Communion Of Dreams

[This post contains mild spoilers about Communion of Dreams, particularly chapter 5.]

As I’ve been doing some conservation work this morning, I’ve been listening again to the audio version of Communion, done by Scot Wilcox of OwnMade AudioBooks, and discussed previously. I just enjoy hearing his interpretation.

Anyway, at the end of chapter five, as the first team of researchers is about halfway to Titan to investigate the alien artifact which has been discovered there, the protagonist has an odd dream which is described in some detail. In the dream Jon (the protagonist) crosses a bridge, and there’s lots of symbolism which is important for how the rest of the book unfolds. For this reason, I worked fairly hard to get the description just right. Scot’s reading of the passage is great, and really brought that scene to life for me.

Which is fairly easy, because it is based on a real scene - a real bridge: this bridge on the campus of the University of Iowa, which I crossed often while in graduate school at the Iowa Center for the Book. And the fun thing about that bridge - which I used for my own purposes in the description in the novel - is that because of the way it is built, it has a kind of spring to it as you walk across.

I enjoy knowing from whence artists and authors draw their inspiration and imagery, and thought I would share this on the off chance that someone else might be curious . (If anyone has better images of the bridge, feel free to post them/a link in comments - those were the best I could find with a quick search, but they are very dated.)

Jim Downey

I’m also interested in human culture, what we do, where we have been, what we have left behind. Ruins are windows into human histories, they tell tales of the past through the architecture and things left behind. Memories are inscribed on the walls and in the discarded objects; the silent rooms and dust covered furniture recall moments when these places were occupied. Ruins are the containers of events played out, still vibrant and surprisingly alive with the memories of the past. These places are true living museums, preserving the past in its unpolished and raw form. The aging surfaces bear the etched marks of former times.

There is a layered meaning in these places, random pieces of a historic and social puzzle are clumped together, confused by years of decay. These ruins are an archaeology of our culture, they reveal unexpected artifacts of a past that seem distant and foreign. Archived in these ruins can be found the collective memories of a changed culture, the forgotten pieces of the past being preserved as if in a time capsule. Modern ruins exist in the fringe landscapes of our cities, places that were once hardwired to the center of the social and industrial infrastructure, place once the cutting edge of technology and manufacturing, now they have become faded shadows hidden behind cyclone fences on the outskirts, along old canals and abandon rail lines. They map an old system of industrial landscapes now encroached upon by office parks, expanding suburban sprawl and shopping malls.

That’s from the intro on Shaun O’Boyle’s site Modern Ruins, containing his photographic essays from numerous locations. Working primarily in black & white, his images capture the stark beauty of decay. It’s worth spending some time to explore his work.

I got directed to O’Boyle’s site via a thread on MeFi about his recent photos from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. That set mostly covers artifacts from the Apollo Program era there at the KSC, but has other images from the NASA manned space program as well. I love this stuff, always have - and O’Boyle brings a nice artistic sensibility to capturing the images of these artifacts. The image of the Saturn V F-1 engines at the bottom of this page is one of the most iconic images from the early space era. When my finances are a little more stable I will have to order a couple of his prints to have, just for inspiration.

Arthur C. Clarke’s notion of “industrial archeology” has long intrigued me, and was one of the primary reasons that I included the character of Arthur Bailey in Communion of Dreams. Reading through O’Boyle’s writings about his interest in ruins, I can easily see him being just this kind of character - someone who brings a unique perspective on the subject of how our artifacts tell the story of our culture. Very interesting stuff.

Jim Downey

What do you visualize when I say “Hobbit”?

How about “Blade Runner”?

Chances are, in both cases you had a mix of images you thought of. But I would wager that you had at least one architectural image both times: of a ‘Hobbit Hole’ and of the Tyrell Corporation’s vast pyramid. In both cases the iconic images help to anchor us in an alternate reality, whether it is Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Ridley Scott’s dystopian LA of 2019. (I’m sorry to say I don’t remember how much description of architecture Philip K. Dick had in his novel from whence Blade Runner is drawn - mea culpa.)

Odd or (paleo-) futuristic architecture has been a common device to help create a sense of setting for SF and fantasy just about forever. Descriptions in text, or images used in movies, quickly communicate that the setting is something different than our everyday world. And even before you get into a book or movie this works. With a movie poster or a book cover the visual image of architecture can instantly convey something about content to the viewer, and when it is well done it both informs and intrigues, and can come to symbolize or summarize the entire story the director or author wishes to tell.

I use architecture this way in Communion of Dreams. There are descriptions of how the US Settlement Authority offices reflect the passive defenses of the chaos following the fire-flu, of how they also incorporate some elements of the new building technologies from space colonization. There are descriptions of the colonies themselves, and of the space stations (both old and new), not to mention Darnell Sidwell’s Buckminster Fuller style dome habitat. There are even descriptions of how homes have evolved somewhat, adapting to a more communal style and drawing on the resources of huge numbers of abandoned buildings.

But the book opens with a small research facility in the ‘buffalo commons‘ out on the Great Plains prairie. I don’t give a lot of description of the station in the book (perhaps that’s something I should change . . . hmm), but envision it as a small, modular unit which could be relocated easily if necessary. Perhaps something like this. Or this. Or even this.

