Twenty-first lecture for my students in English 192, "Science Fiction," summer 2013 at UC Santa Barbara. Course website: http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/m13/

1. Lecture 21: “It’s just good business”
English 192
Summer 2013
10 September 2013
“It is by way of a study of daily life that we can begin upon the task of
theory construction. For example, if I were to trace back where my
dinner came from, I would become aware of the myriads of people
involved in putting even the simplest of meals upon the table. Yet I can
consume my repast without having to know anything about them. Their
conditions of life and labor, their joys, discontents and aspirations
remain hidden from me. […] We cannot use only the experience of
shopping in the supermarket as a way to understand how daily life is
reproduced. There is no trace of exploitation upon the lettuce, no taste
of apartheid in the fruit from South Africa.”
— David Harvey, introduction to The Urban Experience

2. Sample final exam question
Pick six options from the four sections below,
including no more than two items from any particular
section, and write an identification of the term you
choose according to the directions for that section. (6
points each.)
Section B: Places. Pick no more than two of the
following items. For each, explain in your blue book, in
approximately four to five sentences, which text the term
occurs in and what the location of the place is, as well as
what its relevance and/or significance are to the broader
concerns of its own text and/or of the course as a whole.
Example: The Nostromo

3. The calorie corporations
[Anderson:] “Blister rust is mutating every three
seasons now. Recreational generippers are hacking
into our designs for TotalNutrient Wheat and SoyPRO.
Our last strain of HiGro Corn only beat weevil
predation by sixty percent, and now we suddenly hear
you’re sitting on top of a genetic gold mine. People are
starving—”
Yates laughed. “Don’t talk to me about saving lives.
I saw what happened to the seedbank in Finland.”
“We weren’t the ones who blew the vaults. No one
knew the Finns were such fanatics.”
“Any fool on the street could have anticipated.
Calorie companies do have a certain reputation.” (6)

4. Globalization
Jaidee: “We aren’t living in a perfect world anymore. This isn’t
the Expansion.” (56)
When Anderson arrived, the books had filled the
SpringLife offices and ranged around Yates’ desk in stacks:
Global Management in Practice, Intercultural Business, The
Asian Mind, The Little Tigers of Asia, Supply Chains and
Logistics, Pop Thai, The New Global Economy, Exchange
Rate Considerations in Supply Chains, Thais Mean
Business, International Competition and Regulation.
Anything and everything related to the history of the old
Expansion.
Yates had pointed to them in his final moments of
desperation and said, “But we can have it again! All of it!”
And then he had wept, and Anderson finally felt pity for the
man. Yates had invested his life in something that would
never be. (62-63)

5. “‘I would never participate in such blasphemy.’ Hagg
scowls. ‘Food should come from the place of its
origin, and stay there. It shouldn’t spend its time
crisscrossing the globe for the sake of profit. We
went down that path once, and it brought us to
ruin.’” (92)
Carlyle: “The white shirts seem to have forgotten
they need outsiders. We’re in the middle of a new
Expansion and every string is connected to every
other string, and yet they’re still thinking like a
Contraction ministry. They don’t understand how
dependent they’ve already become on farang.” (97)
Carlyle: “That’s the problem with you. You all sit
around, bitching and wishing, and meanwhile I’m
changing the rules of the game. You’re all
Contraction thinkers.” (96)

6. “Back to the future,” Anderson murmurs.
[Carlyle]: “Sorry?”
“Nothing.” Anderson shakes his head.
“Something Yates used to say. We’re in the sweet
spot, now. The world’s shrinking.” (148)
Akkarat: “Ever since your first missionaries landed
on our shores, you have always sought to destroy
us. During the old Expansion your kind tried to take
every part of us. Chopping off the arms and legs of
our country. It was only through our Kings’ wisdom
and leadership that we avoided your worst. And yet
still you weren’t done with us. With the Contraction,
your worshipped global economy left us starving and
over-specialized. […] And then your calorie plagues
came. You very nearly took rice from us entirely.”
(150)

7. “the behavior of these people who rule a
nation, in the old-fashioned sense, who govern
the fortunes of twenty million other people.”*
Anderson thinks of the few buildings he
glimpsed as he was escorted to the temple.
They were all dilapidated. Water stained and
covered with vines. If the Tiger’s fall isn’t
proof enough, the fallen trees and unkempt
grounds are fine indicators. “You must be
very proud of what you’ve accomplished.”
Carlyle draws on his cigarette and exhales
slowly. “Let’s just say it’s a satisfying step.”
(147)
*Le Guin 7

