Book Review: Rad Decision

Book Review: 'Rad Decision' by James Aach
(Remembering Three Mile Island: 30 years later)

3/5 Stars

‘Rad Decision’ (2006; 348 pp.) is a self-published novel about an accident at a fictional nuclear power plant (‘Fairview Station’) in Indiana in May, 1986, just a few weeks after the real-life Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union. Author James Aach worked at a nuke plant as an engineer for more than 20 years, so he certainly knows the ins and outs of nuclear power plant operation.

The main character is an engineer and plant manager named Steve Borden; his adversary is an undercover KGB agent named Vitally Kruchinkin, who has procured a job at the plant under the alias ‘John Donner’. There is a rather large cast of supporting characters.

The first half of the novel is basically concerned with familiarizing the reader with the operation of the power plant; the point of view continuously shifts from one character to another as a narrative device to expound on the function of various components of the reactor . A number of diagrams are used, in sequentially labeled fashion, to help teach the reader about the plant design and operation. A chart of radiation dosages is also provided. These are among the book’s strongest features, and indicates a real desire on the part of the author to avoid losing the reader through an overly technical description of the Fairview Station plant. Thus, by the mid-way point of the narrative, even readers who opened the book with only a limited knowledge of how nuclear reactors work should be suitably enlightened. 

This is good, because from this point on the narrative arc shifts to an act of sabotage and the increasingly dire consequences for the plant, its workers, and the population of the surrounding area. The book’s final 100 pages are genuinely suspenseful as Steve Borden and his co-workers try to halt a meltdown and saboteur Kruchinkin attempts to escape.

As a self-published book, ‘Rad Decision’ has its share of problems that would have been corrected by a commercial publishing house editor. A major problem is the book’s layout; it provides too few, and too loosely defined, Parts and Chapters. Most of the text is divided and subdivided and sub-subdivided into sections demarcated by rows of asterisks. Many of these subsections are only a page or two in length; some are simply a single paragraph. Some are set in a particular time and represent flashbacks, while others are set in the present.

To further complicate things, many of the subsections deal with characters and individual plot lines that may or may not intersect with those of the main characters. The continuous jumping from one character to another, one scene to another, makes it difficult for the reader to grasp any continuity of plot. Maintaining so many narrative lines, tenses, and dialogue sections would strain the abilities of even seasoned writers.

A commercial editor would have combined many of these overly parsed sections into unified, discrete chapters featuring a consolidated group of characters, thus making the narrative more comprehensible and polished.

In summary, ‘Rad Decision’ is worth a look from readers who are interested in a nuclear disaster novel that may not have the polished writing of, for example, Scortia and Robinson’s ‘The Prometheus Crisis’ (1975), but does offer a learned overview of just how and why a catastrophic accident could take place.

'The Breathing Earth'

There are a number of websites that display continuously updated information on things like traffic densities, national population, birthrates, infant mortality, and other demographic statistics. One of the more elegant – and disturbing - of these sites is ‘The Breathing Earth Simulation’ maintained by David Bleja. The site’s dashboard provides the viewer with a world map, with subdued brown, maroon, and ochre hues, all color-keyed to depict CO₂ emissions.

There are also little starbursts, representing births and deaths, constantly popping up for various nations. There is a world population counter in the lower right of the dashboard that updates how many people have been born, and how many have died, since you first accessed the web page.

‘The Breathing Earth’ can lead observers into a kind of Zen-like trance, as the little world population counter turns over, and the birth and death starbursts wax and wane in countries like Brazil, India, and China. Over time, you will get a creepy feeling as the implications of those changing numbers and little icons start to seep into your consciousness.

‘The Breathing Earth’, needless to say, would have been a great teaching tool back in the late 60’s – early 70’s when the Population Bomb era was in full swing. I can’t help but imagine how Ehrlich, Moore, the Paddocks, and Commoner may have reacted if they had been able to watch ‘The Breathing Earth’ simulation back in, say, ’72. I’m sure it would have had a troubling, even traumatic, psychological effect.