Those are all from a Wired column by Rob Beschizza titled “Small and Fabulous: Modular Living as it Should Be.” (Via BoingBoing.) I can’t say that I would really want to live in any of the dozen designs profiled in the article - but I am a spoiled American in an 1883 Victorian home with about a dozen rooms. Realistically, most of the world lives in much smaller spaces. And when you start considering the cost of transporting materials and managing environmental controls in space, then some fairly radical changes will be necessary.

Architecture, like any art, is a reflection of the society which produces it. Of course, until an architectural style is widely adopted it cannot be said that it is representative of society. As interesting as the various modular homes in the Wired article are, I cannot imagine that they will become emblematic of our society anytime soon. But because of that, they’d be perfect for use in, say, a film adaptation of Communion of Dreams. I wonder what Peter Jackson will be up to once he is done overseeing the production of The Hobbit in 2011 . . .

Jim Downey

Couple of items of interest from the news.

First, researchers have figured out a way to produce what I called “plasteel” in Communion of Dreams, and used as the basis for a lot of the architecture of the future. From PhysOrg.com:

New plastic strong as steel, transparent.

By mimicking a brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells, University of Michigan researchers created a composite plastic that’s as strong as steel but lighter and transparent.

It’s made of layers of clay nanosheets and a water-soluble polymer that shares chemistry with white glue.

Engineering professor Nicholas Kotov almost dubbed it “plastic steel,” but the new material isn’t quite stretchy enough to earn that name. Nevertheless, he says its further development could lead to lighter, stronger armor for soldiers or police and their vehicles. It could also be used in microelectromechanical devices, microfluidics, biomedical sensors and valves and unmanned aircraft.

Ah, I love to see my predictions actually coming true. (Not that I knew exactly how this would be achieved, but it was clear that materials science will reap a huge benefit from nanotech advancements.)

Now for the bad news:

Bird flu virus mutating into human-unfriendly form.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The H5N1 bird flu virus has mutated to infect people more easily, although it still has not transformed into a pandemic strain, researchers said on Thursday.

The changes are worrying, said Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We have identified a specific change that could make bird flu grow in the upper respiratory tract of humans,” said Kawaoka, who led the study. “The viruses that are circulating in Africa and Europe are the ones closest to becoming a human virus,” Kawaoka said.

This is unbelievably bad news. The thing which has kept H5N1 from becoming a real threat is that it is difficult for it to move from one human to another - almost all the deaths attributable to the virus so far have come in animal to human transfers. Part of this is due to the fact that the virus just doesn’t find us all that good a place to set up shop. But once it does, it will only be a matter of time before you start to see human-to-human transfers. And then it’ll be “hello, pandemic!” And depending on how virulent that strain is, it may or may not precipitate the sort of global catastrophe I envision as the basis for Communion.

That’s one prediction I’d really love to have completely wrong.

Jim Downey

Heinlein made a comment somewhere along in one of his books/stories that all architecture was basically humans just trying to build a better cave (from “And He Built a Crooked House”?)  The notion stuck with me when I read it in my youth, and seemed to play out in a lot of the offbeat architecture of the 60s and 70s.  One good example from Paleo-Future:  Maison Bulle in France, originally designed by Antti Lovag.

The problem with all such structures is that they leak.  Well, that they are prone to leaking, anyway.  Getting away from standard building design means that you are relying on the builders to sort out how to translate what the architect comes up with to a finished, real, building.  And that means using non-standard materials and techniques.  Which may be visually exciting, and ground-breaking in terms of design, but can lead to functional problems that can make a building almost uninhabitable.

For Communion, I have a passing mention that structual design elements used in building space habitats had been adapted to use on Earth, incorporating new materials and tensegrity.  My thought was that during a period of rapid exploration and the beginnings of colonization, the images of buildings in space would appeal to the culture here on Earth, and be particularly suited to the home of the US Settlement Authority.  But really, I should have a throw-away line in there somewhere (perhaps in the scene in the cafeteria when Jon and Magurshak are having lunch, looking out over the city) about the fact that the damn roof still has leakage problems…

Jim Downey

Gotta love this: a collector of J. R. R. Tolkien artifacts needed a small library/museum to house his collection. His architect decided to do the right thing, and go to the source material for inspiration. The result is a wonderful little Hobbit House, straight out of the books:

Asked to design a fitting repository for a client’s valuable collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts and artifacts, architect Peter Archer went to the source—the fantasy novels that describe the abodes of the diminutive Hobbits.

“I came back my client and said, ‘I’m not going to make this look like Hollywood,’” Archer recalled, choosing to focus instead on a finely-crafted structure embodying a sense of history and tradition.

The site was critical too—and Archer found the perfect one a short walk away from his client’s main house, where an 18th-century dry-laid wall ran through the property. “I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful to build the structure into the wall?”

Now, my wife is an architect, so I know a little about this profession, and having a client willing to go along with such a design is a real boon. And as a rare book and document conservator, I appreciate an architect who went to the trouble to make sure that the environment was appropriately climate controlled for the archives. And as a craftsman, I really appreciate the attention to detail by the contractor and his crew - this isn’t just a facade, it’s well-crafted workmanship.

Wonderful, all the way around. I can’t help but think that J.R.R. would be pleased.

Jim Downey

Via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.