File:Mindbridge - Haldeman - Radioactive billiard ball.jpg

Summary

Mindbridge by Joe Haldeman

Geoformy 1

"To geoform" is a transitive verb, an inelegant neologism that means, rather obviously, "to change into [something having certain qualities of] earth." The first planet to be geoformed was earth itself. Consider: men can't destroy a planet's ecology, not with hydrogen bombs, not with nonreturnable bottles (remember them?). All they can do is change it. Even a featureless radioactive billiard ball of a planet has an ecology, albeit not a complex one. Men started to geoform the earth in the middle of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, a lot of the early work was done by people who failed to see the earth as a closed set of mutually interrelated systems. Typically, they would drive around in petroleum-powered vehicles, picking up cans (which were trying their damnedest to rust and get back into the soil). Then they'd drive the cans to a recycling place that ultimately burned coal to melt down the cans to make more cans. In the process they were using up very finite supplies of fossil fuels-and incidentally gave New Jersey the most spectacular sunsets this side of the planet Jupiter.

• Post @ Twitter (29 October 2024)