I’ve written about the emerging literature of Climate themed science fiction – Cli Fi.
If you liked Memento, Inception, or the Dark Knight – this may be of interest. Christopher Nolan’s new movie has, at least tangentially, a climate theme.
Needless to say, one of the most anticipated films of 2014 will be Christopher Nolan’s newest movie, Interstellar. It’s not only his first original project since 2010′s Inception, but is also the first film the director has made since ending his astronomically successful Dark Knight trilogy last year.
Production on the film began in August, and at this point in time we still know very little about the film other than that it’s based on the work of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, and a few story details. The story takes place years after Earth’s climate has changed, making it impossible to grow enough crops to sustain the world’s population. This prompts a small team of explorers to enter a newly discovered wormhole in an attempt to find fresh land for cultivation.
Like many of Nolan’s projects, it’s not much to go on and the production has been shrouded in secrecy. Granted, we’re still about a year away from finally seeing the film, which hits theaters on November 7, 2014, so it’s understandable that details may be a little scarce this early.
Luckily for fans, Warner Bros. released our first glimpse at the film early Saturday in the form of a nearly two-minute teaser trailer. The trailer may frustrate those hoping for more information, as it contains very little actual footage and instead manages to merely pique your interest while giving an impression of the film’s tone. Watch the trailer for yourself (above):
climate change replacing nuclear war as what brings humanity to the brink and then inspires salvation (or adventure in any case)…not exactly a novelty. Has anybody made a list of all movies where the main character is in trouble because climate change has ruined the planet?
Was “Waterworld” the first in the series?
Soylent Green:
thank you Jim. Forgot it wasn’t just overpopulation.
Because it’s easier to find a wormhole, go to another habitable planet, plant crops there, and bring those crops back to Earth, than it is to ask humans to live within the Earth’s limits.
This is really just more free market propaganda. There’s always a solution for more more, more.
agreed. I have heard otherwise bright people opine that when we ruin this planet, we’ll look for another. It’s complete fantasy.
Did not The Newt think we needed to establish moon colonies? Have you not noticed the drumbeat of “let’s go to Mars” that is swelling in the media? There are a lot of “free-marketers” that want us to do that so they can get rich from it. All those engineers (that are NOT scientists) need jobs and the greedy rich need to get richer. There are all too many “otherwise bright people” that buy into that idea of sending shiploads of humans off to “other” planets, but, as usual, $$$ will drive the issue.
Colonizing other planets has been a theme of SF since “The Brick Moon” in 1869.
More recently, in the 1970’s Gerry O’Neil’s undergrads showed that ordinary steel and glass were sufficient to house people in space, no planetary surface required. Skyhooks, possible with materials as strong as graphene, could allow mass transport of people and materials into orbit. And of course, solar energy is a natural when you have neither night nor clouds.
Will we? Probably not; the political will is lacking.
“…ordinary steel and glass were sufficient to house people in space, no planetary surface required”. More fantasy?
There was a SciAm article some number of years ago about sending people to Mars and the problems to be overcome. I tried to access it a year or two ago and couldn’t—it may be in “pay to see” archives now.
One thing I recall vividly was that considerable shielding would be required to keep the astronauts from having a less than 50% risk of dying from cancer within one year of their return (or something close to those figures—-I do remember saying to myself “delayed suicide mission” when I read it).
The article spoke to how difficult it would be to get enough lead into orbit and suggested that water would work, and maybe we could capture a comet as a water source. The diameter of a capsule using water shielding was on the order of 130 feet.
The O’Neil group’s system for radiation protection used rock. About ten feet of lunar regolith or slag is enough to stop primary cosmic rays and absorb the secondary particles. The rock would just be un-refined stuff from whatever was being mined to get the iron and glass, be it the Moon or a small asteroid.
Yes, more fantasy to think that we can economically mine an asteroid or the moon to get materials to build a “ship” to send a small group of humans “somewhere”. Has anyone every done an “energy costs analysis” on that? Hard to believe that it would be any different than lifting it all directly into orbit from earth.
