Hello everyone

Disaster movies are part of Science Fiction fodder. We can show alternative endings for the fate of the other inhabitants of this planet Earth, confident that we can sleep happily at night that such disasters will never happen in our reality. Such films might even have a happy ending. After all, we welcome the stars’ survival even if the rest of the world didn’t make it. The events in Southern Asia on 26th December 2004 will testify that it doesn’t and is a strong reminder just how precious the planet we live on is and a wake-up call not just to help the survivors there but to work towards looking after our planet. We aren’t the owners of this planet, merely its custodians and aren’t collectively doing a particularly good job. If we don’t look after it then when we least expect it, Nature won’t have to work hard to take it away from us...we’d have done it all by ourselves.

Environmentalists have been pressurising this attitude for ages now. We are in the middle of potential disasters that Nature itself can hand out as well as ones of our own making like global warming with a side-dash of our global dimming that kept it a little in check. We can be very generous to these countries when we ourselves don’t appear to be affected by them but natural disasters don’t choose whom they affect or kill. As such, we are all victims just waiting to happen, especially if you live near the edges of tectonic plates, volcanoes or even seasides and beaches. Nowhere is as safe as you might think.

Over the Yuletide period in the UK, we had three British Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on TV - they look at a different subject by different experts each year. Although these lectures are designed to target a youthful generation, adults watch them as much as the young to be informed on a variety of scientific subjects. This year, we saw the problems affecting the Antarctic and the global warming that is affecting that continent and will spread out across the world. The Antarctic is the gauge to what is going to hit the world sooner than later. The frozen continent is melting at a rate that is going up geometrically with ice masses the size of Belgium breaking off and drifting into the open sea weighing several millions tons. You can check up on the lectures on the net link below or do your own personal verification through your favourites search engines.

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/A/antarctica/lectures.html

What I want you to do right now is scan a print of a map of your local area and look at all points that are below sea level that lead out to the shoreline. This will also affect any rivers that do the same. Cover that area in dark blue. See if you can find a height 20 feet (6 metres) above this and all such areas cover in light blue. Anything still standing above that height is all the land you will be able to see in, oh, about 15 years time of where you live today. If you want to add to your worries, add another 6 feet or so, depending on how high your tides are for twice daily changes. If where you live can be affected by earthquakes or tsunamis add another 20 feet or so. Now, think about how much land is left around you assuming that there isn’t any left and you’re not living on a seabed, especially as it won’t get back in a hurry.

All right, so some of you think you live so far in land or high up that none of that detail will affect you. Check for any low land connected to the sea near you and the high tides are likely to make your rivers a little on the salty side so bang goes any freshwater fishing and fish come to that. Also, all those displaced people will have to move somewhere and your neighbourhood will suddenly be refugee heaven. It will also have an effect on wherever your local power stations and water supplies are as well, more so if they are on low ground.

Globally, the effect will be devastating. It isn’t something waiting to happen. It is something that IS going to happen. Some countries and islands will just cease to exist. Unlike SF disaster films, things don’t get better at the end nor the next day. Such a calamity will take decades to sort itself out and many of the things you take for granted today you simply won’t be able to do. That is, if you have sufficient resources like even the basic things like food to keep those who survive alive.

Drive cars? Forget it! Carbon dioxide emissions from them are one of the causes and probably impossible to get fuel cos the oceans are too deep. I expect aeroplane flights will be down to non-existent only under advisement so foreign holidays are out. Mind you, with the tropical temperatures and the new shorelines, you won’t want to go far anyway, right? Would recommend buying shares in cartographer firms as the shape of the world will change with untold millions of people dead and those left confined to certain ‘safe’ areas. Your whole way of life will change and definitely not for the better. What kind of world is this to leave for your offspring? We’d all be refugees.

So, we’re back to today. 15 years looks like a long time into the future. It isn’t. Antarctica is melting at an alarming rate cos of global warming. This will go up geometrically. Higher tides will be the norm initially and no doubt, like everything else, we just move further up the beach or try putting higher barriers in the way. This won’t be an overnight thing and such precautions won’t stop them being beaten. Did I say the temperature will also go up? We’d all be able to get suntans at home not to mention being burnt to a crisp.

Probably the biggest thing in its favour is that with few cars and aeroplanes flying, our carbon dioxide emissions and other air pollutants will drop off and the ozone layer might repair itself in a century or so. Won’t say so much about what is going to be left of the human race though. Man will survive but will be extremely humbled and might even suppress technological developments for decades. Everyone will forget that they all contributed to the problems that beset them.

All right. So you’ve read such messages before. The real problem is that, individually, all the charity donations in the world are worth nothing if you don’t do something individually yourselves. A lot of that boils down to petrol or gas consumption. If you don’t want to use so much, the oil barons won’t sell so much and carbon dioxide emissions will drop. Probably won’t make the oil barons happy or wealthy but how many of you are worried about that? We’ve done some strides in that direction on this side of the pond but the USA is still the biggest petroleum guzzler let alone the factories who let their unfiltered fumes out into the sky.

