(Leonard Nimoy, telephone telephone your office!)
As I await my comprehend artist’s creation, I’ve been maundering over what to produce side yesteryear side fictionally. The Onteora Canon, as much fun as it’s been, deserves a rest, peradventure a permanent one. Concerning the Spooner Federation Saga, amongst which I’ve had an as skillful fourth dimension (and which deserves at to the lowest degree i to a greater extent than novel), I haven’t quite worked upward the publish energy for some other majority inwards that particularly taxing series. And I intend I demand to last away from Athene Academy as well as the futanari of Onteora County for a trivial while, for similar reasons.
But I dislike idleness. To recess for a calendar week or ii afterward completing a novel-length even out is i thing; to become on a months-long sabbatical away from fiction is quite another. Dangerous. I could lose my fictioneering chops as well as last relegated to zippo merely these interminable op-eds for the ease of my days. So I’ve been casting close for a fresh sentiment that would sustain a novel-length story.
Well, Our Lord as well as Savior has told us to pray for what nosotros need, thence this morn earlier Mass I asked Him – as well as His Dad as well as The Spook, of flat – for an sentiment that would be:
- Suitable for a novel-length story;
- Usable inwards a fantasy or scientific discipline fiction setting;
- Relevant to contemporary discourse on a plain of written report of interest.
And glory be! I got one.
What’s of greater electrical flow involvement than ecological balances, eh? Damned close zippo I tin intend of. Perhaps the most contentious number inside that envelope would last the move of Man inwards the Terrestrial ecology. the loudest voices are those that proclaim that Man is an excrescence upon Earth’s ecology: an intruder who tin alone produce harm, as well as whose effects nosotros are morally obligated to minimize.
But at that spot are arguments, skillful ones, to the consequence that the contrary is true: that Man is an integral component of the ecology, as well as that his subtraction from it would laissez passer on ascent to what whatsoever objective observer would telephone telephone catastrophe... that is, if at that spot were an objective observer to a greater extent than or less afterward Man had been removed from the scene.
Now, inwards our temporal reality nosotros would await for destructive organisms as well as pernicious influences that would surge beyond command without Man to moderate them. But a spec-fic approach would non last restricted to what nosotros know of public inwards reality.
Larry Niven, Steven Barnes, as well as Jerry Pournelle turned inwards a prissy handling of this sentiment inwards The Legacy of Heorot as well as sequelae. But that hasn’t used it up. There’s room for farther exploration of the idea. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 pregnant difference powerfulness include non-biological interactors amongst a planetary ecosystem: interactors that alone Man tin control.
I’ll last tossing this to a greater extent than or less for a few days, I’m sure.
