Wound Up With Conclusions

[aggienaut]

The Wind Up Girl, a review
   Recommended to me by lookfar when we were discussing post apocalyptic books, this book takes place in a future where the global economy has been wrecked by petroleum having run out, and then "calorie companies" competitively destroyed rival crops with engineered crop diseases until much of the world was starving and dependent on buying food or sterile seeds from one of the small number of surviving campanies, all based far away in the US midwest. The story takes place in Bangkok, which has surprisingly survived all this, thanks in part to a seed bank they've managed to maintain in isolation. The author, Paolo Bachigalupi, has managed to fill his world with so many interesting details its a marvel to me. But what I think I like most is the complexity of his characters. You don't know which of the several main characters the book follows to really root for: one is a secret agent for the calorie companies who is written is a very sympathetic way such that its easy to feel like he's the good guy you're rooting for until you think about how the end goals he represents are pretty evil; one works for the very conservative, brutal and corrupt "Environmental Bureau" but you find yourself sympathisizing with their goals of protecting the country from the dangerous outside influences; one is a Chinese immigrant stuck beween all these larger forces who at times seems selfish but he's also just desperate to survive; and of course the titular characer, the wind-up girl, is a genetically modified person who faces a very great deal of mistreatment (big trigger warning if you're sensitive to these things, she suffers a LOT of abuse by people who consider her a less-than-human toy) but as one can guess from the title, ends up having an important role. Altogether I loved the book for the complexities of the characters and the detailed, vivid, thought-provoking world that Bachigalupi created. I strongly recommend if this sounds like your kind of book at all.


   I'd like to continue reading all the Bachigalupi I can get my hands on but before I drift too far from traditional apocalypse I'm starting on the 1957 novel On The Beach by Nevil Shute. Should be a good comparison with Alas Babylon which I just read, which was published in 1959. I've only just begun On the Beach but I'm a bit excited that it actually takes place in Melbourne, near me (Though the protagonist lives in a fictional suburb called Falmouth which I just googled and learned is based on Frankston, across the bay from me).




Trying To Find The Best Conclusion
   Still tinkering with the conclusion of my Nicaragua article. First I tried rewriting it entirely several times only loosely using my favorite words from previous iterations. As that didn't seem to solve my problems I decided to actually try writing it in verse, not as sometihng that would go in to the final product but to maybe shake some better turns of phrase out and/or exercise my sense of pacing since the pacing of it seemed off.

Iteration 1
   The volcano smoke plumes recede below me as my plane departs, a potent symbol for the simmering instability of this beautiful country. I think back to the bullet holes I've seen in walls, the murals and heartbreaking personal stories about the civil war. That instability would erupt into violence again, in 2018 black columns of smoke were again rising in Nicaragua, as clashes between protestors and paramilitaries left 300 dead and churches besieged.
   Despite the volcanic political violence, it's inspiring to think of people like Padre Fabretto and Vincent Cosgrove, the charitable organizations they've built, and the many volunteers who brave these dangers to help the people.

[notes: that first sentence is a bit long and awkward]

Iteration 2
   I watch the volcano smoke plumes recede below as my plane lifts me away. The plumes seem a potent symbol for the instability of the country. I had often looked up at the ominous columns of smoke, or jumped at a sudden alarm – sure they were erupting, but the true simmering instability was written on the walls: murals of protestors throwing molotov cocktails at riot police, or simply actual bullet-holes. The following year, 2018, the political situation erupted again, pro-government paramilitary militias clashing violently with protestors, leaving three hundred dead, and man-made columns of ominous smoke in the sky.
   It's inspiring to think about how, undaunted by the smoke columns both natural and artificial, people like Padre Fabretto and Vincent Cosgrove, the charitable organizations they've built, and their many volunteers brave these dangers to help the people.

[As I begin to read this I always have a twitch of wanting to eliminate "I watch" but the point isn't the flying away but literally the me looking out the window]

Iteration 3: As a Haiku Series!

Volcano plumes,
Recede below, airplane flies,
Potent apologues.

Bullet-holes in walls,
And murals of molotovs,
Instability.

Dauntless volunteers,
Such as Padre Fabretto,
And Vincent Cosgrove.

Charitable work,
Organizations to help,
Upraise impoverished.

[I don't know if this was really any value to me except thesaurus introduced me to the word apologue, but I don't think it's really quite the right word anyway]

Iteration 4: As a Rhyming Verse Poem
   I haven't even even attempting to write a rhyming poem since probably elementry school, and I'm assuming back then I didn't worry about iambic pentameter or possibly even syllables per line. Maybe it would have been easier to not think about those things and just let it flow, but Ii ahve to admit I had to google exactly what the rules are for writing a poem and once I knew them my OCD brain became, well, obsessive. Though iambic pentameter quickly drove me mad and I gave up after two lines on that. All in all I only got one complete (and awful) verse before losing my mind entirely:

Volcanic plumes receding,
Unstable countryside,
Bullet-holes in plaster walls,
The past tensions abide.

