ALL SCI-FI

[MetroPolly]

I wasn't sure if this should go in the scifi TV section, although it has a scifi element to it, it was really a science show.

If you never saw it, it ran for 2 seasons on the History channel. It was a detailed examination of how what we've done to the planet would continue to influence things if we were to suddenly vanish.

It's a fascinating show, and if anybody wanted to maybe start a discussion on it, I would back them. (hint,hint)

[Gord Green]

It was a good show. It explained that every trace of humanity would rust, crumble and dissolve into the earth and nature and ecology would take over.
Reminds me of the Sara Teasdale poem :

There Will Come Soft Rains

Sara Teasdale, 1884 - 1933


There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

This poem was also the inspiration for a beautiful short story by Ray Bradbury.

[MetroPolly]

I've read the story, but I never read the poem. It's lovely.

It really was a good show, glad I'm not the only human being who watched it.

[Gord Green]

Another reference, and one of the first post-apocalypse novels was Earth Abides.

To quote from the wikapedia entry :

Earth Abides is a 1949 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer George R. Stewart. It tells the story of the fall of civilization from deadly disease and its rebirth. The story was set in the United States in the 1940s, in Berkeley, California. Isherwood Williams emerges from isolation in the mountains to find almost everyone dead.

Earth Abides won the inaugural International Fantasy Award in 1951. It was included in Locus Magazine's list of best All Time Science Fiction in 1987 and 1998 and was a nominee to be entered into the Prometheus Hall of Fame In November 1950, it was adapted for the CBS radio program Escape as a two-part drama starring John Dehner.

Biological controls on population.

On the title page Stewart immediately starts with the theme, quoting Ecclesiastes 1:4 —

"Men go and come, but earth abides." For the first half of Earth Abides, George R. Stewart concentrates on a major theme for the book, that humans have no privileged place in nature and are not immune to nature's built-in population controls.

The main character, an ecologist, states it plainly, "When anything gets too numerous it's likely to get hit by some plague".

On the first page Stewart tells readers how contagion could bring the end very quickly for mankind:
"If a killing type of virus strain should suddenly arise by mutation...it could, because of the rapid transportation in which we indulge nowadays, be carried to the far corners of the earth and cause the deaths of millions of people." W.M. Stanley, in Chemical and Engineering News, December 22, 1947.

Within a few pages he makes it clear that basic biology applies to humans too:

"Some zoologists have even suggested a biological law: that the number of individuals in a species never remains constant, but always rises and falls — the higher the animal and the slower its breeding-rate, the longer its period of fluctuation[...]As for man, there is littler reason to think that he can in the long run escape the fate of other creatures, and if there is a biological law of flux and reflux, his situation is now a highly perilous one....Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens."

[MetroPolly]

Considering I'm currently getting over a cold, that's just creepy.

BTW, I've read Earth Abides, and IMO, it's one of the driest, depressing books I've ever read.

[MetroPolly]

Okay, confession time: I forgot I already posted on this, and I started a new thread in the TV board. No worries, Bud locked it, and I said he can dump it.

I thought I'd add a bit more detail to my original post.
The original Life after people special came out in '08, the same yr NatGeo did a documentary on the same subject.

Both specials and the History series are available for streaming and/or download. Soooo, I'm reintroducing my idea of a weekly chat on the subject. We would start on the special(s), then move to the series, one ep at a time. Yes, I know it sounds dull, but it's worth consideration, isn't it?

[Gord Green]

Yes, it is.

Considering that the Organization of Nuclear Phisicists just moved the Doomsday clock ahead by 30 seconds to two and a half minutes to midnight.

May be closer than you think.

[MetroPolly]

Thanks for that ray of sunshine, Gord. I'm open to options as to when we would do the chats. I'm hoping Bud would lend us the chat room.

[Bud Brewster]

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I'm afraid the idea doesn't interest me, but anybody can click on the chat room link and open it. And anyone who wants to join them can do so as well.

Have fun, kids!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Brent Gair]