Hughes: Not a Problem
Jul. 5th, 2011 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteI don’t think I’ve read Hughes writing outside his trademark and delightful “high-Vancean” prose (Henghis Hapthorn et al.), so it was a pleasant surprise to see that he’s capable of equally entertaining material in a very different voice. Or perhaps not so different after all, since “Not a Problem” is also full of his trademark humor.
Half a century in the future, Bunker Hill Sansom (“Bunky”) is a billionaire who’s grown rich embracing the notion of contrarian economics, which means that if the market is running one way, you run the other way to take advantage of whatever it is that they missed. As the saying goes, “one man’s problem is another man’s opportunity”. Thus it is that when global warming hits hard, with Pacific islands being submerged by rising seas and the Manhattan seawall collapsing to flood the city, Bunky sees an opportunity where others see only looming disaster. For him, the opportunity lies in the stars: Bunky has enough money to fund SETI singlehandedly, confident in the notion that with enough money, they’ll be able to find some civilization that will give him a product he can capitalize on, thereby further enriching him and possibly letting him find a way to rule the world.
[Spoilers] Sure enough, throwing enough money at the SETI problem solves it, and Bunky’s scientists soon start contacting alien civilizations by the handful. Early contacts aren’t very helpful; the aliens are either giant bugs (which Bunky abhors and won’t deal with) or won’t help Earth unless we provide them with “fafashertz”, a transuranic element that’s essential for FTL travel. But soon the scientists find a race of slugs willing the teach them the secret of FTL communication; how such a dialog could be conducted in real time when the distances to even the nearest star would require round-trip times of years must be handwaved, perhaps by assuming that the aliens are initially broadcasting blueprints for their ansible-like devices and that this is the only signal SETI receives from them, though Hughes should perhaps have made that explicit. To canvass all the visible stars opened up by this technology and look for potential saviors, Bunky “hires India” to man his new FTL call center. And sure enough, they do eventually find helpful aliens, giant birdlike creatures who keep telling the humans that their predicament is “not a problem” and that they’ll soon come to Earth.
The problem with the contrarian approach is that it only works if you understand why everyone else is running in one direction and where the real profit opportunity lies. The “not a problem” of the title refers both to the way many capitalists see the opportunity and miss the problem, and how the aliens (not us) are the ones who are going to profit from this opportunity. When the aliens turn out to be flesh-eating dinosaurs (something veteran SF readers will see coming well in advance), the global disaster for humans turns out to be an opportunity for them, restoring the warm and lush conditions that they loved before climate change (to a colder, drier climate) forced them to leave Earth long ago. Bunky is neatly hoist on his own petard—or perhaps skewered on his own sharp wit, as he’s immediately devoured by one of the nominal alien saviors.
Apart from serving as a neat satire of the super-engineer character (often Heinleinian) who can solve any problem through diligent application of science, “Not a Problem” reminds us that sometimes the solution is worse than the problem, and that it’s wiser to avoid the problem in the first place. All told in a delightfully droll manner, cleverly constructed to deliver a concealed and perfectly timed punchline that arrives with maximum effect. I don’t think Hughes has come up with any solutions engineers will be able to use to solve our problem, but that’s hardly the point; the point is a highly entertaining read and a reminder to relax a little and enjoy life, even if catastrophe looms. In the words of Douglas Adams, “Don’t Panic”: it’s not a problem.
Half a century in the future, Bunker Hill Sansom (“Bunky”) is a billionaire who’s grown rich embracing the notion of contrarian economics, which means that if the market is running one way, you run the other way to take advantage of whatever it is that they missed. As the saying goes, “one man’s problem is another man’s opportunity”. Thus it is that when global warming hits hard, with Pacific islands being submerged by rising seas and the Manhattan seawall collapsing to flood the city, Bunky sees an opportunity where others see only looming disaster. For him, the opportunity lies in the stars: Bunky has enough money to fund SETI singlehandedly, confident in the notion that with enough money, they’ll be able to find some civilization that will give him a product he can capitalize on, thereby further enriching him and possibly letting him find a way to rule the world.
[Spoilers] Sure enough, throwing enough money at the SETI problem solves it, and Bunky’s scientists soon start contacting alien civilizations by the handful. Early contacts aren’t very helpful; the aliens are either giant bugs (which Bunky abhors and won’t deal with) or won’t help Earth unless we provide them with “fafashertz”, a transuranic element that’s essential for FTL travel. But soon the scientists find a race of slugs willing the teach them the secret of FTL communication; how such a dialog could be conducted in real time when the distances to even the nearest star would require round-trip times of years must be handwaved, perhaps by assuming that the aliens are initially broadcasting blueprints for their ansible-like devices and that this is the only signal SETI receives from them, though Hughes should perhaps have made that explicit. To canvass all the visible stars opened up by this technology and look for potential saviors, Bunky “hires India” to man his new FTL call center. And sure enough, they do eventually find helpful aliens, giant birdlike creatures who keep telling the humans that their predicament is “not a problem” and that they’ll soon come to Earth.
The problem with the contrarian approach is that it only works if you understand why everyone else is running in one direction and where the real profit opportunity lies. The “not a problem” of the title refers both to the way many capitalists see the opportunity and miss the problem, and how the aliens (not us) are the ones who are going to profit from this opportunity. When the aliens turn out to be flesh-eating dinosaurs (something veteran SF readers will see coming well in advance), the global disaster for humans turns out to be an opportunity for them, restoring the warm and lush conditions that they loved before climate change (to a colder, drier climate) forced them to leave Earth long ago. Bunky is neatly hoist on his own petard—or perhaps skewered on his own sharp wit, as he’s immediately devoured by one of the nominal alien saviors.
Apart from serving as a neat satire of the super-engineer character (often Heinleinian) who can solve any problem through diligent application of science, “Not a Problem” reminds us that sometimes the solution is worse than the problem, and that it’s wiser to avoid the problem in the first place. All told in a delightfully droll manner, cleverly constructed to deliver a concealed and perfectly timed punchline that arrives with maximum effect. I don’t think Hughes has come up with any solutions engineers will be able to use to solve our problem, but that’s hardly the point; the point is a highly entertaining read and a reminder to relax a little and enjoy life, even if catastrophe looms. In the words of Douglas Adams, “Don’t Panic”: it’s not a problem.