a Silicon Valley start-up and less like a huge government agency, Space X gives me some guarded hope that they will, with marginal improvements, get their next launch right.

That such events are happening in the midst of a global economic downtown actually gives me a bit of hope that, if matters improve, we may see the first glimmers of a new technological revolution. Because as cool as the Internet is, we remain chair-bound or fixated on our palms.

Neither are the places for heroes, explorers, and world-builders. I'd prefer to dream on.

image credit: Wikipedia's entry on the L5 Society

This is No Way to Run a Railroad

 
Location: Watching Linden Lab Run Things Into the Ditch, Again.

I'll again try to host my meeting of the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable tomorrow. Our title for the meeting is "What will you do with virtual worlds on your summer (or winter!) vacation? (TAKE TWO!)"

When last attempted, the Grid was down and only one lonely avatar made it to the Roundtable venue.

Then we rescheduled promptly, so we could at least talk about holiday plans before the Summer (or the antipodean Winter) break fades away. But Linden Lab has other plans: three days of work and "some regions may be taken offline and remain offline for extended periods of time."

I cannot imagine our newest educators in the group being pleased with this.  At the same time, Premium members are promised a "latest Premium-only perk. . .a fully interactive railcar that you can ride across more than 80 regions of the Second Life Railroad. Up to four people can ride and explore on each car!"

Well, wheeeee to that! I could not even get four of us to log in last time, and I certainly have had rotten luck crossing sim borders in my own vehicles.

What a fiasco this virtual world is becoming, for any serious work.  This is no way to run a railroad, even a fake one.

Hat tip to Prim Perfect for alerting me to this in an aptly named post, "There have been better weeks for Second Life."


My summer plans: beef up the Jokaydia Grid build for Fall. After all my prognostication about mobile apps in the last post, my department chair asked me to teach my first-year seminar again, and I most likely have missed the deadline for the iPad Initiative grants. I will run the Usher simulation again for my class...somewhere.