8. Emiko: “I do not know. Raleigh-san likes
money. But I think also that he likes to see me
suffer.” (221)
“He [Anderson]’s met calorie executives like
this [the Somdet Chaopraya]. Men intoxicated
on their power and influence, their ability to
bring nations to heel with the threat of a
SoyPRO embargo. A hard, brutal man.” (230)

9. Climate change
Just beyond, the dike and lock system of King Rama
XII’s seawall looms, holding back the weight of the
blue ocean.
It’s difficult not to always be aware of those high
walls and the pressure of the water beyond. Difficult
to think of the City of Divine Beings as anything other
than a disaster waiting to happen. But the Thais are
stubborn and have fought to keep their revered city of
Krung Thep from drowning. With coal-burning pumps
and leveed labor and a deep faith in the visionary
leadership of their Chakri Dynasty, they have so far
kept at bay that thing which has swallowed New York
and Rangoon, Mumbai and New Orleans. (7)

10. “Behind glass walls, LEDs on servers wink red and
green, burning energy, drowning Krung Thep even as
they save it. She walks down the halls, past a series of
rooms where the scientists sit before giant computer
screens and study genetic models on the brightly
glowing displays. Kanya imagines that she can feel the
air combusting with all the energy being burned, all the
coal being consumed to keep this single building
running.” (213)
“The computers down here all have large screens. Some
of them are models that haven’t existed in fifty years and
burn more energy than five news ones, but they do their
work and in return are meticulously maintained. Still, the
amount of power burning through them makes Kanya
weak in the knees. She can almost see the ocean rising
in response. It’s a horrifying thing to stand beside.” (215)

11. Ecosystem balance
“The screens on the temple walls portray
scenes of the fall Old Thailand: The farang
releasing their plagues on the earth, animals
and plants collapsing as their food webs
unraveled; his Royal Majesty King Rama XII
mustering his final pitiful human forces, flanked
by Hanuman and his monkey warriors. Images
of Krut and Kirmukha and an army of half-
human kala fighting back the rising seas and
plagues.” (142-43)

12. Gibbons snorts. “The ecosystem unravelled
when man first went a-seafaring. When we first lit
fires on the broad savannas of Africa. We have
only accelerated the phenomenon. The food web
you talk about is nostalgia, nothing more.
Nature.” He makes a disgusted face. “We are
nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every
biological striving. We are what we are, and the
world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty
is your unwillingness to unleash your potential
fully upon it.”
“Like AgriGen? Like U Texas? Like RedStar
HiGro?” Kanya shakes her head. “How many of
us are dead because of their potential
unleashed? Your calorie masters showed us
what happens. People die.” (243)

13. Gibbons: “Blister rust is our environment. Cibiscosis.
Genehack weevil. Cheshires. They have adapted.
Quibble as you like about whether they evolved naturally
or not. Our environment has changed. If we wish to
remain at the top of our food chain, we will evolve. Or we
will refuse, and go the ways of the dinosaurs and Felis
domesticus. Evolve or die. It has always been nature’s
guiding principle, and yet you white shirts seek to stand
in the way of inevitable change.” (243)
Gibbons: “That is the nature of our beasts and plagues.
They are not dumb machines to be driven about. They
have their own needs and hungers. Their own
evolutionary demands. They must mutate and adapt […]
Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly.
And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?”
(246)

14. What’s life worth?
“Pom and Nu’s muscles flex as they try to keep
the spindle from reseating itself. Hock Seng
kneels and slides a shakelight down to the girl
[Mai]. Her fingers brush his and then the LED
tool is gone, down into the darkness. The light
is worth more than she is. He hopes they won’t
drop the spindle back into its seat while she’s
down there.” (21)
“We haven’t had heeya like this since the last
Expansion. Money at any cost. Wealth at any
price.” (127)

15. Raleigh, to Emiko: “I own every part of you. […]
If I want you mulched tomorrow, you’re gone.
No one will care. People in Japan might value a
windup. Here, you’re just trash. […] I own you.
Remember that.” (159)
“A man comes to your village with a promise of
food for your belly, a life in the city, and money
for your aunt’s cough and your uncle’s whiskey.
And he doesn’t even want to buy your body.
What else can one wish for? What else could
buy loyalty? Everyone needs a patron.” (211)