OurGlass: The Update

The OurGlass blog began on April 3, 2010, and my writing process began shortly thereafter. Statistically, here is where I stand with this novel, and my Independent Professional Project.

As far as word count goes, I’ve reached a modest count of 43,000 words. On my word processor screen this translates to 83 pages. Wow! (you might say) Well, let’s just say I feel I’m falling a little bit short. I’m nearing crunch time for my personal goal to reach 140 pages by the end of October. With four weeks to go, it’s not Mission: Impossible, but it’s pretty darn close.

It’s going to take a considerable amount of energy to find the required time in the face of the rest of my course-load. But that’s what this program is all about; reaching your goal, and meeting your deadline. My IPP advisor, Chris Petty, is relatively happy with my draft so far, so that’s a plus in my corner. And, once this book is complete, in the least it will be a portfolio piece.What, no New York Times Bestseller List?  One must be realistic…:)

As a tie-in to my project, tomorrow at 10 a.m. I will be giving an oral presentation about my book, OurGlass. The exercise is meant to prepare students to speak publicly about something they know about, hence, our year-long IPP projects. Each student has been asked to prepare a speech about what his or her project is about, the reasons it was chosen, the challenges encountered, and a progress update. I’m not terrified about speaking in front of a room of people, but it certainly is a humbling experience. Not many people strive to be the only voice in the room, except CEO’s or politicians, neither of which I aspire to be. Our “performances” are recorded so we can see where we might need improvement. That’s going to be sommmmme awkward viewing. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll learn from it and better myself in the process for the next time around.

Wish me luck.

p.s. next OurGlass excerpt in one week!

Kiri Amazing

Halliday placed his hand atop Silas’ head and guided him to his side as he walked back to the car. He had been listening to the radio chatter on the transmitter inside his ear. There was still no trace of the submersible. He buckled Silas into his seat and they sped off, bits of gravel flinging from the tires, leaving only a cloud of dust behind them as the car met the asphalt.

The world outside began to blur as the trees and buildings rushed by. Halliday was silent as he concentrated on keeping the car on the road as it accelerated. The only words that had come from his mouth were to ask if Silas was okay. Silas wanted to ask what had gone wrong, but he had seen how upset his father had been at the park, so he kept silent. Halliday never said where they were going. Whatever the destination, they were wasting no time in getting there.

“Silas, do you you remember the boat you described to me?” Halliday asked, as he weaved the car from lane to lane, “Would you recognize it if you saw it again?”

“For sure,” Silas answered, “there’s no other like it.”

Hundreds of mariners ventured into Halifax harbour each day. There were days when the water traffic was so high, any vessel that could withstand the constant assault of the open ocean were obliged to remain outside the harbour. They came from all over the world; tourists, adventure seekers, container ships. It was time for Halliday to move among them, to take matters into his own hands. The hunt was on.

I can’t help but notice a certain theme that I seem to step back to in this blog; that being environmental sustainability. It’s an essential topic that will only build in interest as Earth does its best to support all the species upon it.

One of the biggest issues facing our environment is excess CO2 in our atmosphere. While many ideas out there exist on how best to deal with this overabundance of gas, I like it best when an idea comes to light that’s practically “shovel ready.”

Enter ECO2, a company created to deliver large scale sustainable forests in order to help preserve the old growth forests that remain. Ahem, of course they expect to profit from it as well. Its forestry projects are operated under the Global Forestry Plan, an initiative that puts the kiri tree at center stage.

The kiri is a hardwood tree that can capture carbon in excess of five times that of most other trees. After the first season of growth, its leaves can measure a metre in diameter and absorb up to ten times the CO2 as other trees. After 7 years, the tree can reach a height of more than 65 feet. Once harvested, the kiri can start its growing process all over again from the stump left behind. In comparison, trees such as oak or fir (popular in the building industry), can take up to eight decades to reach maturity. With numbers like these, the kiri is poised to be a major player in the carbon sequestration market.

While re-planting trees in the wilds of British Columbia will always be a noble act, the pines that are replaced can take decades to reach maturity. If three kiri trees can grow in the space of time it takes to grow one pine (and remove a small cloud of CO2 in the process), this project needs to be considered in as many parts of the world that have the most basic growing conditions.

Observer and the Deflection of Light

Fewer than one-hundred people on Earth knew of the Observer’s existence.  In his absence, Victor Booth had trusted Kent with the access code to the satellite. Observer was a breakthrough in science. Soaring in a low-earth orbit, pulse technology emitted into light particles increased the effect of gravity within the constrained beam. By adjusting the pulse frequency, the lens curved to see horizontally. Light would bend as Einstein had predicted.

