ArmadilloCon 2011: Imagining a future without fossil fuels

Defining the peak oil is not simple

As we may have already reached peak oil, the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, it is timely to have a panel like "Imagining a future without fossil fuels". But before we can ask science fiction writers what will happen once oil production enters inevitable decline, we have to take into account that the definition of peak oil in itself, err, slippery. The question of whether there is a peak oil should be, "peak oil at what price", says Paolo Bacigalupi, whose novel "The Windup Girl" is set in post-fossil-fuel future. At $90/barrel, it becomes profitable to convert shale into oil. So when cheap oil becomes unavailable, people start extracting oil from reserves that were harder to reach. Since petroleum is used for much more than fuel, but also for plastic, fertilizers, and many other things, at some point oil will become too valuable to burn as fuel. We'll have to prioritize what we'll use fossil fuels for -- driving versus plastics, food, or fertilizers.

Matt Cardin, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jayme Lynn Blaschke, and David Chang. More pictures from ArmadilloCon 2011 are in my photo gallery.

With the tendrils of fossil fuels going into so many things, we should not imagine that a world with a different energy mix will look just like this one, says Matt Cardin. Our supply chains won't look the same. For example, industrial farming will change, because Dow Chemical produceds a lot of fertilizers from petrochemicals, and it will be too expensive to do that.

The question is, does the future have to go apocalyptic?

Will it look like the Little House of the Prairie?

The panelists sure hope the technological society won't go away completely, and we won't have to return to a lifestyle of 19th century farmers. Katy Stauber's mixed visions of the future do include farmhouses, albeit still connected to the internet. That way we could still play World of Warcraft while riding our bikes to power our computers. It seems she doesn't mind returning to pre-technological civilization, as long as enough technology is preserved for us to have some fun.

David Chang, Katy Stauber, and Matthew Bey. More pictures from ArmadilloCon 2011 are in my photo gallery.

David Chang and Paolo Bacigalupi hope that the tools and technology we have these days will make it possible for ordinary people to innovate solutions for post-fossil-fuel future. Bacigalupi has faith in people like a guy down the street from him, who is working on a biogas composter in his garage.

We could save lots of energy just by wasting it less, the audience points out. House builders used to (or still do) put the air conditioning unit in the attic, where it gets 150 degrees in summer. With energy costs rising, they might soon become smarter about that.

What is the next promising power source?

It is solar? Though it's commonly viewed as being cost-ineffective compared to coal, solar power costs about the same as coal, says Jayme Lynn Blaschke. The reason for discrepancy is that when those comparisons are made, commercial solar panels are lumped in with retail, and that drives their cost up. But there isn't such a thing as "retail" coal power.

Is it wind? Jayme was driving on Texas coast and saw four times as many wind turbines as last year. Matthew Bey said he knows a wind power entrepreneur -- a wind wildcatter, as it were -- who invests in this form of energy, and he's not doing it to make the planet green. This investor had a Whataburger franchise before he decided to make money off wind power. So anecdotal evidence shows that the good old free market is starting to see alternative energy as viable.

What are the promising modes of post-fossil-fuel transportation?

Could it be Shweeb, which David Chang describes as a human powered transportation system resembling a bicycle on tracks. You can go long distances on it, because there is little friction.

Could it be buses on stilts, or straddling buses, the kind that have been developed in China? (Here's a New York Times article on that.) While the buses don't do away with fossil-fuel (they are only partially solar-powered), their capacity to carry 40 times as many people as a regular bus should present significant energy savings.

Losing my writers' workshop virginity

Ah, the ArmadilloCon writers' workshop.

This is the first writers' workshop I've ever been to -- actually, the first time I've had my writing critiqued. It's like crack. I'm hooked. I want more, more of this experience!

Not because the critiquers praised my work. Of course they didn't, nor did I expect them to. I'm very aware of the flaws in my writing. But it was so interesting to have other people read -- really read -- my work and analyze it in detail, and tell me what they did and didn't like. This was so much better than reader comments I received on some of my stories that were published in fanzines and on the internet. Those were limited to "it sucked" or "I didn't get it". This was the whole new dimension of critique.

Author Louise Marley (the teacher of our group), and students Sarah Arnold and Chuck Emerson. More pictures from ArmadilloCon 2007 are in my photo gallery

As I said in one of my earlier posts, due to size restrictions I could only submit half a story. Because of that, I did not expect to get helpful critique, but what I got exceeded my expectations. To summarize the readers' comments: my ideas were interesting and BIIG. But the story wasn't so much a story as an outline. For a novel. Some comments were of a nature "this sentence needs to be a chapter", or "I really want to know how this or that happened". I guess that's not too different from the ole "show, not tell". There were infodumps in some places. Several reviewers commented that the story was completely devoid of setting and the action was totally internal -- and that's very true. All the reviewers asked me to put in more images, some sensory stuff, to help them see the characters. That's an entirely valid comment. My characters are devoid of external descriptions. Not just because descriptions are desperately difficult for me to come up with. I don't see my characters as 3-dimensional people... or even 1-dimensional ones. They are just moving points in space that draw trajectories connecting my ideas.

Patrice Sarath, the coordinator of the writers' workshop (center), Steve Wilson, and Matthew Bey (instructors). More pictures from ArmadilloCon 2007 are in my photo gallery

The most fascinating thing for me was to see how people saw different things in my story than what I've put in there. A topic I thought was secondary, they perceived as primary. And they had very few comments on the topic I myself perceived as primary -- perhaps because the primary topic does not reveal itself in earnest until the second half of the story, which they didn't have a chance to read.

A curious fact: based on the text alone, only 2 of 6 critiquers figured out English isn't my first language. That's not to say they didn't find flaws in my writing style; they did. The most common criticism was repetitiveness.

In any case, the workshop experience was rich beyond my expectations. I still haven't had a chance to absorb all the comments. What I said here is just scratching the surface. What saddens me is that the aspects of the story that require fixing are probably beyond my skills right now... and may be for a long time.

Here are more of my pictures and blog posts from ArmadilloCon 2007.