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2004-12-15 Home Front: Culture Wars

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Posted by tipper 2004-12-15 02:42|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Oh baby! Another prescient home run by Crichton, methinks. He has the knack for picking the technological wheat out from the chaff - very selectively and far ahead of the madding crowd. And, often enough to make you wonder, he anticipates the social ramifications with amazing accuracy. Moonbatism may, indeed, become a permanent state with a core of professional agitprop thugs who will keep the frenzy going well beyond the debunking.

Of course, I'll have to buy the book, now that I've read this, lol!

Posted by .com 2004-12-15 4:02:43 AM|| 2004-12-15 4:02:43 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 I'd like to ask RBers for their opinion on novels that rely on wacky conspiracies for their plot. I have a specific reason for asking, because I wrote a novel in a similar vein called The Year Without A Summer where the villian is a pair of volcanos that plunge the world into abrupt global cooling. It was comprehensively knocked back by publishers with comments like 'unbelievable plot'. As a reader I hate novels whose plot is based around a conspiracy. I find them implausable and avoid them. Yet as Michael Crichton shows they sell. I'm wondering whether I should rewrite and add a similar conspiracy. TIA for any comments.

Posted by phil_b 2004-12-15 5:01:05 AM|| 2004-12-15 5:01:05 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 I'd suggest doing something so outrageous that you make the national news....best if it has some tie in with your plot. Perhaps the claim that you have evidence to show that Mt. St. Helens isn't really erupting, but, rather, it is the result of a terrorist attack on a CIA base located underneath the volcano. If that doesn't work, try biting your dog or holding your baby over the balcony :-)

Posted by 2b 2004-12-15 5:36:10 AM|| 2004-12-15 5:36:10 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Phil, you've probably heard the story that a frustrated author copied a novel by Jerzy Koszinski which had done quite well. He shopped it around and, 1, the agents and publishers had no idea it was a hoax, and 2, said it would never sell.
You know somebody turned down Tom Clancy.
There was a year without a summer, when Krakatoa went up in the early nineteeth century. Maybe you should include a bit of basic knowledge available to everybody but the publishing scene.

Posted by Richard Aubrey 2004-12-15 8:31:35 AM|| 2004-12-15 8:31:35 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Kraktoa was a wet firecracker compared to Toba. Toba caldera produced the largest eruption in the last 2 million years. The caldera is 18 x 60 miles (30 by 100 km) and has a total relief of 5,100 feet (1700 m). Large eruptions occurred 840,000, about 700,000, and 75,000 years ago. There is substantial evidence to show that within the time of the super volcano Toba's eruption in the Indonesian Pacific, the world's population of homo sapiens decreased from over one hundred thousand to less than two thousand, basically because global temperatures dropped five degrees for many years. Now that's a disaster!

Posted by Steve 2004-12-15 8:53:13 AM|| 2004-12-15 8:53:13 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Richard Aubrey, that was Mount Tambora, in 1815, that caused the year without a summer.

Posted by Grunter 2004-12-15 9:14:49 AM|| 2004-12-15 9:14:49 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Discovery Chanel has a great show about Yellow Stone National Park.Did you know Yellow Stone is what is called a Super valcano?If that puppy blows agin(according to Discovery)it will make Krkatoa look like a wet baby fart.

Posted by raptor 2004-12-15 9:40:24 AM|| 2004-12-15 9:40:24 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 Yup, I remember reading that yellowstone is the world's largest volcano and last time it blew the entire north american continent was inches deep in ash and everything within a few hundred miles was pretty much destroyed.

Posted by Damn_Proud_American 2004-12-15 10:34:03 AM|| [http://brighterfuture.blogspot.com] 2004-12-15 10:34:03 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 Author C. Clarke began his book Hammer of God (about an asteroid threatening to destroy the Earth) with a chapter about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. He slipped in little chapters throughout the book about different asteroid hits throughout the ages. This sort of brought out a sense of, it can happen again. That's the way the movie Armageddon started as well. You might consider taking the volcanoes listed by the posters above and doing something similar.

Did anyone know that an asteroid skipped off the atmosphere over the Pacific during Gulf War 1. That the impact created a Hiroshima level explosion that caused US defense to go on alert until they figured out what it was. Didn't make the papers but Bob Zubrin wrote about it in his Case for Space.

Posted by rjschwarz 2004-12-15 10:36:35 AM|| [http://rjschwarz.com] 2004-12-15 10:36:35 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 The plot is a Tambora scale eruption that causes major disruptions to agriculture, massive population moves, etc., then ends with a Toba scale eruption, whose consequences have been eluded to during the book.

Thanks for the advice, but I'm still worrying the conspiracy angle. I watched Mercury Rising last night, which is not a bad movie once you get past the plot that even my 12 yo daughter mocked as unbelievable (9 yo kid cracks secret government code. Evil businessman starts killing people to coverup). Much as I dislike conspiracies as a cheap plot device, audiences seem to have been conditioned to expect them as a way to explain what happens in the world.

Posted by phil_b 2004-12-15 4:55:09 PM|| 2004-12-15 4:55:09 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 That should have read 'alluded to'

Posted by phil_b 2004-12-15 5:14:25 PM|| 2004-12-15 5:14:25 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 Screw the publishing houses. Go directly to the web. Use a Creative Commons License to let people link to but not alter your work. Provide a central site where they can read free teasers and then submit micropayments for additional chapters. Take in ad revenues from booksellers who offer fare similar to yours.

Posted by lex 2004-12-15 5:23:59 PM|| 2004-12-15 5:23:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 lex, Ive been toying with the idea for a while and also using it to offer different versions of novels, e.g. conspiracy/non-conspiracy versions.

Posted by phil_b 2004-12-15 7:09:34 PM|| 2004-12-15 7:09:34 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 it's really tough to get published if you aren't already famous or are sleeping with someone in the publishing business. Tom Clancy went with Naval Institute Press for his first book and when it was a hit, the MSM stole him out from under them.

If you make it accurate and educational with a plot, it might be possible to get a scientific publishing house to take a chance.

Things are changing with internet access...but basically what sells books are famous or infamous names. Also you can piggyback on ideas that indy publishers want to promote.

Posted by 2b 2004-12-15 7:26:54 PM|| 2004-12-15 7:26:54 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 2b, a poorly served market is fiction around scientific themes (outside science fiction), possibly for the teen market. Fictionalized versions of real events often of scientific significance are popular. Why not scientifically accurate portrayals of fictional events. Similar to the work Hoyle and Sagan used to write but in the geo and earth sciences.

Posted by phil_b 2004-12-16 12:11:15 AM|| 2004-12-16 12:11:15 AM|| Front Page Top

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