But still undaunted volunteers,
Labor to help locals,*
Padre Fabretto's legacy,
Schools and youth programmes*

*[what I eventually decided on was to just make it fit the syllables and then try to rearrange words to make lines 2 and 4 rhyme but in the second verse I couldn't come up with a way to do it. Yes I didn't get very far at all. Though this exercise did result in me realizing the bullet holes should be merely in walls but in plaster walls, so there's that]

Bonus Iterations: Koriander Steps In
   I explained my poetic woes to my good friend Kori, who is always good at word games and such, and while I had spent hours coming up with one and a half crappy paragraphs she churned out two spectacular verse renditions on the spot:

Kori 1
Black columns of smoke
Rise into the air
They reach me even here
Through this airplane window I star
A world in turmoil
Bullets ricocheting
I can't help but hear
The tears of a people hurting
But like a distant candle
I am inspired by the stalwart few
Gving hope and charity
In spite of all the chaos that ensues

Kori Encore now with 100% less rhymes!
Black smoke billows
Rises up into the air
To reach me even here
As a jet plane takes me away
The sound of ricocheting bullets
Recede in the distance
But hauntingly continues to ring in my ears
The after-image of a million stories
Of a war-torn place
Deceptively beautiful dress in its lush greenery
Yet, hope also rises
Flares sent up by bold bravery
To combat the despair
Championed by a stalwart few
Who are unsatisfied and won't settle
Hearts united in charity and human kindness.


[Poetry Exercise conclusions: The one english teacher I had whom I actually respected had urged me to take the poetry class even if I wasn't interested in writing poetry, becaues it would make me a better writer. I packed that idea away but I think even if I hadn't left the country before the next term I wasn't itching to take a poetry class. But now I'm thinking it probably was good advice, I think I need to work on fitting words together more poetically, even in prose. Also, Kori is really good at this.

Iteration 5: Back to Prose
   I watch the volcano smoke plumes recede below as my plane lifts me away. The plumes seem a potent symbol of the instability simmering under the surface of this beautiful country, the instability written with bullet holes in stucco walls at ground level. But its inspiring to think despite the dangers, people like Padre Fabretto and Vincent Cosgrove remain, undeterred. Regimes come and go, man-made plumes of smoke reach up into the sky, but as long as there is a need of education and hope among the people, the organizations and volunteers dedicated to providing it remain.


   Any feedback on what you think is working and what you think is not working is much appreciated!! The most enduring problem I think is that I'm having a surprising amount of trouble teasing out the lauding of Fabretto and Cosgrove to a few sentences so it doesn't feel like they're jammed together in one breath. Also I'd like to mention the later violence in 2018 as sort of evidence that it was indeed waiting to blow, but I'm not sure it fits and you see its left out of the most recent iteration.

Comments

[cactus_rs]

Speaking of post apocalyptia, I just finished Station Eleven a couple days ago and it's SO GOOD, would recommend unequivocally.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Oh? Give me some non-spoilerific details (:

[cactus_rs]

A flu epidemic wipes out nearly everyone on Earth, and the book focuses on a ragtag traveling music and Shakespeare company that wanders along the shore of one of the great lakes, stopping and playing at different makeshift towns.

It got hyped on a bunch of the book blogs I follow a couple years ago and it's one of the rare times where something has lived up to the hype for me.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Neat I'll add it to my list!

[maju01.livejournal.com]

Have you read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake series?

[ryl.livejournal.com]

I'm actually reading Windup Girl right now. I've only finished the first chapter so far but it's interesting.

You should give The Tangled Lands a try. It's a short story collection by Bacigalupi and Tobias Bucknell about a post-apocalyptic fantasy land.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Do you want me to tell you that Nevil Shute was a playwright, not a physicist, and that the situation he describes is absolute bollocks?  Like Carl Sagan’s “nuclear winter” bogeyman, he wasn’t interested in being factual, but in being effectual.

It’s a good book, and was made into a good movie, but the situation he describes is literal make-believe.


n b  Did you know that the Earth is a featureless bone-dry billiard-ball in space?  Comrade Carl based his “findings” on computer models - which he tweaked to get the required results.  That the models did not represent fact was irrelevant.  This was absolutely textbook “junk science,” but this ivory-tower “scientist” had higher priorities, y’ see.  Mmm hmm.

The richest irony is that this “Fifth Columnist” was Jewish, and if the people he was helping had won, they’d have promptly liquidated him.  Pogrom is a Russian word, and Stalin made Hitler look like an amateur…

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Are you saying lots of nukes going off would _not_ in fact create a nuclear winter?