It had taken Kent twelve minutes to find Khai Mohamed’s boat, The Eye of Mediterranea. Its name emblazoned onto the stern, the ocean marvel was returning from the open ocean. As the boat floated on the screen before his eyes, he attached a digital marker to the vessel on the translucent screen. The marker guaranteed it couldn’t disappear.

Now, as he rounded the bend and drove onto the dock, Kent’s nerves made him stiffen. The ship’s black hull mirrored the daylight, its twin-column dual mast stretched fifteen metres into the air. The vessel looked like a sabre afloat on the water. Kent’s vehicle rolled to a stop and he stepped out. As he walked closer, the ship’s name came into view, The Eye of Mediterranea. No one was on deck. He took a deep breath as he walked toward the platform that linked her to the dock. He considered again what he was about to do. It was no less than treason. Before his first step touched the platform, a man appeared, but it wasn’t Khai.

The best thing about science is that it is always moving forward. It may encounter speed-bumps as politics occasionally become involved, but in the very least it progresses in a five steps forward, one step back fashion. In writing a science fantasy novel one can allow himself certain liberties, but shouldn’t stray too far off the mark.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity was one of the greatest breakthroughs in scientific understanding. I won’t claim to understand much of Einstein’s theories beyond E=MC2, but I do my best to allow my imagination to fill in the blanks.

What I’ve proposed for this scene is straight out of Einstein’s theory that light could bend under certain gravitational conditions (light deflection and gravitational time delay) Hence, the satellite camera I’ve described sees at a horizontal attitude in real-time. Would it work? In OurGlass, it does, and it’s both terrifying and exciting in the same breath.

The beauty of science fiction.

The Future of Cellphones

As he spoke to Halliday, he drove the stolen car towards the bridge. Khai had timed the drive perfectly, keeping his visor down as he approached the toll booth, aware of the closed circuit cameras at both ends of the bridge. He was at the bridge’s center when he ended the call, exactly where he wanted to be. Khai pressed a button on the steering arm of the car, slid his side window down, and flipped the phone out the window like a credit card. It sailed over the railing into the deep channel below and slowly sank to the bottom. He was three kilometres from the bridge when the police cruisers arrived, sealing the traffic at both ends.

In an earlier post, To Ping, or Not to Ping, I wrote about technological development in GPS tracking of cell phones. A more appropriate question would be what might these devices look like in 2050. To say the least, phone technology from 40 years ago has changed dramatically. Back then, phones were only expected to connect a single person to person call. Today’s smart phones have web browsers, email, texting, camera and video, games, music, voice recording, and the list goes on. Our current level of connectedness would astound anyone 40 years ago. It will be interesting to see if this continues to rise, or if users will start to rebel against it and try to seek a little more privacy. As it sits even now, it could be a difficult slide backward.

A particular challenge to writing OurGlass is to include devices and settings that will hopefully put the reader into a near future frame of mind. When the subject of the future comes up, I think there’s a tendency to let our imaginations run wild with design. I’m the first to admit these settings are interesting to look at, but I don’t think many are practical. As humans continue to grow as a species, I think our challenge above all will be population management. With more people on the planet and limited space to occupy, the time will come when real world solutions will outweigh the need for gadgetry and (dare I say it) artistic invention.

Lightning Enlightening

“His name is Mohamed Aftar,” Kent said, a lump rising in his throat, “He’s an artifact dealer from Alexandria.”

“How did you find him?” Halliday answered.

“His name turned up in the past few days,” Kent said, burying his lie deeper, “You’ve been back for over a week now. He’s connected to someone you visited before you left Morocco.”

Halliday rose from his chair and went to the window, a twinge of failure running through him. The wind was howling against the window inches from his face, rain spattering against the glass. A flash of lightning exploded in the sky and Halliday’s mind flashed back to Tangier.

Lightning is the purest form of energy man has ever encountered. The bolts of electricity it produces shoot across the sky in wicked fashion, seemingly unable to be harnessed outside of science fiction. This may hold true for now, but there are scientists who theorize there is a way to capture one aspect of this wild, untapped resource.

The humid regions upon Earth are consistent with occurrences of lightning strikes. While it would be too unpredictable and dangerous to capture a bolt of lightning, there are changes that occur up in the clouds during a storm that do produce electricity. Scientists have discovered that water droplets suspended in the air have the capacity to pick up an electrical charge. In order to capture the stored energy in each droplet before it hits the ground, “hygroelectric panels” attached to the rooftops of homes could collect the energy and store it for later use. In areas like Singapore where it experiences the highest level of lightning activity in the world, there could be a burgeoning business in the making.

As always, no single solution will get civilization off of its need to power our daily lives with fossil fuels. By employing different methods that suit a particular region the most, we will be off on a pretty good start.