For today’s citizens, most of whom are unaware of the population problem confronting many nations in the 21^st century, ‘The Breathing Earth’ is an absorbing way to present a complex environmental and political topic without being didactic.

Book Review: Voyages: Scenarios for A Ship Called Earth

Book Review: 'Voyages: Scenarios for a Ship Called Earth' edited by Rob Sauer

3 / 5 Stars

‘Zero Population Growth’ was a population control advocacy group founded in 1968 by entomologist Paul Ehrlich (author of the best-selling The Population Bomb), Charles Remington, and Richard Bowers. It quickly became a very ‘in’ thing among academic and intellectual circles to join ZPG, and to participate in rallies, teach-ins, and lobbying campaigns that urged the citizenry to ‘just have two’ (children). 

Eventually the movement gained sufficient traction in the popular culture to lend its title to a feature film, 1972’s ZPG, starring Oliver Reed. Even leftist folkie Pete Seeger- always ready to capitalize on the Issue of the Moment- turned out a bit of doggerel titled ‘We’ll All Be A-Doubling’ (!) as the theme song for ZPG.

Alas, like many other groovy 70s phenomena, ZPG lost momentum as the decade wore on. As exemplified by Allan Chase’s massive 1980 book The Legacy of Malthus, attacks against the Population Bombers for being racists and elitists gathered strength, and the movement lost influence and prestige. Nowadays ZPG operates as ‘Population Connection’; still a reasonably effective lobbying group, but with a profile decidedly less prominent than in those heady days of the early 70s.

‘Voyages: Scenarios for a Ship Called Earth’ is an anthology of Eco-catastrophe stories assembled by ZPG staffer Rob Sauer and published by Ballantine books in 1971. Paul and Anne Ehrlich were SF fans, and they provide an introduction stating that genre tales about overpopulation can be valuable tools for demonstrating what could happen if measures are not taken to implement population control. The ‘ship’ metaphor is of course derived from the potent ‘Spaceship Earth’ iconography of the Apollo moon missions.

The book has five Parts, with several stories in each Part, along with framing commentary by the editor. A Bibliography of stories and novels for further reading appends each story, and there is a listing of nonfiction ecology and overpopulation books provided at the book’s end.

Since there simply weren’t enough SF Eco-catastrophe tales available at the time, Sauer had to incorporate some non-SF stories in order to provide the anthology with sufficient material. These include stories by Doris Lessing, Moshe Shamir, and Emilio Belaval. The latter author’s ‘The Purple Child’ is a particularly grim, but effective, account of poverty and childbearing in rural Central America.

Some of the SF entries are old standbys, such as J. G. Ballard’s ‘Billenium’ and C. M. Kornbluth’s ‘Shark Ship’. Other stories represent products of the ‘speculative fiction’ movement fashionable in SF circles from the late sixties to the late seventies. Unfortunately, Pamela Zoline’s ‘The Heat Death of the Universe’, ‘The Other’ by Katherine MacLean, and Norman Spinrad’s ‘The Big Flash’ haven’t aged all that well, and come across as trying too hard to be Arty and Profound.

Other entries that possess even less kinship with mainstream SF are ‘Food Farm’ and ‘Golden Acres’ by Kit Reed, and ‘Consumer’s Report’ by Theodore Cogswell. These stories are more in the vein of social satire than efforts to depict an overpopulated, future earth.

‘Population Control, 1986’, by Horacio Paredes, is an interesting entry; first appearing in Atlas magazine in 1970, it’s a rare tale about the Population Bomb by a ‘third world’ writer (Paredes is a Filipino author). ‘Population Control’ is a brief but competent tale of drastic measures taken to curtail population growth in India and the Philippines.

Alice Glaser’s ‘The Tunnel Ahead’ is a dystopian vision of the US in 2100 AD with a population of 1 billion. The cherished Retro-SF fantasy of an 8 – lane superhighway with auto-controlled, teardrop-shaped cars speeding into and out of a Mongo cityscape (a la ‘The Gernsback Continuum’) is given a cruel twist.

