tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post3233085824694185476..comments2024-03-28T00:36:19.403-07:00Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Faking ItRickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-77944045666290250272014-03-23T18:44:08.686-07:002014-03-23T18:44:08.686-07:00Actually, my understanding is there is a hell of a...Actually, my understanding is there is a hell of a lot of debate in the literature about if Chernobyl is a boon or bane to wildlife. Some studies and casual observation show it flourishing, as while birth rates and survival to adolescences are much lower due to mutations, the overall removal of humans is positive. Other one are finding large amounts of damage and mutation to songbirds and plants that may harm the species in the long term, even if it is getting a population boost now, and (this is all from memory) some smaller bird species are suffering very heavily from the radiation. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-44457884192317608842008-05-04T20:55:00.000-07:002008-05-04T20:55:00.000-07:00Jim - I'm totally unsurprised by that.Jim - I'm totally unsurprised by that.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-60095369079544442662008-05-03T20:22:00.000-07:002008-05-03T20:22:00.000-07:00More on radioactivity & its mystique:I read a book...More on radioactivity & its mystique:<BR/>I read a book titled _Wormwood Forest_ by Mary Mycio.<BR/><BR/>It's subtitled 'A natural history of Cheynobyl' & is about how the area around Chernobyl has become the greatest wildlife refuge in Europe.<BR/><BR/>Any harm done by the radioactivity to the wildlife is far outweighed by the benefits of not having human activity interfering with the wildlife.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-12585684571547990212008-04-30T19:45:00.000-07:002008-04-30T19:45:00.000-07:00I have a 1970s vintage world railways book with an...I have a 1970s vintage world railways book with an endplate showing a Japanese cityscape with the bullet train line running through it. I'd had the book for a couple of years before I realized that it was Hiroshima. It was weird encountering it in a non-atomic context, just a scene of modern urban railroading in Japan.<BR/><BR/>Radiation, and especially lingering radiation, has a mystique of its own, because it is like a reverse lottery ticket. It's a bit ironic that the truly catastrophic nuclear war scenarios have nothing to do with radiation, but plain old firestorms and the like. <BR/><BR/>(As opposed to those less catastrophic scenarios, where a mere few dozen million people get incinerated or simply buried in the rubble. Even then radiation is a fairly minor factor.)Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-2739309990804127122008-04-30T10:48:00.000-07:002008-04-30T10:48:00.000-07:00Re:"city names like New Chicago, with its spacepor...Re:"city names like New Chicago, with its spaceport built on the still slightly radioactive site of old Chicago"<BR/><BR/>In a way It's curious that people think of a-bombed cities as being radioactive & if not 'uninhabitable' then undesirable to live in for a long time after the bombing.<BR/><BR/>The only 2 examples of a-bombed cities were rebuilt immediately & became perfectly fine places to live.<BR/>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima<BR/>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagasaki%2C_NagasakiAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-1027397925755325532008-04-29T08:52:00.000-07:002008-04-29T08:52:00.000-07:00Ferrell - an apocalyptic subtlety: At least in Hei...Ferrell - an apocalyptic subtlety: At least in Heinlein stories of the 50s, when he implies a nuclear war in the past, it clearly was fought mostly with Hiroshima-yield bombs, and probably dozens rather than hundreds of them. A nuke war on that scale would "only" be about as horrific as WW II, just in one day instead of six years. It took the H-bomb to introduce full frontal apocalypse to SF.<BR/><BR/>Sam - some other types of cities start out "clean," Roman colonies for example. Caesar speaks, and up springs a city with its forum, baths, and theater. But once the clock is started it runs, and the city begins to change, accumulating a past.<BR/><BR/>Bernita - yes. I have created worlds in detail only to do nothing with them, but (anticipating my next post) I've been very sketchy about the conventional world-building of Lyonesse. I know its essence: Britain, shifted a couple of hundred nautical miles west, a bit closer to Faerie. Specifics can be filled in when I come to them, because I know the flavor they should have.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-68758528516622529702008-04-29T04:06:00.000-07:002008-04-29T04:06:00.000-07:00Underneath every city lies history, for cities are...Underneath every city lies history, for cities are built, not by arbitrary whim, but following geographic imperatives, followed consciously or unconsciously.<BR/>In world building, the <I> flavour </I>, illustrated by casual detail engage the reader more than a careful town plat.Bernitahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05264585685253812090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-78180258622984932542008-04-29T01:48:00.000-07:002008-04-29T01:48:00.000-07:00The future cities we built here in the UK - Milton...The future cities we built here in the UK - Milton Keynes and Welwyn Garden City for instance - didn't have any history either when they were built. But then those ones really were constructed ab initio, by the same people who hated the dirty, messy Victorian past and knocked it down to build clean new vistas of concrete and glass.Samhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16882025740447744451noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-77386460108130792692008-04-28T18:17:00.000-07:002008-04-28T18:17:00.000-07:00When I was a teenager, back in the '70s, it was al...When I was a teenager, back in the '70s, it was almost taken as gospwl that the Cold War would end in a nuclear exchange. After that, civilization would rise from the slightly glowing ashes, stripped of its past. While the tone of those old stories was almost always optimistic, they left me with an unsettled feeling. Years after, when I thought about it, I was amazed at how cavalier the writers were about doomsday and its aftermath.<BR/> On a lighter note, I think that the best way to create the illustion of a fictisious world is layers. Each new discription of a street, a building, a park, a palace, a taproom, or what a character is wearing, paints a new layer onto your world. If you've done it right (and I've tried and failed more times than I've succeded), than the reader comes away with a picture of that world by the end of the story. Now if I could only get more people to read my stories! Oh, well, (insert approperate self-depreseating idom)<BR/>FerrellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-60152366232092022532008-04-28T08:38:00.000-07:002008-04-28T08:38:00.000-07:00They are pretty much right - that was the conventi...They are pretty much right - that was the convention for many decades, pretty much from when the future was first invented till around the 1970s or 80s. Then we got the Dystopian City of the Future - pretty much like the traditional version, but shabby and run down, with hookers in woven titanium hot pants and drunks sleeping it off in the monorail stations.<BR/><BR/>In the original rocketpunk era it was all too clear why cities had no old neighborhoods - city names like New Chicago, with its spaceport built on the still slightly radioactive site of old Chicago. (Heinlein, <I>Between Planets.</I>)Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-53051964097544271442008-04-28T04:49:00.000-07:002008-04-28T04:49:00.000-07:00The "Science Fiction Tropes" site said that "futur...The "Science Fiction Tropes" site said that "future cities have no history" - they're all steel and glass, with no old neighbourhoods or remnants of same!<BR/>GrifAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com