Dumboldguy -once you’re into LEO (low earth orbit) the Solar System is up for grabs…ironically the one thing to avoid is to land back on Earth.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget
I love the “scientific precision” of “the Solar System is up for grabs”.
It is sometimes said that some people are unable to find and “grab” their rear ends with both hands.
Sadoldguy – you asked a question, I gave you an answer, then you found a way to complain about that too. Slow day, wherever you are.
As for the grabs, a cursory understanding of the different between 9 and 4 should suffice.
SorryOlog, I asked a question, you gave a meaningless reply.
And you wonder why you have no friends.
No, I wonder if I am the only friend you’ve got.
(I am so overwhelmed by the cleverness of that rejoinder that I have been rendered speechless).
I posted a reply to dumboldguy, but I forgot that adding the third link for the back-link automatically sends it to moderation (even though it’s a link within this page) so you’ll have to wait to read it.
Sounds like a great film, look forward to the release:
A quote from Kip Thorne
Thorne grew up in an academic, Mormon family in Utah but is now an atheist.
“There are large numbers of my finest colleagues who are quite devout and believe in God, ranging from an abstract humanist God to a very concrete Catholic or Mormon God. There is no fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. I happen to not believe in God.”
The soft voice acquired an edge when discussing conservative attacks on evolution and climate science. “It’s very worrying for the future of our country. I don’t think it’s been a major issue for science today but the danger is it will be a major issue for science in the future. To have one political party that’s under control of anti-intellectuals who don’t accept the fundamental tenets of science is really scary. That’s where we are.”
and a quote from his friend and colleague Stephen Hawking (taken from a lecture on Space and Time Warps)
There was a young lady of Wight,
Who travelled much faster than light,
She departed one day,
In a relative way,
And arrived on the previous night.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jun/21/kip-thorne-time-travel-scientist-film
I’ve written about the emerging literature of Climate themed science fiction – Cli Fi.
If you liked Memento, Inception, or the Dark Knight – this may be of interest. Christopher Nolan’s new movie has, at least tangentially, a climate theme.
“astronomically successful Dark Knight trilogy” I must have been in interstellar space because I’d never even heard of that trilogy.
Bat Man?
And in all that time, not one picture of Babe Ruth!
and don’t forget, Darren Aronofksy’s cli fi movie titled NOAH is set for March 2014 release, about a flood, yes that flood and yes THAT noahic man, Noah, so two big cli fi movies coming next year
strange trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OSaJE2rqxU
but then, Aronofsky is a strange director.
when are we going to get beyond white
europeans playing ancient middle eastern
characters?
very telling.
Logan Lerman is 100% Jewish and Jennifer Connelly’s mother is Jewish. Surely they can play Old Testament characters.
Replying to this, re-parented for readability.
Particle storage rings were once a fantasy, but the same guy who invented them (which made the Tevatron and Large Hadron Collider possible) also invented O’Neil cylinders. They weren’t intended as interplanetary ships, but as living space for people building solar-power satellites (SPSs). SPS technology would have replaced fossil fuels on the electric grid.
Of course they did. Most of the raw materials came from the Moon, including the silicon to make PV.
It takes about 1/25 of the energy to launch something off the moon compared to earth, and from the airless moon all you need is an electric catapult (which you can power with PV for two weeks a month). Lunar regolith contains a bunch of useful stuff, including hydrogen from the solar wind and native nickel-iron from meteoroid impacts (which can be pulled out with a magnet). The lunar poles appear to have ice in the bottoms of the permanently-shadowed craters.
All of this was essentially 1970’s technology. You’d think it would have been wildly popular with environmentalists, because all of the industrial activities would be either at about the distance of lunar orbit or on the lifeless moon itself (and later, even farther away on asteroids). Strangely, it got the exact opposite reaction. It’s like they wanted humanity to keep polluting our one planet, instead of either replacing the most-polluting activities with solar power (eliminating the issues of intermittency and seasonality by collecting it where the sun shines almost 24/7) or moving them where there’s no biosphere to pollute.
Yes, I am aware of the perfectly plausible “possible” of the situation, but I think you overreach when you mix particle storage rings with moon mines. The LHC merely required the application of $$$ and the effort to build it—-by people with their feet on the ground who went home every night Just as O’Neill cylinders are perhaps scientifically “possible” but not likely to ever be constructed.