‘Student Body’ by F. L. Wallace is genre SF set on the earth-like planet Glade; it’s one of the more clever attempts by an author to design a rational tale around an alien ecology.

Other entries include several short-short stories by Frederic Brown and Wayland Young and some unremarkable tales by Roger Zelazny and Ray Bradbury.

All in all, ‘Voyages’ is of interest less for its qualities as an SF anthology, and more as a example of how fiction writers in the early 70’s were addressing the prominent social and environmental issues of the forthcoming decade. It’s also a glimpse into the Zero Population Growth movement at the height of its influence. Anyone curious about the literature spurring the advent of Earth Day, and the environmental awareness movement, may want to give ‘Voyages’ a look.

Population: The New Pollution' tee shirt

'Population: The New Pollution' tee shirt !

Available from zazzle.

The perfect wardrobe choice for those times when you're feeling nostalgic for those exciting ZPG days of the early 70's.

Also great for wearing to Indian weddings, your local Quiverfull group's Bible study session, or a Natural Family Planning teach - in !

Rebel by Pepe Moreno

'REBEL' by Pepe Moreno (graphic novel)

‘Rebel’ (1986; 70 pp) is a graphic novel by the Spanish artist Pepe Moreno. According to his Wiki entry, Moreno produced a number of well-received graphic novels and comics, including 1990’s ‘Batman: Digital Justice’.

‘Rebel’ takes place in 2002, after a global calamity has reduced New York City to a lawless wasteland inhabited by various ethnic street gangs who war with one another over the dwindling supplies scattered about the abandoned stores and tenements. The surviving city government has retreated to ‘Cosmo City’, a high-tech, quasi-fascist enclave run by the ruthless Kane, with the assistance of his sadistic henchman, Kessler. The Cosmo City crew periodically intervenes in the gang wars for its own purposes, usually by loosing the well-armed Sanitation Police to enforce the ‘New York City Social Hygiene Act’.

Rebel, the hero of the story, naturally enough leads the Rebels, a Brooklyn-based gang. When a Rebel raiding party sparks a violent battle with the Black Knights gang, it draws the attention of Kane and the Cosmo City overlords. It appears Rebel has something of a past with these overseers, and plans are immediately set in motion to wipe out Rebel... and all of his Rebels.

‘Rebel’ is a great read, and a great example of 80s sci-fi culture. The setting and story owe much to the 1979 box office smash ‘The Warriors’, and John Carpenter’s very influential 1981 film ‘Escape From New York’. Rebel is modeled on the punk singer and star Billy Idol, and the Skinheads gang that proves to be Rebel’s major adversary have definitive 80’s punk / new wave style in dress and appearance.

Moreno’s art is very good, relying on a wide palette of colors without coming across as too ‘cartoony’. 

I’ve uploaded some scans of a few pages.

‘Rebel’ is well worth searching out at used book stores or online.

Book Review: Nerves

Book Review: 'Nerves' by Lester del Rey
(Remembering Three Mile Island: 30 years later)1 / 5 Stars

‘Nerves’ (1956, 153 pp.), a novel about an accident at a nuclear power plant, was expanded from a story Lester del Rey published in 1942. This paperback edition appeared in 1970 and features an arresting cover illustration by Dean Ellis.

The story takes place in the late 20th century in the medical clinic of the National Atomics Products plant in Kimberly, Missouri. There, the senior physician, Roger Ferrell, and his younger assistant, Jenkins, deal with the occasional case of radiation exposure and trauma suffered by the plant’s ‘Atomjacks’. Things are not looking up for the atomic products industry; a serious accident at a Croton, New York plant has turned public opinion against locating the plants close to inhabited areas.