I'm still not very far into On The Beach but its funny now that you pointed out he's a playwright I'm noticing it is written a lot like a play, most scenes so far being mainly two people talking.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Define “lots.”  The explosion of Krakatoa in 1883 was the loudest sound in known human history, produced pressure shock waves that circled the globe some three times (!), and indeed caused discernible distortions in global weather for two or three years thereafter.  That’s nice.  Did it “kill the world”?  No.  Did it even cause any changes in human civilization?  Well, one part of Java didn’t get resettled; it’s a national forest today.  How ’bout that.

What Comrade Carl was doing was the Leftist equivalent of “Reefer Madness.”  It was very important to certain people facing repeal of Prohibition to manufacture a new menace, a new hobgoblin they could then courageously fight - and stay employed.  Today we giggle at the resulting propaganda - but that’s all he was making too, and the “menace” he described was just as overblown, just as artificially inflated.  What he was saying wasn’t true, and he had to tweak his computer models out of all semblance of reality to support that enervating, defeatist, paralysing propaganda - which is all it was.  Meanwhile, the Kremlin knew better.

The coercive, manipulative mentality involved, the notion that we lumpenproles must be led by enlightened philosopher-kings like himself away from our childish foolishness and toward a “greater good” that anyone with sufficient intelligence would perceive - so if you disagree, then by definition you lack adequate intelligence…  This is detestable, it’s un-American, it’s anti-Western, and it’s why Comrade-Queen Hillary lost the Presidential election in 2016.  She reeked of this attitude, and always has.


Oh, as to On the Beach - do you know the term “half-life”?  How about “nuclear footprint”?  Half-life is used as a measurement because radioactivity declines but never quite disappears, which is why the Earth is still hot!

Let's say something has a strength of 12 sparks - to use a term - and a half-life of one week.  A week later, its strength is 6 sparks.  A week later, it’s 3.  Then 1.5.  Then 0.75.  Look:  One month later, your twelve-sparker is down to less than one!  It’ll go on fading, always something there, but 0.00~ is only a technicality.

That’s what fallout does.  When it first appears it’ll fry your eyeballs, but two weeks later - a fortnight! - it’s barely there.  Two weeks after that, just ash - you can shovel it like snow.  The one exception is heavier metals, which will retain radioactivity as Shute mentions - but they’re heavy, which means they - wait for it - fall out.  That’s your “nuclear footprint,” the candle-flame-shaped plume of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” downwind from Ground Zero.  It can be fairly sizeable - but only relative to walking distance.  Not to the Earth.

What Shute describes would produce climate distortion, volcanic winter in the Northern Hemisphere.  There’d be lots of survivors, tho’ their lot might fall somewhat short of “happy.”  Without global communications, Australia might not even know it happened.  A cooler, wetter summer or maybe two, and that’s it.  No sweeping curtain of deadly hubris-punishing radioactivity inexorably blanketing the entire world, so sorry.

“Have a nice day!”

       

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I actually know a thing or two about nuclear weapons, I took Physics 137 Nuclear Weapons as one of my science breadth requirement classes in university, which was supposed to be easy enough for us political science majors but I had the bad fortune of taking it the first quarter it had a new much much more rigorous teacher. I had to buy a scientific calculator and learn how to use it! But the test at least had interesting questions about "if a x kiloton uranium bomb is detonated 600 meters over Woodland (the neighboring town) what would be the blast overpressure and gamma radiation here in Davis 11 miles away?" or some such. And he refused to grade on a curve because "there's no curves in nuclear war" but 80% of the class failed the midterm...

but I digress extensively. I must have fallen asleep through nuclear winter or the lack thereof or it wasn't mentioned or I forgot. I've been taken it for granted that nuclear armageddon would result in nuclear winter and the destruction of the planet. Inspired by your comment I did some wiki-walking and its interesting to learn that yeah, no. What cooling effects there would be are entirely from the soot kicked up and are entirely exaggerated. Interesting to learn that a basic premise of this book does appear true, that what happens in the northern hemisphere would largely not move into the southern hemisphere ... but yeah it doesn't seem like the whole north would become uninhabitable.

I think I'm halfway through the book now. It's also weird to me that shipping has completely ground to a halt due to a lack of petroleum when any harbor has plenty of fairly large sailing yachts capable of ferrying passengers up and down the coast, to Tasmania, and I'm sure there's enough larger ones to carry communications between the major points in the southern hemisphere. In fact the large fully funtional replica sailing vessels such as I am fond of volunteering on could be pressed into immediate useful service.

And he maintains that most people in towns that are overcome by the creeping ash don't try to flee as refugees but just sit there and wait for it, that seems to be in absolute contradiction to human behavior in every historical natural disaster.

