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Benford: Eagle
Jul. 6th, 2011 11:56 amElinor is a former marine engineer, and is using that profession to reach Anchorage, Alaska, as crewmember onboard a freighter bearing a huge cargo of hydrogen sulfide. But she’s also an environmental activist (more properly, an “ecoterrorist”), and her reason for visiting Anchorage is initially a mystery, other than the suggestion that her goal is to stop something she considers potentially disastrous.
[Spoilers] Elinor arrives in Anchorage and immediately begins the kinds of precautions you’d expect a professional spy to do: using a specialized credit card that releases a virus into the system to wipe her footprints when she rents the car that she’ll be using in her crime; reconnaissance of the lie of the land, both physical and social; social engineering several of the employees at Elmendorff Airforce Base to learn their schedule; and wearing medical gloves in her accommodations and vehicle to avoid leaving fingerprints plus wearing different outfits to confuse her description. By the time she’s done her recon, her teammates have arrived: Bruckner, a hard-case ex-Marine who seems part of the movement as much because he collects grudges and wants to pay them back violently as because he’s a true environmentalist, and Gene, who’s quieter and more of a cipher. In an interesting plot device, the two men sneak aboard a freight train like hobos and ride the rails north inside cars that are being transported to Anchorage; apparently the railroads would rather let the hobos into the cars easily by leaving the doors unlocked than risk having them break windows and crap on the seats, but it seems likely that this would still be a simple way to get around the country if you know how to use a “slim Jim” to jimmy a car door.
Given that we have no reason to doubt Elinor’s description of her past, it’s clear that she’s been very well trained in her role and is being very well supported. The virus wouldn’t be easy to write (credit card systems have no reason to let anything other than your card number into the system), and if you had any doubt, her gang’s possession of high-tech, next-generation shoulder-launched missiles tells you all you need to know about the brains and resources behind her. But Elinor herself did most of the planning, and by the looks of it, she’s a sharp one indeed. She’s also the “Eagle” of the title: a lover of sea and sky, a loner by nature, and someone who has a predatory ability to take advantage of the unprepared combined with the willingness to use violence to achieve her ends.
The mysterious problem Elinor has come to fight isn’t so mysterious if you’ve been reading the science about combating greenhouse warming: release enough hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere, and it will combine with water to produce sulfuric acid, which does a great job of blocking sunlight. (We know this is true from studying the effects of recent volcanic eruptions.) This gives rise to the program’s name: SkyShield. If you do the job right, you block enough sunlight to slow or even prevent warming of the arctic, and since Benford claims the sulfuric acid required to achieve this goal won’t be enough to significantly affect the background levels of acidity when it falls out of the air, it seems like an environmentally benign solution. (I’m less sanguine about this given how fragile many northern ecosystems are with respect to acidity, but he’s undoubtedly checked the numbers and I haven’t, so I’ll take his word for this.)
The downside of this approach is that it reflects a long-time arrogance on the part of scientists, who tend (as a profession) to believe that once the science has been solved, the engineering will be the easy part. For a system as complex as atmospheric circulation patterns, that’s a seriously dubious proposition, and many of the geoengineering schemes that have been proposed violate my sense of how well we really understand the systems we’re proposing to alter. Benford acknowledges this in a memorable and subsequently significant quote: “The greatest threat to humanity arose not from terror, but from error.” In the absence of any better solutions, it’s comforting to know that we have something we can do—even if that something turns out to be as violent against nature (and subsequently, against us) as Elinor’s violence against her fellow humans.
Elinor’s passion and brains are admirable, but her willingness to resort to even extreme violence to achieve her ends makes it hard to like her. That’s particularly true once we see her chatting up several people from the local airforce base who she may well end up killing the following morning; she shows no trace of regret at any time. This is one of the hallmarks of a sociopath rather than a true believer, though the two sometimes overlap. Her contempt for mainstream environmentalists, who may recycle and drive a Prius but aren’t willing to make the hard choices (i.e., violence), detracts even further from any sympathy we might have for her. When she and her team shoot down two of the aircraft being used for operation SkyShield, we lose what little sympathy remains: one of the air tankers she’s shot down crashed on an Inuit village, killing everyone there. Several of the Inuit, out hunting a rogue bear, survive the crash, and hunt down and kill all three terrorists before they can escape. She’s troubled by the consequences of her actions, but right to the end she believes her principles justified even this high cost.
“Eagle” is like a far darker version of Edward Abbey’s “The Monkeywrench Gang” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey_Wrench_Gang), with Elinor possibly playing the role of Bonnie, Gene playing the role of Doc Sarvis, and Bruckner playing the role of Hayduke. (I’m probably forcing those parallels to some extent, so take this as a general comparison of the themes rather than a claim of identity between the two stories.) Though the writing is generally simple and effective, Benford reserves his loveliest wording for Elinor’s appreciation of Alaska’s beauty. Elinor’s a fascinating character, if not always in a good way. The science, as you’d expect from Benford, is impeccable (right down to methane bubbling out of tundra ponds as the permafrost melts), but he doesn’t neglect the human side of the equations, such as the notion that if it looks like we have an easy technological fix for global warming, human nature will suggest to most of us that there’s no reason to change the behaviors that are causing the problem.
Benford’s handling of terrorism is particularly thought-provoking: most readers will feel at least some sympathy for the environmentalist ethos, while still being asked to consider the downside of extremism even in such a laudable cause. (The echoes of the “error, not terror” quote are clear. The result is compelling, unlike Niven and Pournelle’s sophomoric and offensive treatment in “Oath of Fealty”. “Eagle” is the strongest work in the anthology thus far, combining skillful technical skills (writing, research) with a firm grasp of the complexities of the greenhouse problem, including the human aspects. It’s a great example of how the best SF not only tells a good story, but also explores the impacts of science and technology in a way that gets us thinking about the problems before it’s too late to begin solving them.