There are good reasons why we have not mined the moon and only The Newt was so interested (because he was pandering to NASA and aerospace folks who want to maintain their industry and jobs), but hardly anyone else is. We only went there in the first place for political reasons anyway, and of course as a make-work project for engineers since climate change was not yet a big issue for them to get involved in because they are “scientists”. The WashPost is publishing occasional articles about manned travel to Mars as part of a long-term info-wars campaign by the same folks that would love to have us go back to the moon. That’s not going to happen either.
“It takes about 1/25 of the energy….etc” Yep, it could be done, even though the moon is ~240,000 miles away and all but the first two or three miles of that is an environment that is exceedingly hostile to life and very expensive to travel in.
And you want us to swallow the idea that anyone WANTS to pollute the earth just because they are too ignorant to move certain activities to the moon? That thought is too way out for comment. We need to realize that the Earth is the ONLY chance we have and the only “spaceship” that the human race will ever live on. Loading a few humans (perhaps in suspended animation if we ever figure that out) into a ship for a few hundred year ride to some Utopia that doesn’t exist is the stuff of movies. You should stick to pushing nuclear power—I can agree with some of what you say there.
Why else would they attack others merely for wanting to try?
“Earth is the cradle of mankind. But one does not live in the cradle forever.” — Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
When humanity goes into space, bits of Earth’s biosphere will go along. This will spread Earth life through the universe. Railing against the idea of spreading of life into lifeless reaches is insane, but sadly not uncommon.
“Why else would they attack others merely for wanting to try?” Perhaps because this particular “other” who wants to “try” is just standing in front of a mirror and admiring himself as he spouts nonsense? SBAN, E-Pot!
“Loading a few humans into a ship for a few hundred year ride to some Utopia that doesn’t exist is the stuff of movies”—-D.O.G. 2013
And “When humanity goes into space….will spread Earth life through the universe” is just an example of the “Le Roi,C’est Moi” hubris of E-Pot for making such a statement, and too many of the entire human race that is destroying the planet. The universe is perfectly happy without “Earth life being spread”, E-Pot—-we have been allotted a wonderful and unique place within it—-you distract us from the task or preserving it.
What IS insane is the “fiddling while Rome burns” mentality that underlies the idea that “spreading of life into lifeless reaches” is worthwhile or any alternative to preserving Earth’s biosphere where it evolved—ON EARTH.
Dumboldguy -you have got two independent answer to your budget request but in neither case have shown interest to the figures
The only constraint is that it takes a lot of energy to leave Earth. Everything else is much simpler. This means that Earth is likely to import goods from outer space and export very little (until space elevators are built at least).
O-Log appears at last today! Perhaps jealous of E-Pot getting all the attention, he makes a comment that he knows will not be ignored. Yes, I have not “shown interest to the figures” because they are irrelevant.
I really wanted to respond to “This means that Earth is likely to import goods from outer space and export very little (until space elevators are built at least)”.
Does this mean the $*&#@! Chinese are going to get “out there” first and flood the world with cheap “rubber duckies from space”? (not a good title for a band but a great one for a movie)
you asked about budgets, then explicitly declare that figures are irrelevant. oh well.
And? What don’t you understand about “irrelevant”?
fine then. your question Has anyone every done an “energy costs analysis” on that? was not a question. that explains a lot of your past statements that were not, in fact, statements.
Go away. Your logic sounds like Tweedle-dee’s or the Duchess’s, and they gave Alice a headache trying to figure them out.
I get it now. You ask for an energy cost analysis, but you think the figures are irrelevant. You ask me to go away, but you think I am the soul of the party around here.
Why, thank you very much.
I don’t know what things are like in Virginia, but telling someone to “sodomize bovines and narwhals” is considered fighting words around here. Keep your kinks to yourself.
It’s so funny that the whole purpose of the effort can be explained to you and you persist in going off as if you never read a word of it.
It’s as if… you have zero reading comprehension, just a dogmatic insistence that your preconceived notions are natural law. That sure would explain a lot.
