by Mark Selby
There have been several bad storms around Brisbane and the Gold Coast recently but where we’re located north of Brisbane,we had ducked the worst of them. However, today the centre of rather bad one hit us pretty much head on. In the Rain Radar map below the black and dark red regions represent intense storm cells.
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
Jacob Bronowski
In Part 1 the question was asked about how the system of Science could become dystopian? We looked at one way that that could occur through capture by corporations and interest groups. In Part 2, we examine how a corrupt system can infect the scientists and science that they carry out.
Dr. Batholomew Reese was in charge of the small scientific and medical team for Hadley’s Hope, a “shake-and-bake” terraforming colony on the planetoid Acheron – formerly known as LV-426. As he was enjoying some evening alone time in his quarters, a soft but persistent chime from the door interrupted him. It was his associate, Dr Mori, who was grinning ear-to-ear, which caused Bartholomew to exclaim: “you look a giddy and lovestruck teen.” Dr Mori excitedly replied: “it may be the answer to the Nostromo mystery.” What had excited Mori so much was that an executive from Weyland-Yutani company had just sent to the Colony Administrator, and to Drs Reese and Mori, a communication that included the grid coordinates for a site that should be investigated “immediately.”
Continue reading “Reading the “Alien” Trilogy (2014) and Reflecting on a Dystopian Science, Part 2″
This is an example of a style of writing that I’ve been developing for communicating popular science at my blog,
Allan Decker had a secret. His father had told him to: “hold it tight inside you.” You see, Decker and his father were empaths that could feel the emotions of others around them. He had hidden his talent over his career with the Interstellar Commerce Commission (ICC), where he was a Deputy Commissioner. But on this day, in the latter part of 2496, on the newly terraformed planet New Galveston, formerly the desolate and barren LV-178, his anonymity would be uncovered and his secret revealed.
The paragraph above is my summary of how Alien: Sea of Sorrows begins. I’ll return to fill you in with rest once I’ve introduced the other novels in the trilogy. I will also attempt to answer the question of how it all relates to dystopian science.
Now that I’ve finished reading the Coyote trilogy, I’m eagerly awaiting the concluding novel in Cassandra Clare’s Dark Artifices series (Queen of Air and Darkness) and I’m awaiting the final instalment of James S. A. Corey’s The Expanse series (Tiamat’s Wrath), originally due December, now due March 2019.
Continue reading “Reading the “Alien” Trilogy (2014) and Reflecting on a Dystopian Science, Part 1″