Global Warming Fun 6:
Ice Giants Make Manhattan
By
Gary J. Davies
Global Warming Fun 6: Ice Giants Make Manhattan
Copyright 2017 Gary J. Davies
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This e-book is a work of fiction created by the author and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are a production of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Thank you again for downloading this e-book!
Contents
FOREWORD
CHAPTER 1 - Marys and Trouble in the Big City
CHAPTER 2 - Zombie Cop
CHAPTER 3 - Dumbing Down
CHAPTER 4 - The Crazies
CHAPTER 5 - The Worriers and the Ostriches
CHAPTER 6 - Science or Bust
CHAPTER 7 - The Zombie Bar
CHAPTER 8 - Growth Fails
CHAPTER 9 - Disasters Natural and Unnatural
CHAPTER 10 - Aliens, Stone-Coats, and Jants
CHAPTER 11 - Battle for New York City
About Other Publications by This Author
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Foreword
It is indeed an inconvenient truth (with over 95% certitude - see for example the NASA website) that climate change/global warming is real and it is nearly as certain that it is human-caused. Yet from a positive/cup-half-full perspective it does provide a convenient backdrop and underlying crisis for this planned ten-book Global Warming Fun series. The 'fun' aspect is of course in the writing of it and hopefully also in the reading of it. 'Fun With Global Warming' would have been slightly better as a series description but that would have made all book titles of the series even more awkwardly long.
Aside from providing entertainment (my number-one intent), my goal in this series is to provide enlightenment by pointing out some of the serious issues/problems that humans face in our emerging future, including but not limited to climate change. That's serious business for a writer that prefers creating pure escapism! Happily my fictional books outside of this series are generally not thus burdened. See a brief description of my other books in the 'About' section located at the end of this book.
'Watching' global warming actually happen is a bit like watching grass grow, except climate change happens much slower. Yes, weather happens every glorious day, but each year seems much like the last, and climate change deceptively sneaks up on us slowly, over decades and centuries, while as 'now' focused ephemeral humans we typically busy ourselves with the many pressing details of the moment rather than dwelling on the weather.
But eventually even we take notice. (Didn't there used to be a glacier here? Didn't our first snow used to come a month earlier? Why are those once flourishing coral reefs dead? Why did our crops dry out while other folks are getting unusual floods? Does it seem to you that many more really hot summer days happen? Why is there so much rebellion and human migration in much of the world? Why are those nifty white bears having such a tough time?)
I have added some characters and situations to spice up the drama a bit (chiefly sentient telepathic ants called jants and living stone creatures called Stone-Coats that include Ice Giants), but reality will doubtlessly be a much worse and more complex experience than my fiction suggests. Nature will reveal nasty surprises, and humans will likely find ways to make things worse than they need be, while also hopefully occasionally behaving heroically and wisely.
Even though this series is primarily science FICTION and fantasy and certainly not written to provide proof for or defense of climate change science theory, or an accurate description of what will happen and when, some critics may still object to presenting climate change as a 'given' even in a fictional context! Such science/fact denialism is one of the very human problems that is actually pointed out in this particular volume!
Like it or not according to current science climate change is happening and is likely human-caused. If your epistemology is slanted towards reality/facts then you already have considerable confidence in science - the most successful approach yet devised by mankind for making sense of reality. You with some confidence daily make use of science-based technological applications such as electricity, computers, medicine, planes, trains, airplanes, etc. You therefore realize that writing a story of our future that DIDN'T include climate change would have been slanted much more towards fantasy.
Not that I object to fantasy: most of my books including this series include definite fantasy elements that are not provided solid scientific or even pseudo-science explanations. But to be plausible a story set in this universe/reality/timeframe should begin with current fact-based science as part of its world view. For this series I have chosen to assume the 95% certain science view of human-caused climate change. Perhaps sometime in the future I will write a less plausible more fantasy-slanted no-climate-change story that for the sake of entertainment takes the more challenging 5% route.
This particular story takes place in New York City. Like all books in this series it may be enjoyed separately but is best understood in the context of the preceding five books of the series. Each book provides in chronological order a brief look at Earth as global warming progresses through several centuries. See the first book for further insights on the beginnings of this project.
Book six takes place roughly seventy-seven years in the future (relative to the original publication date of this book), when most of us are long dead and gone, but our descendants hopefully remain to struggle on. At this point climate change is well along (following what is perhaps a worse-case scenario, including New England cooling that is hopefully far more radical than likely), and humans have become somewhat accustomed to sharing Earth with two other sentient creatures discovered over the course of this series: the sentient ants called jants (introduced in book one of this series) recently gene-altered into existence, and the ancient Mohawk-discovered Stone-Coats/Ice Giants (introduced in book two and further developed in books four and five).
By book six many humans have largely come to terms with med-ticks (introduced in book three) and jant/med-tick controlled human zombies (which play a role in book five). And of course as with most books of this series, the apparently immortal telepathist Ed Rumsfeld (introduced in book one) is the lead character.
This book takes place roughly twenty-seven years after the drought-driven California adventure of book five. It is the last near-future book in the series; to get to the full impact of global warming, after this book the stories will necessarily tend to take place centuries instead of mere decades apart. I will likely have to remove the tin-foil skull-cap that normally protects me from alien mind control and malicious spirits and make even greater use of my crystal ball in order to write them.
The stated 'plan' of this Global Warming Fun series is to outline human history over the next few centuries in response to problems faced by Earth and humanity including but not limited to climate change. Yes, unfortunately as has likely not escaped the notice of my more astute readers, climate change is definitely not the only oncoming threat or crisis. Some serious difficulties such as climate change happen in slow-motion, while other disasters could essentially wipe out humanity almost overnight. The universe is a very dangerous place, with humanity ourselves typically providing most of the perils. (W
ho would have thought that we'd even mess up the climate!) We have generally been very lucky so far, but as we advance our technologies we increase the risks we pose to ourselves, even though we also introduce tantalizingly exciting positive opportunities.
Many of the 'concerns'/issues highlighted here in book six, including concepts, terms, and phrases, appear in the 153 essays of What Should We Be Worried About ? edited by John Brockman, the excellent 2014 Edge Foundation Incorporated/Harper Perennial book that chronicles answers to that title/Edge-dot-org question of 2013 asked of the Edge intelligentsia blogosphere. Readers are urged to consult those sources and others for more faithful, comprehensive, in depth, and up-to-date discussions of many of the worrisome issues only briefly mentioned herein. Unfortunately even as I write this book many of the potential problems/issues mentioned are becoming reality. As is often the case, reality can be more F-ed up than fiction.
Particularly for this specific book in the series, a key writing issue/challenge for the author was how to fit mention of so many of the non-fiction issues we face into a fictional action/adventure story line without totally ruining the story or coming off as too preachy. Sort of like Beethoven trying to combine orchestra and chorus in his monumental ninth symphony, or perhaps more aptly like eating a spoon full of yummy sugar to help the nasty tasting medicine go down. Did I succeed? That's for the reader to judge. But at least I had a challenging and fun time writing it! What better hobby is there for a physics-trained engineer to pursue in his retirement?
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Global Warming Fun 6:
Ice Giants Make Manhattan