But hey its a pleasant read with a full bodied bittersweet flavor and a heck of a lot better than One Second After was ajajajajaja.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Well, see above:  He wasn’t trying to be factual, but effectual.  ‘If This Goes On we’re all doo-oo-mmm’d…’

Right, thank you…

p.s.  By the way, I’m impressed that you DO know so much about the subject.  Not many do.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I used to know a fair bit, another favorite moment from college was in national security policy class when I was sound asleep but just drifting back when I overheard someone ask the teacher how an anti-ballistic missile worked and she actually said she didn't know. My hand shot up while still face down on the desk, as the teacher is like "ye... es?" and I launch immediately into an explanation of exo-atmospheric kinetic kill vehicles and everyone in class is staring at me, having clearly thought I was sound asleep. ahahahaha.

I actually blogged during college, I apparently don't have a Physics 137 tag but do have the professors name as a tag so voila, he was a source for some funny quotes.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Well, something I’d like to know, is if it’s possible to produce coherent sound.  The principle of coherent energy transmission was first achieved with microwaves, and when the laser was first invented it was called an “optical maser.”  What I want to know is if an acoustical maser is possible.  It would be huge, of course, considering the wavelengths involved, but imagine the result!  Communications - ventriloquism would take on a whole new meaning if you can “throw your voice” for miles, and it might also be made into a concussive weapon, punching and shattering target aircraft or missiles or ships at an improbable distance…

But I sense that I may not know what I’m talking about.

[pundigrion.livejournal.com]

Volcano smoke plumes recede below as my plane lifts me away. They seem...

^ I think this might be a stronger wording and does away with the "I watch" that was making you twitch! You don't need to tell us you are watching, we got that and then it is clear what the "they" is in the next sentence, which makes you next use of the word stronger.

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

Suggestion, since you hate, "I watch."

The volcano smoke plumes recede below as my plane lifts me away. The plumes seem a potent symbol for the instability of the country. I had often looked up at the ominous columns of smoke, or jumped at a sudden alarm – sure they were erupting, but the true simmering instability was written on the walls: murals of protestors throwing molotov cocktails at riot police, or simply actual bullet-holes. The following year, 2018, the political situation erupted again, pro-government paramilitary militias clashing violently with protestors, leaving three hundred dead, and man-made columns of ominous smoke in the sky.
It's inspiring to think about how, undaunted by the smoke columns both natural and artificial, people like Padre Fabretto and Vincent Cosgrove, the charitable organizations they've built, and their many volunteers brave these dangers to help the people.

Simple change, and it implies that you "see" it.

And I like this version best - even with the "I watch." Less repetition of words.

[thismaz.livejournal.com]

Personally, I like paragraph 1 from Iteration 1 and paragraph 2 from Iteration 2 best, if that is any help at all.

I haven't read any Nevil Shute since I was a teenager, when I read them all, but I remember enjoying his worlds, where just about everyone was a 'decent chap'. He had a condescending admiration for the skilled working man who was satisfied with his lot, but there is a nice and golden simplicity to his view of the world as a result *g*
I still remember some scenes from the film of On The Beach, more than 4 decades after watching it.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Yah, whaddya know, Fred Astaire could act!  Turn in a real, memorable dramatic performance!  I’m always fascinated by that, people doing something entirely other than what they’re known for, and doing it well.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Version 5 is the best version. It sounds very good. Consider sharing your writing on Google Docs with commenting permitted. I think you'd get a lot of good edit suggestions that way.

> I watch the volcano smoke plumes recede below as my plane lifts me away.

Remove the "my ... me" repetition. It's not really your plane, so maybe just "the plane".
If that's too boring you could use "the AeroMexico Airbus A320 jumbo jet" or whatever.

>The plumes seem a potent symbol of the instability simmering under the surface of this beautiful country,

Nitpicking here, because the way this is written actually works pretty well, but I might complain that this metaphor is too obvious.
Symbols are better when they remain symbols, rather than being called out explicitly to the reader. Remember, "show, don't tell."
You could use "parallel structure" to guide the reader to these comparisons.

> the instability written with bullet holes in stucco walls at ground level

I like this phrase.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah I think in the even earlier original iteration I didn't spell out the "potent symbology" but I worried readers wouldn't get it. I do like it better not spelled out though.

Thank you for your feedback. I did post it as a google doc but not with open editing. I should give that a try. I assume it'll track changes and show me what people suggested changing?

[nibot.livejournal.com]

You can share a document allowing others to only comment/suggest but not edit. Example:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15h-4Z_lS042SyqGzpCFL2ZonLWK5CJ7ILHVugVasEyU/edit?usp=sharing

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

You may also be familiar with

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass

- John Christopher’s 1956 take on the subject.  It’s also the Nefarious Scheme for World Domination in Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, tho’ you have to look for it.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ah I'm not familiar with this book, may have to add it to the list too!