Lord love a duck, but that is one of the lamest and most asinine attempts at humor ever attempted on Crock. Bovines and NARWHALS? And WHO is KINKY here? The answer is—-the person who would pick “sodomize” for the “S” in SBAN and then search for animals to put after it is the KINKY one.
After displaying his perverted and KINKY sense of non-humor for us, E-Pot then says it’s “funny” that D.O.G. won’t accept E-Pot’s “dogmatic insistence” that E-Pot’s “preconceived notions are natural law”. That’s ironic, E-Pot, and it’s funny too because it’s ironic, and someday you may understand humor and irony.
And in case anyone has forgotten, SBAN is short for Stop Being A Narcissist. It’s an acronym used to admonish E-Pot and his soulmate O-Log about the need to stop making it all about them. E-Pot’s narcissism “sure does explain a lot” about why he spends so much of his time fighting with me rather than talking about climate change. Narcissists do NOT like to be challenged in any way.
“Loading a few humans into a ship for a few hundred year ride to some Utopia that doesn’t exist is the stuff of movies. Repeatedly insisting that it is a viable option for dealing with the problems we face on earth is mindless narcissism”—-D.O.G. 2013
Despite being more imaginative than you, in 30 seconds I couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous (or impossible) to sodomize that also started with “B”. I wasn’t going to waste any more time on a throwaway backronym.
Just because you think it’s not funny doesn’t mean it isn’t. You are remarkably humorless.
I figured it had some history, but its last explicit appearance was before I followed a blogroll link and stumbled across the stuff here. I decided to have some fun in the process of making you write it out fully. Mission accomplished.
Let me quote your re-re-quoted quote of yourself, just for illustration of your preconceived notions:
Had DOG actually read the material offered, he would have discovered that:
1. Even the Stanford torus was intended to house tens of thousands of people, not “a few humans”.
2. They wouldn’t necessarily be there for longer than a work contract.
3. They wouldn’t be “on a ride” at all; the habitats have no engines.
4. Their purpose isn’t to find Utopia, but to construct pollution-free energy plants for Earth.
5. Of course this stuff doesn’t exist yet. Neither does the renewable energy utopia that DOG and more than a few others here appear to believe in. The question is, which of them is preferable… if they can be created at all.
#5 is the real kicker, and all I can tell the dogmatic Greens is that in the battle between the Pope and Galileo, bet on Galileo.
E-Pot YET AGAIN misses the point because he is too wrapped up in listening to himself to hear what others say.
I have to laugh at “Despite being more imaginative than you”—-if E-Pot would step away from his mirror and look at the real world, he would realize that I have shown much more “imagination” than he has in our exchanges, and it takes me only a second or two to come up with my “insults”. I wouldn’t waste 30 seconds thinking about what to say to him—life is too short.
E-Pot misses the point that “sodomize” is the KINKY and perverted thing here. NO ONE but E-Pot has ever used that word on Crock. (Didn’t he also mention “intellectual onanism” (jerking off) way back on another thread? Or was that his fellow narcissist O-Log?)
Another example of the degree to which E-Pot is out of touch is “Just because you think it’s not funny doesn’t mean it isn’t. You are remarkably humorless”. Uh-huh. Typical narcissist—-insisting it’s funny when it isn’t and refusing to accept reality. I’m humorless in his eyes because he is humorless in actuality.
And “Mission accomplished” because I wrote out SBAN? A George W. Bush moment for us with that pronouncement, and just as ironic. LOL, but I DO love irony. I have “written out” what SBAN means more than once, and used it many times on you and O-Log, our two resident Crock narcissists. Put down the mirror and look around, E-Pot.
E-Pot would also have us stand around like 10-year-olds going back and forth with “Your notions are more preconceived than my preconceived notions—No they’re not—-Yes they are—Your dog is ugly—So’s your sister—No she’s not—Yes she is” until our brains melt. I will simply say that IDEAS and OPINIONS that result from many years of study and analysis of scientific fact are not “notions” just because one does not agree with them.
And his final five points? Print them out and line your bird cage with them.