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    Children of the Flood
    Children of the Flood
    Children of the Flood
    Ebook43 pages40 minutes

    Children of the Flood

    By Alfred D. Byrd

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    About this ebook

    What if the West Antacrtic Ice Sheet melts? Where will we live if there are ever more human beings for ever less land? Here's a dramatic and at times light-hearted exploration of some solutions that are being proposed -- or even being implemented. Under the earth or atop the sea -- will we be able to live well there if need to arises? Might we choose to live there anyway for advantages that homes in such places may offer us? The treatment of these topics may be light hearted, but the subjects that it addresses aren't. The farther ahead we plan, the better off we're likely to be.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlfred D. Byrd
    Release dateSep 20, 2019
    ISBN9780463092590
    Children of the Flood
    Author

    Alfred D. Byrd

    I'm a graduate of Hazel Park High School, Hazel Park MI, and I've earned a B. S. in Medical Technology at Michigan State University and an M. S. in Microbiology at the University of Kentucky.My interests are Christian theology and history, Civil War history, science fiction, and fantasy. I've published a number of works, in prose or in epic verse, on these subjects.A number of my works are available from Amazon and other major on-line book distributors. I've also sold four short stories or novellas to science fiction or fantasy anthologies.

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      Book preview

      Children of the Flood - Alfred D. Byrd

      CHILDREN OF THE FLOOD

      Alfred D. Byrd

      Copyright © 2019 Alfred D. Byrd

      Smashwords Edition

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this e book. You are welcome to share it with your friends.

      This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes,

      provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please

      return to your favorite e book retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

      Each chapter of this work originally appeared as an article in the pages of The Reluctant Famulus, Thomas D. Sadler, editor. You can find back issues of this fanzine at http://efanzines.com/Reluctant/

      The cover illustration is detail from The Flood of 1838 by Johann Matthias Ranftl

      Table of Contents

      The Caves are Real

      The Coming Space

      The Underground Mitty

      But Doth Suffer a Sea Changec

      The Caves are Real

      IN HOLES IN THE GROUND there will live humans.

      When will they live there? do you ask me?

      When the melting of ice caps thrusts many from their present homes, and when ongoing population growth fills up the world’s remaining land.

      Why will humans live in holes?

      Because, at least in the short run, it’ll be easier to house humans underground than on the sea, under the sea, in the air, or in space.

      Besides, if done well, underground living can be like a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.

      My interest in underground living stems from Through the Gate of Horn, a novel I wrote back in 2003. In the novel, inter alia, a fictional science-fiction writer writes a science-fiction novel called Children of the Flood, which tells of the settlement of West Antarctica after its ice cap has melted. An event like the one I meta-wrote about could happen, but what’ll happen before then as sea levels and population keep rising, and habitable land keeps shrinking?

      Back in the Sixties and Seventies, writers of speculative fiction would’ve turned out poetically crafted gloom about such a doom. Good stuff, if you’re into downers. For me, it’s too late for Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. Still, out of that period, and after it, have emerged writers who’ve explored how human ingenuity, faced with a long-term, slowly developing crisis, can overcome it to produce a world not only survivable, but livable. Scientists and entrepreneurs inspired by these writers have begun to discuss, and even to implement, ingenious solutions to the crisis.

      These have fascinated me. Some look to the expanding sea to relieve the burden of the shrinking land. Moving humans aboard boats, ships, converted oil-drilling platforms, or artificial islands could give many new homes, as you’ll learn in this e book’s last article. Still, look up the politics of micronations to see how messy life in these new homes might be. Humans don’t live by postage stamps alone. Pirates, navies of aggressively expansive nations — the sea has always been uneasy.

      Others look to the air to house those displaced by the sea. Habitats hung from gigantic dirigibles, cities inside massive Buckyballs held aloft by self-generated heat — did someone watch that ST:TOC episode about the floating city of Stratos? Luckily for the Stratosians, the rebel miners lacked shoulder-mounted ground-to-air

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