[Spoilers] Elinor arrives in Anchorage and immediately begins the kinds of precautions you’d expect a professional spy to do: using a specialized credit card that releases a virus into the system to wipe her footprints when she rents the car that she’ll be using in her crime; reconnaissance of the lie of the land, both physical and social; social engineering several of the employees at Elmendorff Airforce Base to learn their schedule; and wearing medical gloves in her accommodations and vehicle to avoid leaving fingerprints plus wearing different outfits to confuse her description. By the time she’s done her recon, her teammates have arrived: Bruckner, a hard-case ex-Marine who seems part of the movement as much because he collects grudges and wants to pay them back violently as because he’s a true environmentalist, and Gene, who’s quieter and more of a cipher. In an interesting plot device, the two men sneak aboard a freight train like hobos and ride the rails north inside cars that are being transported to Anchorage; apparently the railroads would rather let the hobos into the cars easily by leaving the doors unlocked than risk having them break windows and crap on the seats, but it seems likely that this would still be a simple way to get around the country if you know how to use a “slim Jim” to jimmy a car door.
Given that we have no reason to doubt Elinor’s description of her past, it’s clear that she’s been very well trained in her role and is being very well supported. The virus wouldn’t be easy to write (credit card systems have no reason to let anything other than your card number into the system), and if you had any doubt, her gang’s possession of high-tech, next-generation shoulder-launched missiles tells you all you need to know about the brains and resources behind her. But Elinor herself did most of the planning, and by the looks of it, she’s a sharp one indeed. She’s also the “Eagle” of the title: a lover of sea and sky, a loner by nature, and someone who has a predatory ability to take advantage of the unprepared combined with the willingness to use violence to achieve her ends.
The mysterious problem Elinor has come to fight isn’t so mysterious if you’ve been reading the science about combating greenhouse warming: release enough hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere, and it will combine with water to produce sulfuric acid, which does a great job of blocking sunlight. (We know this is true from studying the effects of recent volcanic eruptions.) This gives rise to the program’s name: SkyShield. If you do the job right, you block enough sunlight to slow or even prevent warming of the arctic, and since Benford claims the sulfuric acid required to achieve this goal won’t be enough to significantly affect the background levels of acidity when it falls out of the air, it seems like an environmentally benign solution. (I’m less sanguine about this given how fragile many northern ecosystems are with respect to acidity, but he’s undoubtedly checked the numbers and I haven’t, so I’ll take his word for this.)
The downside of this approach is that it reflects a long-time arrogance on the part of scientists, who tend (as a profession) to believe that once the science has been solved, the engineering will be the easy part. For a system as complex as atmospheric circulation patterns, that’s a seriously dubious proposition, and many of the geoengineering schemes that have been proposed violate my sense of how well we really understand the systems we’re proposing to alter. Benford acknowledges this in a memorable and subsequently significant quote: “The greatest threat to humanity arose not from terror, but from error.” In the absence of any better solutions, it’s comforting to know that we have something we can do—even if that something turns out to be as violent against nature (and subsequently, against us) as Elinor’s violence against her fellow humans.
Elinor’s passion and brains are admirable, but her willingness to resort to even extreme violence to achieve her ends makes it hard to like her. That’s particularly true once we see her chatting up several people from the local airforce base who she may well end up killing the following morning; she shows no trace of regret at any time. This is one of the hallmarks of a sociopath rather than a true believer, though the two sometimes overlap. Her contempt for mainstream environmentalists, who may recycle and drive a Prius but aren’t willing to make the hard choices (i.e., violence), detracts even further from any sympathy we might have for her. When she and her team shoot down two of the aircraft being used for operation SkyShield, we lose what little sympathy remains: one of the air tankers she’s shot down crashed on an Inuit village, killing everyone there. Several of the Inuit, out hunting a rogue bear, survive the crash, and hunt down and kill all three terrorists before they can escape. She’s troubled by the consequences of her actions, but right to the end she believes her principles justified even this high cost.
“Eagle” is like a far darker version of Edward Abbey’s “The Monkeywrench Gang” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey_Wrench_Gang), with Elinor possibly playing the role of Bonnie, Gene playing the role of Doc Sarvis, and Bruckner playing the role of Hayduke. (I’m probably forcing those parallels to some extent, so take this as a general comparison of the themes rather than a claim of identity between the two stories.) Though the writing is generally simple and effective, Benford reserves his loveliest wording for Elinor’s appreciation of Alaska’s beauty. Elinor’s a fascinating character, if not always in a good way. The science, as you’d expect from Benford, is impeccable (right down to methane bubbling out of tundra ponds as the permafrost melts), but he doesn’t neglect the human side of the equations, such as the notion that if it looks like we have an easy technological fix for global warming, human nature will suggest to most of us that there’s no reason to change the behaviors that are causing the problem.
Benford’s handling of terrorism is particularly thought-provoking: most readers will feel at least some sympathy for the environmentalist ethos, while still being asked to consider the downside of extremism even in such a laudable cause. (The echoes of the “error, not terror” quote are clear. The result is compelling, unlike Niven and Pournelle’s sophomoric and offensive treatment in “Oath of Fealty”. “Eagle” is the strongest work in the anthology thus far, combining skillful technical skills (writing, research) with a firm grasp of the complexities of the greenhouse problem, including the human aspects. It’s a great example of how the best SF not only tells a good story, but also explores the impacts of science and technology in a way that gets us thinking about the problems before it’s too late to begin solving them.