direstraits
Well-Known Member
[Warning Spoilers ahead]
Obviously this will be best if there are people who've read both books, but I'd like to know what you guys think on the global warming scenario, and whether fiction is a great way of being educated in these issues.
Kim Stanley Robinson has written a trilogy consisting of 40 Signs of Rain, 50 Degrees Below, and 60 Days and Counting. Robinson, whom most of you will know via his Mars trilogy, has written this as a showcase of what the world will be like if the environmentalists were right about the effects of global warming, and the effects are being felt right now. He's imagined this world being ravaged by the weather, it's effect on the economy, with a good dose of politics thrown in too.
On the other hand, we have Michael Crichton, who famously (well, as he told it in an audio interview I've listened to) did not read any opinion pieces on global warming as he researched the issue, and came up with The State of Fear. In it, Crichton has taken the opposite stance - that global warming is just hot air (ahem).
Now in reality there are those who either realize and support what Al Gore is bringing attention to, and there are also those who call him alarmist and his environmental science more than a little skewed.
Do you agree with global warming or not? And do you think reading fiction such as those written by Robinson and Crichton will help intelligent readers get a view of what's happening to make up their own minds?
ds
Obviously this will be best if there are people who've read both books, but I'd like to know what you guys think on the global warming scenario, and whether fiction is a great way of being educated in these issues.
Kim Stanley Robinson has written a trilogy consisting of 40 Signs of Rain, 50 Degrees Below, and 60 Days and Counting. Robinson, whom most of you will know via his Mars trilogy, has written this as a showcase of what the world will be like if the environmentalists were right about the effects of global warming, and the effects are being felt right now. He's imagined this world being ravaged by the weather, it's effect on the economy, with a good dose of politics thrown in too.
On the other hand, we have Michael Crichton, who famously (well, as he told it in an audio interview I've listened to) did not read any opinion pieces on global warming as he researched the issue, and came up with The State of Fear. In it, Crichton has taken the opposite stance - that global warming is just hot air (ahem).
Now in reality there are those who either realize and support what Al Gore is bringing attention to, and there are also those who call him alarmist and his environmental science more than a little skewed.
Do you agree with global warming or not? And do you think reading fiction such as those written by Robinson and Crichton will help intelligent readers get a view of what's happening to make up their own minds?
ds
