Like "Let There Be Light" in Robert Heinlein's Future History, this is a story about a new source of cheap energy. Someone might summarize the technical details and economic ramifications. Not me.
"Autumn, the New England fall of rain and chill whistling wind, smoky days and flame-like leaves and the far wild honking of southbound geese."
We are on familiar territory here, especially with the "chill whistling wind." However, the paragraph continues by outlining human activities:
"The crash came in September: a reeling market hit bottom and stayed there. Gasoline sales were down twenty-five per cent already, and the industry was laying men off by the hundreds of thousands. That cut out their purchasing power and hit the rest of the economy."
A newly unemployed man who remembers the breadlines of thirties tries to kill the inventor of the destabilizing factor, capacitite.
During the depression, there are:
"...a leaden sky and a small whimpering wind."
As ever, a whimpering wind exactly expresses what is going on for the human characters.
And I thought that a leaden sky had played a significant role in James Blish's Black Easter:
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Now I'm wondering what a "leaden monotone" sounds like? A kind of low, dreary, "heavy" mumble?
Merry Christmas! Sean
Good question. "Heavy," I suppose.
The name "capacitite" and the mention of gasoline sales dropping, makes me suspect it is not so much a cheap *source* of energy as a cheap and compact way of *storing* energy. This is before reading any part of the story.
That would improve the economics of almost any energy source relative to petroleum, since power from sunlight or wind or hydroelectricity or nuclear reactors etc. can then be stored compactly to run vehicles or power any off grid small settlement.
This reminds me of my thoughts about what happens on earth after the "Hail Mary" leaves in "Project Hail Mary". We don't get any information about that in the book except that Eridians detect that the sun's output goes back up to normal, so they know that human civilization stays advanced enough to do something useful with the Taumeba when the 'Beatles' bring it back to the solar system.
There is room for a lot of stories about humanity dealing with the dimming sun and the effects on civilization of the energy storage capacity of Astrophage.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: One thing to do is watch for Anderson using similar metaphors in his stories.
Jim: I like that, inventing a really efficient means of storing energy.
I did read PROJECT HAIL MARY, THE MARTIAN, and ARTEMIS.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Electrical energy storage is the weakness of intermitten sources like wind and solar. Either you have to build enormous numbers across continents linked by a transmission grid, or you have to find a cheap way of storage. A really cheap, efficient form of electrical energy storage would be profoundly disruptive, just as Anderson points out.
We've been getting a steady drop in storage costs, but nothing so drastic.
Note that electrical energy has to be available -on demand- to be effective.
Capacitite IS storage, not source.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A really efficient, cheap means of storing energy in large quantities would be profoundly disruptive--in beneficial ways. Exactly as how the internal combustion engine freed us from needing horses, donkeys, and mules--or oxen!
To say nothing of no longer needing to worry about how to dispose of millions of dead horses/donkeys and millions of tons of manure.\
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean: mid-to-late Tokugawa Japan had a system that recycled all animal and human waste as fertilizer for farmers. No high tech needed, just a willingness to put it into operation and lots of organization.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But that required an autocratic Shogunate willing to harshly coerce Japanese into doing that cleaning up. But I agree analogous punitive measures had to be enforced in Western nations if they wanted to get serious about public health by the late 19th century.
Merry Christmas! Sean
"profoundly disruptive--in beneficial ways"
Beneficial to most. Cutting the use of petroleum will harm those whose income comes from providing petroleum products to people who are willing and able to pay for those products. "One man's cost is another man's income."
From Paul's comments on the story "Snowball" this is a major plot point.
This isn't really touched on in "Project Hail Mary". It's rightly rather overshadowed by the worries about the sun dimming.
The guy who comes up with the 'blackpanel' idea seems to want all of it in the Sahara, but I thought there would be good reason to put significant quantities in the other hot desert regions of the world also. Yes, the Sahara is the largest area of hot desert, but the logistics of setting up blackpanel would be easier near existing transportation infrastructure and at least some of those other hot deserts have more roads. Putting some roads into the southern parts of the Sahara would benefit the countries there which are now the poorest countries on the planet, but I see no reason to make those countries the *only* places to put black panel there. Every country with some hot desert is going to want in on the economic benefits of generating astrophage there, and every country that doesn't have hot desert will want as many separate countries making astrophage as possible to make a cartel in astrophage difficult to maintain.
Lots of astrophage suppliers would mean the governments of those hot desert countries would have to find ways to use the astrophage generated there to benefit all their people rather than just the elite of the country. See 'resource curse'.
Also Merry Saturnalia to all ;)
Kaor, Jim!
Exactly, you touched on one of the most important principles of free enterprise economics when it's allowed to function: creative destruction. Dominant new inventions/technologies sweeps away old, obsolete technologies. Those who want to benefit/profit from the astrophage seen in PROJECT HAIL MARY will have to adapt to make use of it. The more who do that the harder it would be for a cartel to monopolize the new technology.
Btw, I think there would still be a market for petroleum products, esp. in the chemistry industry.
Merry Christmas! Sean
I've had the thought that given some practical alternative to petroleum for powering vehicles, among the last petroleum producers left might be the Athabasca Oil Sands producing asphalt for road paving. Though I concede that useful products other than fuels can be made from the lighter fractions of petroleum.
Note that tech innovation destroys -particular- jobs, but increases employment overall. Predictions that vast chunks of the population would be thrown out of work have always been wrong, disruptive though innovation has been at times.
Kaor, Jim and Mr. Stirling!
Jim: And one advantage of using asphalt is that as much of 80% of asphalt paving for roads can be reheated and reused when being repaired. "Efficient," as Ciara (from Stirling's BLACK CHAMBER books) might say.
Mr. Stirling: Exactly, which is why I get so angry at the fools who oppose technology like nuclear power, or oppose new space tech.
Happy New Year! Sean
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