In an effort to curry favor with an influential politician, Palmer, the plant’s manager, orders intensive production of something called ‘Isotope 713’ which is used to kill boll weevils (!) infesting Representative Morgan’s home district, a Southern cotton-growing state. Unfortunately the stepped-up production of the isotope results in the untoward generation of something called ‘Isotope R’. This isotope is highly reactive, and an explosion partially destroys one of the plant’s ‘converters’ (i.e., reactors). Soon what remains of the building is afire, magma is dribbling out onto the grounds of the plant, and clouds of Isotope R are seeping out from the interior of the reactor and dissolving whatever structure remains. But that’s not the worst of it; Isotope R is capable of decaying into a third isotope, termed 'Mahler’s Isotope', of which the detonation of a thimbleful will level the entire state of Missouri.

‘Nerves’ is an awful book. It’s clear that del Rey gave a lackadaisical effort when he expanded the original short story to cash in on the hardbound SF novel market that was rising by the mid-50s. The writing is riddled with poor grammar and even poorer syntax. The dialogue is clumsy and filled with cringe-inducing mannerisms; speakers say things ‘jerkily’, turn their heads ‘jerkily’, and end their remarks with the construction “…. ,even.”

By the mid-50s, even a modicum of effort on del Rey’s part would have allowed him to provide an updated scientific underpinning for the operation of a nuclear power plant, and a rationale for an accident of catastrophic proportions. However, he seemed content to recycle the lame sci-fi concepts (‘Isotope R’, ‘Mahler’s Isotope’, etc.) he used in the 1942 story.

Sometimes an engaging plot can rescue a novel from poor writing, but that’s simply not the case with ‘Nerves’. Most of the narrative centers on the doctor’s efforts to tend to patients with ‘radioactive’ lodged in their tissues; too much 'radioactive', and the afflicted lapse into spastic fits that require ‘neo-heroin’ and curare treatments (!). The happenings at the doomed reactor, while central to the story, are poorly communicated, and the book loses any momentum it has gained when del Rey focuses the narrative on the antics of Doc Ferrell and company.

In summary, even when making allowances for the fact that much of mid-50's SF writing was still en route to acquiring the stylistic skill taken for granted in 'conventional' prose, ‘Nerves’ is a poor example of a novel. I can only recommend it to those wishing to complete their collection of Lester del Rey publications.

Book Review: In the Drift

Book Review: 'In the Drift' by Michael Swanwick
(Remembering Three Mile Island: 30 years later)

4 / 5 Stars

'In the Drift' (195 pp.) was published by Ace Books in February 1985 under its 'Science Fiction Specials' imprint. The cover art is by Ron Lieberman. Subsequent printings were made by Ace Books in 1987, and in the UK, in 1989 by Legend.

'Drift' is a fixup of several stories that Swanwick first published in the early 1980s in genre magazines such as Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and anthologies such as Universe 11.

'Drift' posits a scenario in which the reactor at Three Mile Island experienced a catastrophic meltdown in March 1979. The novel is set in Pennsylvania, circa 2079, and the central and southern portions of the state are thinly populated wastelands contaminated by fallout (the ‘Drift’ of the title). The United States government has collapsed, leaving various regional governments and satrapies in its place. 

Philadelphia is the nearest metropolis to the Drift; it’s governed by the Mummers, a neighborhood organization that in the pre-meltdown days staged New Year's Day parades, and served as something of a clandestine force in city politics. The main protagonist of the novel is Keith Piotrowicz (pr. 'pet-ro-vich'), a somewhat aimless young man who works as a truck driver, toting garbage and toxic waste from Philly out to dumping grounds in the Drift.

The initial chapter, 'Mummer's Kiss', sees Keith learning perhaps too much about the nature of the Drift than is wise; there is an emphasis on action and intrigue that makes this the best chapter in the book. 

The remaining chapters focus on characters such as Sam, a 'vampire' girl whose mutated intestines cannot digest any food other than blood; Vicky, a girl whose family resides in the margins of the Drift; Esterhazy, a dwarf scientist researching the means of survival in the fallout zone; and Patrick Cruz O'Brien, a naive reporter from Boston who decides to chronicle the increasing tension between the population of the Drift, and those in power who desire to exploit the territory for the benefit of influential political and economic interests. 

