"And the weatherman says something’s on the move…."

The climate is what you expect; the weather is what you get.

Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

Texas is currently dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, which made its landfall late on Friday with winds of 130 miles an hour and torrential rains. So far eight fatalities have been reported, and the region has been devastated by the combination of wind, rain and flooding.*

This kind of catastrophe seems to be the new normal of climate and weather in the new millennium, and it may well be that as time goes on, unchecked global climate change will continue to worsen the situation.  Hurricanes could become stronger, and the gaps between them shorter, until ultimately an constant stormfront gnawed sullenly at the Eastern coast of the United States.

What option would the future United States have when faced with an opponent of this magnitude? 

Retreat.

In that future, the United States finally abandons the East Coast, moving everything and everyone 100 miles inland.  However, the US economy depends on a ceaseless flow of seaborne cargo, so the waterfront must remain open.  The result:  Festung America - its ports bunkered emplacements of concrete and steel, like a Maginot line around a beleaguered country. And, like the Maginot Line, ultimately a futile gesture, outflanked as tornadoes brutally march across the American Midwest, and temperatures in California continue to climb above this year's record high of 125° F.

Remember when this sort of thing was more like science fiction?

- Sid

P.S. For some excellent reading in which weather conditions are part of the plot rather than the background to the story, I strongly recommend that you pick up Heavy Weather, by Bruce Sterling, and The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi.

* It's getting harder and harder to say anything that doesn't sound trite in terms of support and sympathy, there have been so many disasters in the past few years that it feels like everything has been said. I guess the simplest things are still the most true: good luck.  You are all in everyone's thoughts.

"Once upon a time there was light in my life..."

 

10:17 PDT - total eclipse starts.

2:47 EDT - total eclipse ends.

World did not come to an end - check.

Trump still president - check.

Oh well, you win some, you lose some....

- Sid

"Not that it's a B-52 in outer space."

"We spent weeks and weeks building it up, encrusting the set with pipes and wires and switches and tubing and just about anything we could lay our hands on.  Then we painted it military green and began stenciling labels on everything. Ridley came back from the States and said, 'That's it, you've got it,' and then told us to keep going."

Alien Art Director Roger Christian, The Book of Alien

My workplace has recently retired the two simulators that we were using for crane training. (If you're curious, we replaced them with actual cranes - it's actually more cost effective to buy a crane solely for the purposes of training rather than disrupting the regular flow of work by having trainees operate production equipment.)

The simulators have been torn down, and our facilities manager has invited bids from anyone in the company who want the elements of the unit for their own use.

I took a look at the bits and pieces that are up for grabs, and my first thought was that if I bought everything in the room, I would have a damn good start on turning our apartment into something very much like the bridge of the Nostromo, the spaceship from the original 1979 Alien film.

Swiss artist H. R. Giger's unique designs for the alien spaceship and the titular xenomorph tend to receive most of the attention when Alien is discussed, but it's impossible to ignore the strength of the design and art direction for the ship which is the backdrop for the action.

The initial designs were created by two of Britain's premier conceptual artists, Ron Cobb and Chris Foss, with the final look of the ship's interior based primarily on Cobb's artwork.  Cobb describes himself as "a frustrated engineer" and as such his designs are solidly based in practical reality. Cobb's design philosophy is aimed at enhancing the story rather than conflicting with it:

I resent films that are so shallow they rely entirely on their visual effects, and of course science fiction films are notorious for this.  I've always felt that there's another way to do it:  a lot of effort should be expended toward rendering the environment of the spaceship, or space travel, whatever the fantastic setting of your story should be - as convincingly as possible, but always in the background.  That way the story and the characters emerge and they become more real. If you were to set a story on an ocean liner, there would be bits of footage to explain what the ship was like docked or at sea, but it would remain at the background of the story.  It should be the same with science fiction.

The concepts were combined and refined by art director Roger Christian to create the final look that gives the movie its gritty, realistic feel.

 

"Ridley showed us Dr. Strangelove, and he kept saying, "That's what I want.  Do you see?  Not that it's a B-52 in outer space, but it's the military look.' You can't really draw it...but I knew what he was saying because I had done it in Star Wars, so I said...'Let's have a go at it.' "

In order to make the set as believable as possible, every control on the bridge had a practical function, so that if an actor hit a swich, it would have an effect - a light would go on or off, a view would change, and so on.  The set was deliberately built to have a ceiling low enough to be visible, which combined with the fighter-bomber influenced overhead consoles to give the bridge a tight, claustrophic feel.

I can easily see how our apartment hallway would change into one of the ship's corridors, the second bedroom could be the escape craft set, and the living room would be the perfect site for the bridge of the Nostromo.  Heck, there's even a cat to fill in for Jones, the ship's feline mascot, although Jaq is a bit more solidly built than his movie alter ego.  Now all I have to do is convince Karli that this is something that we want to do to our home.  Gosh, that seems easy enough...

- Sid