Apocalypse 1906: The Origins of the YA Dystopia

Van Tassel Sutphen’s The Doomsman (1906)

p064-insertThe Doomsman opens in what seems to be the primitive past: A young man sits on the shore of a bay, dressed in a tunic. In the forest behind him are the heavy wooden walls of a stockade, a clue to the defensive nature of life in this sparsely inhabited country. But not everything fits. The young man is looking across the bay at a vague, dark outline of some tall structure, while in his hands he holds a book: A Child’s History of the United States. He is sitting on the shores of New York, looking out at what’s left of Manhattan.

It would make a great opening shot for a movie — a YA post-apocalyptic movie. The Doomsman is, like After London, one of the earliest examples of the post-apocalyptic YA adventure. The plot follows the familiar pattern: A restless boy is trying to understand his society and discover how it fell from its seemingly more glorious and technologically marvelous past. Excitement, danger, and romance ensue; the boy proves his manhood, discovers the secrets of lost technologies, and seeks to win the girl. (The gender pattern here wouldn’t be swapped until decades later.) Much of what appeals to us in present-day YA blockbusters like the Hunger Games is here in Doomsman, in a form that only feels a little dated. Continue reading “Apocalypse 1906: The Origins of the YA Dystopia”

You say “Hippopotamuses”, I say “Hippipotamus”

Apparently, a herd of hippos derived from animals kept by deceased drug cartel lord Pablo Escobar have been running amok in Colombia for something like two decades1. Unfortunately, I could not find any references to extinct South American members of the Hippopotamidae family. So, this cannot be considered an accidental experiment2 in rewilding.

The multiple articles that have sprung up (no reputable news organization could ignore this story) have heightened the focus on a key question of grammar. What is the plural of hippopotamus. In terms of authority, we have disagreement, with the Oxford University Press voting for hippopotamuses, “The Smartest Man in the World” comedian Greg Proops arguing on behalf of  hippopotami, and would-be Internet language scholars suggesting hippopotamoi from the Greek.

What should the plural of hippopotamus be? Continue reading “You say “Hippopotamuses”, I say “Hippipotamus””

The Art of Science: A Tragic Beauty

Brandon Ballengee Collapse, 2012 mixed-media installation
Brandon Ballengee
Collapse, 2012
mixed-media installation

A must-see for sciart lovers, Brandon Ballengée’s installation Collapse is on display at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC until March 20, 2015.

Collapse was created in 2012 in response to the devastating effects on the marine food chain following the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Simple, beautiful and devastating, the installation consists of a pyramid of gallon jars containing hundreds of preserved fish and other aquatic organisms. Empty containers – and there are many – represent species in decline or those already lost the extinction. A written appendix gives details on all the species represented in Collapse.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the NAS will hold an evening event on Thursday, December 11, on the topic of Art and Ecology. Speakers include Brandon Ballengée, developmental biologist Benjamin Dubansky, Ariel Trahan of the Anacostia Watershed Society, and Kim Waddell, senior program officer of the NAS’s Gulf Research Program.  (More details here)

Santa’s scientific sleigh ride

Last week a few colleagues and I took part in TalkScience‘s annual scientific Christmas quiz at the British Library, where twenty-five teams battled it out in six nerdy rounds, testing their knowledge of science in the news,  animal sounds, the chemistry of sex, ancient cures and more. There were questions about Lego scientists,  Matt Taylor’s shirt, cholera, Florence Nightingale, and much more.

There was also a bonus round, which tested how well you knew several scientific locations, and asked you to match them up with the correct latitude and longitude. We did quite well on this one, and it was my favourite question of them all. With permission of the organisers, and with some new images, here is a reproduction of the “Santa’s scientific sleigh ride” question. (And for a hint, remember that the original quiz was held in London, at the British Library.)

Can you help Santa deliver all his presents? Match up the famous scientific locations to their GPS coordinates and fill in the name of the location.

A. Darwin visited in HMS Beagle B. Powerful particle accelerator
A B
C. Life sciences research institute D. Launch site for Apollo missions
C D
E. Archimedes’ “Eureka” moment happened here F. Where Dolly the sheep was cloned
E F
G. Site of the pitch drop experiment H. And back home!
G H
GPS coordinates Image letter Location
1. 52°N: 0°W
2. 46°N: 6°E
3. 37°N: 15°E
4. 27°S: 153°E
5. 28°N: 80°W
6 1°S: 89°W
7. 56°N: 3°W
8. 90°N

You have to be quite specific in your answers – try to get to institute level!

Our team had almost everything correct in this question, which unfortunately didn’t count toward our total score.

Continue reading “Santa’s scientific sleigh ride”

The next new wave of science fiction will be Chinese

Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, tr. Ken Liu

Back in the middle of the 20th century, during the height of the Cold War, Soviet science fiction was an exotic commodity. As Judith Merril wrote about her 1966 anthology of Soviet SF:

[This anthology] contains some startling insights into the philosophical premises of the contemporary imaginative outlook in the U.S.S.R. And it provides a rather shocking reminder of how uneven the exchange has been so far.

For nearly a century, the center of gravity for science fiction has been the U.S and the U.K. But there is much in “the rest of the world” (as one anthology somewhat condescendingly puts it) that English fans never get a chance to read. More than fifty years after Merrils’ anthology, the exchange between U.S and foreign science fiction readers is still uneven, with very little foreign SF being translated. Some of the great works of the Strugatsky brothers remain in print in the U.S. And Stanisław Lem is still the great exception; nearly all of his works are available in English. But by and large non-English science fiction doesn’t really exist for American readers. Continue reading “The next new wave of science fiction will be Chinese”