These characters and their sub-plots culminate in events that will dictate the future of what is left of the Drift, and by extension, the United States..........

While Swanwick was publishing and garnering critical praise at the same time as the flowering of the Cyberpunks in the mid - 80s, and is often included among their ranks, his writing is much less wordy than that of Gibson, Shirley, Shepard, or even Sterling. However, in my opinion, Swanwick is just as adept as those authors at conveying atmosphere and setting, despite his comparatively restrained exposition. 

'In the Drift' is one of the best SF novels to emerge from the 80s (and, by extension, the Cyberpunk movement). Every time I cross the I-83 bridge into Harrisburg and I look south at the Susquehanna River, towards Middleton, and I see the far-off silhouette of the cooling towers at TMI, the strange, alternate future Pennsylvania of the 'Drift' readily comes to mind.....

Remembering Three Mile Island: 30 Years Later
March 28, 1979 - March 28, 2009

It’s the 30-year anniversary of the nation’s worst nuclear disaster: the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear reactor unit 2 at Middletown, PA on Wednesday March 28, 1979.

I was 18 at the time, and attending college and working at a local grocery store part-time. I remember hearing about ‘problems’ at the reactor, but TMI was located way far away near Harrisburg, a good three hour-drive south from New York’s Southern Tier. So I didn’t feel particularly alarmed. The news announcements tended to reiterate a reassuring message from the plant operators (and by extension the nuclear power industry): the reactor is safely contained, no radiation had been released, no need to panic, etc., etc. Of course, playing in the theatres at that time was ‘The China Syndrome’ with Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, in which a fictional California reactor undergoes a near-meltdown, an event which is covered up by the mendacious plant operators. So public awareness of potential nuclear disasters had been heightened.

Over the next few days it became clear that there had indeed been a major accident at the plant, and a significant amount of radiation had been discharged into the atmosphere. It was also clear that the plant operators had underestimated the severity of the damage to the reactor core, and things had come frighteningly close to a genuine disaster. Realization that a partial (i.e., 50 %) meltdown had taken place was not attained until 1982 when a remotely manipulated video camera was used to examine the reactor core.

With the advent of the thirty-year anniversary of the TMI accident, here at the PorPor Books Blog we'll take a look over the course of next month at several SF / thriller novels that deal with nuclear accidents, as well as some nonfiction accounts about rad exposure and its (gruesome) consequences.

Grab your Geiger-counters, your potassium iodide, your Neupogen, and your rad suit. It's time to step into the Zone of Contamination ......

Unchecked Fecundity

Unchecked Fecundity: the 'Quiverfull' Movement !

An interesting article at the March 17, 2009 Newsweek site about the bizarre 'Quiverfull' movement among some fundamentalist Christians. Basically, the idea is to abstain from any form of birth control and just crank out the kids - or, in Quiverfull lingo, 'blessings'. The Duggars of TLC's '18 and Counting' reality series are the best-known proponents. Obviously, a philosophy in conflict with that of the neo-Malthusians and Population Bombers !

illustration from Dorie Clark 's Portland Phoenix article

Book Review: Famine 1975 !

Book Review: 'Famine 1975 !' by William and Paul Paddock3 / 5 Stars

In 1964 the Paddock brothers – William, an agronomist, and Paul, a diplomat – published ‘The Hungry Nations’, their neo-Malthusian analysis of the world population expansion and the ability – or inability- of grain-producing nations to meet the challenges of more mouths to feed. 

By writing ‘The Hungry Nations’, the Paddocks were clearly trying to site themselves as the newest and most attention-worthy of the ‘futurologists’ (the term was really not in use in ’64 but seems apt) who previously had mined neo-Malthusianism for fame and fortune: William Vogt in 1948 with ‘The Road to Survival’, and Harrison Brown with his ‘Challenge of Man’s Future’ (1954).

I haven’t read ‘The Hungry Nations’ and I haven’t been able to determine what sort of reception it got, but evidently the Paddocks felt it didn't get the readership that it deserved, because just three years later, in 1967, they published a similar book, this time with a much more provocative title: ‘Famine 1975 ! America’s Decision: Who Will Survive ?’ (Little, Brown, & Co., 276 pp).