Many of you reading this no doubt have cut back but it needs to be seen as an example to others if more people are to follow suit. Obviously, you can’t cut down all travelling but walking or using public transport is bound to reduce car pollution. Write letters to your politicians and remind them that concessions won’t save them and to join the Kyoto Agreement. You’ve all done letter protests when your favourite SF programmes are taken off the air. Imagine the effect on your Government officials and politicians if they are stacked up with letters and after it hits the media as well.

I mentioned ‘global dimming’ in the opening paragraph. This came up in a ‘Horizon’, BBC science programme in January showing an odd paradox of less sunlight getting through the Earth’s atmosphere but paradoxically nothing significant changing. It wasn’t until after 9/11 that an American scientist was looking at the differences in the sky when no aeroplanes were flying over the USA and temperatures rose that it was global warming keeping this at bay but only just. As we sort out one problem, global warming will escalate and come much faster than previously expected. This global dimming also contributed to how the droughts happened in Africa in recent decades. Again, look around for information, like in the link below.

If you want some semblance of your current life-style then now is the time to consider and do something about any activity you have that is contributing to mankind and its civilisation’s decline on this planet. Right now, it's the only one we have and if we don’t take care of it, there will be few left of the human race to see any of it left in less than half a century.

Again, if you don’t believe this editorial, then use the Net and check around the science websites and check on what other people, the scientists who monitor these problems, have to say on the subject. If it makes you have restless nights then good. It’ll give you something to work towards in ensuring we put a check on the world turning into something we shouldn’t have let it become in the first place. We might even keep some semblance of the way we have life today.

What makes this particular effort better than money donations is because it's something we can do for free. It doesn’t cost anything other than not doing something or doing less on a daily basis and lives will be saved. It might not stop Nature doing its worst with tsunamis, earthquakes and such but we won’t be contributing to it by our own actions either. We won’t be tying with Nature as being the Earth’s worse terrorist.

Be happy. Do you feel safe? Enjoy the rest of the website before the ice cap melts.

15 years. Don’t forget.

Thank you and good night

Geoff Willmetts

editor: SFCrowsnest.co.uk

(Less Serious) Thought For The Month # 1: A recent newspaper report says US President Bush is arranging for some of his oil baron buddies to go prospecting in the Arctic. Apart from confounding the problems in the main body of the editorial, has anyone told them that they aren’t on solid ground out there?

Another serious thought: It only takes one innovator to prove something is right for everyone else to follow and change the world.

PS If you’ve survived this far in the editorial, let me reiterate something from the website newsletter and the above editorial. As you can see from the main page, we have one of the biggest SF/fantasy/horror monthly reviews columns on the Net. Our success has increased the number of books that comes in and our policy is to read everything before giving a review. You want the bottom line about what you’re going to choose to read. We roadtest books so you have some idea of what you’re letting yourself in for. That means actually reading the product and telling others what you think. For that, we’re always on the outlook for more reviewers.

Apart from the ability to put words into sentences, you also need to know how to précis, either know or do a little research on associated subjects and can express opinions constructively expressing good and bad points about the books you read. You’ll even get a little editorial help in how to write good copy. I did say you have to love books and willing to read beyond your favourite authors, didn’t I?

If you like reading books in the genre, think and show you can write a decent review and, most importantly, live in the British Isles (sorry, expense, time and distance travelled prohibits elsewhere), contact me below for my ‘Reviews Flyer’ - put this in the subject ebox and we’ll see if you’ve got what it takes. We can’t pay you but a review for the price of a book has to be a good incentive.

We have one of the most popular SF review columns on the Net. Do you think you’re up to writing a review?? If you think you can, then you’re really going to think you’ve landed your hands in the biscuit tin.

PPS: For those keeping track, I’m still about 20 months (early March 2003) behind.

With going through the ebook samples, I have removed some who’ve gotten published elsewhere. Thank you for your patience but let me know if you’ve sold elsewhere so I can reduce my pile or if you’ve changed address, especially e-mail address. I can’t give you my comments unless either is up to date. Currently, doing spot-checks to see if you’re still there when I reach your sample in the pile is making it easier on my time and catching up on the slush pile.

This isn’t much of a repeat, just to show you’re not forgotten. Those sending in ebook samples, be prepared for a long wait and read the Guidelines elsewhere on this website. They are there to help you do some of the right things and reduce the number of times I’m repeating myself over silly grammatical errors and spelling mistakes that you shouldn’t be making. It makes editing a lot easier if any editor has less work pointing out poor English which should have been sorted out in the first place and more focused on other areas of your work.

There’s an old editorial adage, if you can’t aim for perfection why should an editor nurse-maid you to that state? If you’re a writer, then you should understand the words and grammar of the job you’re supposed to be writing or are you considering it as mundane and boring as any other job to get right? Fall in love with making every sentence the best you’re ever written, read up and understand the rules of grammar. Be prepared to put a story away for a few weeks and go back to it for a self-edit. A lot of the time, errors will just stare you in the face when you didn’t see them the first time round. Once you know where your weaknesses are, they can be sorted and allow you to move a little higher up the ladder towards making your material look its best.

Please don't confuse this with my short story slush pile which is kinda low at the moment. We’re always willing to give short story writers a chance to be seen if they can withstand my scrutiny even if we can’t pay for their efforts. Don’t forget also, we’ve got a teaching ground of one page stories, so check out the rules elsewhere on the website.