Finding A Way
I just finished reading Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. It’s a novel worth the time to read, but it will consume some days. Dealing with the geopolitics and technology associated with climate change, especially the trifecta of increasing heat, rising oceans and seas, and increasingly violent and larger storms, Stephenson puts the details to work in the novel right from the beginning: a small jet can’t land in its destination of Houston because high temperatures bring on thinner air. There’s not enough lift to sustain the small jet.
Two other interesting aspects struck me in this huge book. One was a story related to London’s mayor and the 1953 flood. After the flood, engineers came up with a solution but were stopped from implementing any changes for twenty years as political infighting took over. By the time the solution was accepted and a consensus achieved to build it, the solution was already overcome by new problems because these things — climate change, rising waters, etc. — are not static, friends.
The second intriguing, amusing, and probably prescient aspect regarded how Americans responded to rising waters and more flooding: they raised their houses and began building them on stilts. That caused a boom in the house-raising/stilt industry. And sure, you can see that, right? People in their houses on stilts, looking out windows, safe, but surrounded by water. It’s one, the sort of approach people will take, adopting a limited, short-term idea that addresses only their personal issues. Two, it’s the sort of business idea that others will eagerly seize and press, making money while they can. Greed, you know.
That second point reminds me of anti-vaxxers and COVID-19. (BTW, the world has endured several more COVID pandemics between 19 and the book’s period.) They don’t trust the government; don’t trust the vax; don’t trust the medicines. Yet, that’s where most rush to be saved while their loved ones look on and damn the government for not doing more.
Meanwhile, wealthy people in the novel, like the billionaire character, raised his Tudor-style mansion and guest houses and outbuildings, and built a mesa out of clay, high above the flood waters, so they can keep living a safe, comfortable life.
Anyway, the book offers deep ideas on the world’s vectors from where we are to where we might be. It will make you think, or at least caused that in me. Cheers
The Book Sales Dream
I was a young man, collecting and selling information on other people and on events. It started with two young women bemoaning the inability to learn something. I told them that I could do it. Then I did.
When I went around collecting information, it ended up taking the form of a thick hardback book. I showed them the book and then told them I’d sell it to the highest bidder. They were taken back — they’re the ones who suggested the information was needed, according to them — and thought I should just give them the book. I disagreed and said that wasn’t going to happen.
Rain started falling. I decided I needed a safe hideout. I found one side of a wooden crate leaning against a hillside. Pulling it aside, I saw a hole. I crawled through and found myself in a small living space. It was where I’d been living, I realized.
It stopped raining, so I left, taking my book with me. I went around, showing others and generating interest in it. People began offering me money. I wasn’t ready to sell.
My father appeared on the scene, telling me that I had to go to court. I wasn’t bothered by that, I would go to court and win. Dad was walking through a creek at that point. The water was low, just covering his feet, but muddy. The original two women were with him. I was back in a military uniform, following Dad. Note that in RL, he’d had a twenty-year career in the military, then I’d done the same.
I realized that I didn’t have a military hat, that I was outside and ‘uncovered’. That’s against reg and disturbed me. I asked Dad if he had a cap I could wear. He didn’t hear me, and I repeated the question several times before he said, “No,” and then told me that I didn’t need one.
Rain began falling anew. The two women started looking for cover and saw the opening to my place because I’d left my protective cover off. I didn’t want them to go in there. They were going enter but decided that it was too small. I then changed my mind and invite them in. I went in first, and then invited them in and showed them how large my space was. They agreed and then made me an offer on the book of data. It was a very large offer and made me grin in delight.
Dream end
Finished
Finished editing and revising The Constant. Final results: 391 pages, 106,291 words. Speculative science fiction mash up. I’ve worked on it throughout the coronavirus pandemic, beginning it around the time in March of 2020 when wearing masks, social distancing, isolation, and watching the daily case numbers became the new norms of the age. I’d been forced into a change of my writing practices. I liked walking to get into the writing rhythm, writing in my head as I did, then settling into a coffee shop, comforted and buffeted by the business activities around me, lowering my head and writing for a few hours. That was all forced aside under COVID-19 rules. Staying at home, shifting into the writing rhythm without the associated rituals was an exhausting, frustrating shift.
Satisfying feeling to finish the novel. I often think of James Caan as author Paul Sheldon in the movie version of the Stephen King version, Misery, when I finish a novel. He had a ritual for when he finished his. He writes ‘The End’ on the final page in pencil. Stacks and tidies the manuscript. Puts it into an attaché. Pours a glass of champagne. Regards a cigarette. Puts it in his mouth, lights the match and then the cigarette. Takes a drag. We learn later, when he’s under Annie Wilke’s care (the nurse and fan played by Kathy Bates) that this was his ritual created when he finished his first successful novel. It’s an engaging film. Was released in 1990. Wow, thirty-two years ago. You should watch it if you haven’t seen it. Also a good book to read. Misery, by Stephen King.
I don’t have any rituals. As others noted after I posted about wrestling with a chapter called Thelma & Louise, it feels good to finish a challenging task. Writing a novel is a challenging task. Finishing it is rewarding. Too, I feel the loss of being done, something felt when I changed duty stations in the military or advanced from one grade to another in school as a child. You’ve done something, and you’re moving forward; yet, to do that, some things must be left behind. What is left behind is part of my fabric of daily activities and focus. Finishing the writing of a novel is about change that I’ve forced on myself.
It’s a change I accept. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. The process and finishing are a comforting buffer against the war videos emerging coming out of Europe as Russia attacks Ukraine.
Michael Seidel, writer 