Perhaps it was the unapologetically neo-Malthusian tenor of the title, or the social mood of the day was more receptive to the Paddock’s entreaties, but ‘Famine’ definitely created a stir and along with Vogt’s book influenced Paul R. Ehrlich to write ‘The Population Bomb’, which was a best-seller and a very influential book when it was published in 1968.

‘Famine’ is organized into three parts, each part having several chapters. Part One, “Inevitability of Famine in the Hungry Nations’, is a fast-moving overview of the world population situation ca. 1966, and sets the tone for the rest of the book’s main arguments: namely, the world’s grain-producing nations will be unable to meet the demand occasioned by the Third World’s burgeoning hordes. All efforts to improve crop yield in developing countries – be they scientific, economic, cultural, or demographic – are destined to fail , and by the mid-70s catastrophic famines will take place in many of these nations.

Part Two, ‘Nor Can the Resources and Talents of the Developed World Avert Famine from the Hungry Nations’ argues that despite impressive advances in crop yields, the developed world will be incapable of providing sufficient emergency grain relief to the starving countries. There is a cogent overview of the US PL 480 program (renamed ‘Food for Peace’ in 1966) which throughout the late 50s and early 60s shipped substantial amounts of donated grain to 111 countries and essentially kept millions of people in Pakistan and India from starving. Most Americans were, and are, ignorant of the scale and scope of the PL 480 program, but it was responsible for the enormous growth in what is the present-day Foreign Aid Industry.

The Paddocks were aware of Norman Borlaug’s efforts to breed high-yield wheat varieties at the time they wrote ‘Famine’, but in their estimation the ‘Green Revolution’ would be inadequate to save countries like India, the Philippines, Egypt, or Haiti from forthcoming disaster.

The final Part, ‘Potential Role of the United States During the Time of Famines’ is the most overtly Malthusian portion of the book. The Paddocks define the term ‘triage’ and propose to apply it to the hungry nations ca. 1975. Egypt, India, and Haiti will be declared ‘can’t be saved’ and left to starve, since the amount of aid necessary to bail out their malnourished millions will be so great as to leave little for anyone else. The Gambia and Libya are ‘walking wounded’ who can survive without immediate aid. Pakistan and Tunisia will be the beneficiaries of US food aid, if only because they have made some effort to implement population control campaigns and have a sufficiently robust political structure to make them worth saving.

Needless to say, the concept of letting millions of brown, black, and yellow-skinned people starve to death in order to save a select fraction deemed most Worthy was, and is, controversial and to modern-day observers the Paddocks are nothing less than bigoted and racist white men playing at God.

But it should be noted that in 1967 the Paddocks were by no means alone in forecasting dreadful times for the world’s poor. A sizeable number of their contemporary statesmen, agricultural scientists, social scientists, and demographers shared – if more demurely than the Paddocks – the idea that eventually the US would have to play God and provide food aid only to those nations with the best chance of surviving a famine.

As we know, the predicted 'Famine 1975 !' never took place, due in part to the advent of Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution, and some adroit, last-minute changes to their agricultural economies by the Pakistanis and Indians. William Paddock produced another book in 1976, titled 'Time of Famines: America and the World Food Crisis', which I have not read. 

Presumably, in 'Time of Famines' Paddock addressed the failure of his predictions in 'Famine 1975 !'. But I also would not be surprised if Paddock stated that the predictions of 1967 continued to loom, perhaps at a later date than the mid-1970s.  

It’s particularly interesting to look back at ‘Famine 1975 !’ and other neo-Malthusian manifestos of the 60s and 70s, now that food availability and world hunger are going hand-in-hand with the concern over global warming. 

As in October 2023, I write an updated version of this review, Time magazine - which now is simply an online news portal, one of many such competing for Clicks - has a provocative story posted. 

Maybe the Paddocks weren’t so wrong after all. We shall see ?!