I began thinking of a science fiction story about a battle over a mass surveillance device not long after I got out of the Army in 2005... At the time, I was thinking of a story that involved outer space and farther in the future...
However, around 2007-2008, the story began to take on a different life, with four teenage heroes... I began to truly know my characters as human beings like you and me, trying to understand their own consciousness... And the story as more of a near-future "could happen" story. I wanted to write a plausible story, based on current technologies, etc.
The Iraq War made me think long and hard about the global resource, oil, and that of course, brought me right back to who I am and where I came from: My own eastern Kentucky/West Virginia family, my great-grandfather who mined coal in southern West Virginia during the Depression & later died of black lung & of course, the resource that has defines our region of Appalachia, coal.
In terms of natural resources and global economics, I began to feel there may not be so much difference between "a far-off" Middle East country, Iraq and its oil, and where I came from, Appalachia, and its coal. In the Army, I met numerous West Virginians serving in Iraq (historically West Virginia has sent a high percentage of our people to fight overseas...) I began connecting the "dots" in terms of global resource economics and what happens to people in fossil fuel regions...
I began to ask myself questions: What is the nature of my own use of fossil fuels? How far can both "developed" & "developing" countries go in burning fossil fuels? How much carbon dioxide can the atmosphere and oceans absorb without devastating consequences? Does the Earth have a limit? If so, what might the future look like when we come up against natural limits? I don't know all the answers, but I felt these questions were important and worth exploring...
My work with "The STARLING Connection" is a plausible near-future story that works to connect many "dots," which many people may not think about one a day-to-day basis, or may not initially think are connected.
The main theme of the book is: Everything is connected in the Full Extent of Reality...
I hope you'll enjoythe continued story & share the link to this blog post (sharing buttons up top) with your friends... Feel free to leave comments!
However, around 2007-2008, the story began to take on a different life, with four teenage heroes... I began to truly know my characters as human beings like you and me, trying to understand their own consciousness... And the story as more of a near-future "could happen" story. I wanted to write a plausible story, based on current technologies, etc.
The Iraq War made me think long and hard about the global resource, oil, and that of course, brought me right back to who I am and where I came from: My own eastern Kentucky/West Virginia family, my great-grandfather who mined coal in southern West Virginia during the Depression & later died of black lung & of course, the resource that has defines our region of Appalachia, coal.
In terms of natural resources and global economics, I began to feel there may not be so much difference between "a far-off" Middle East country, Iraq and its oil, and where I came from, Appalachia, and its coal. In the Army, I met numerous West Virginians serving in Iraq (historically West Virginia has sent a high percentage of our people to fight overseas...) I began connecting the "dots" in terms of global resource economics and what happens to people in fossil fuel regions...
I began to ask myself questions: What is the nature of my own use of fossil fuels? How far can both "developed" & "developing" countries go in burning fossil fuels? How much carbon dioxide can the atmosphere and oceans absorb without devastating consequences? Does the Earth have a limit? If so, what might the future look like when we come up against natural limits? I don't know all the answers, but I felt these questions were important and worth exploring...
My work with "The STARLING Connection" is a plausible near-future story that works to connect many "dots," which many people may not think about one a day-to-day basis, or may not initially think are connected.
The main theme of the book is: Everything is connected in the Full Extent of Reality...
I hope you'll enjoythe continued story & share the link to this blog post (sharing buttons up top) with your friends... Feel free to leave comments!
Continuation of Chapter 1:
Breaking Tradition:
Narrator 15-year-old Simon Laramie is speaking...
Yeah, most of us know soda and lab “food” isn’t real. We know it’s synthetic. But no one I know ever gets real food because there are only a few special kinds of genetically modified crops farmers can still grow and only a handful of places left they can grow them.
I heard people used to catch fish in Briarwood’s river a really long time ago. Pretty wild, huh? But most of the rocks are stained red now from all the mine runoff, so there’s no fish or crawdads or anything. The river’s kind of like how a lot of the ocean has gotten, hot and dead.
All day during school, we hear explosions where the mining companies are blasting the last mountains just outside of town to get what’s left of the coal. Sometimes the blasts are so loud you can’t hear the teachers.
Above the blasting, above the school and our town, silver-metallic aircraft that look like spaceships fly over us several times a day. Every town is assigned at least one, the cities have several. The aircraft can move in about every direction and even hover. Everyone calls them “The Drones.”
The Drones have been over us ever since I can remember. Heck, they watched our parents and grandparents too!
Most of our parents and hardly any of us kids think about The Drones much. Well, maybe I’m the only one that thinks about them, but I’m not for sure. Maybe there are other people out there who think about The Drones and what they really mean too. But because everyone is being watched, everyone is too afraid to talk about their thoughts.
How far can we go in regard to Earth's natural resources?
