How the World Changes
Dear Diary: Of course I'm sitting on the edge of my seat, waiting for tonight's premier of the re-make of the classic V:
In the meantime, the SyFy Channel ran the original versions, both mini-series and "V: the Series".
One of the things that struck me was a line from the original series. This hit me hard.
When the original series aired, it was 1983, and I was instantly a fan. For one, as science-fiction it originally wasn't utterly bad, at least not in the initial mini-series episodes; the aliens had advanced technology but nothing that could exceed the speed of light. There had been some recent excellent SF from some hot young authors, which had the premis that humanity as an intelligent species was an aberration, because if Earth hadn't been hit by an asteriod, the dinosaurs and their descendants would likely have evolved to intelligence and the mammals would probably never have evolved much past the size or intelligence of lemurs. Thus, assuming that evolution would take the same course elsewhere as it took here, minus the asteroid strike, all or almost all intelligent extraterrestrials would inevitably be reptilian, or "Reptoid". And as it turned out, that's what the alien Visitors were... reptilian humanoids disguised as human beings.
Then it got fairly silly fairly quickly, in terms of science-fiction. First, they here to steal our planet's water. Why? They must have noticed that the rings of Saturn contained far more water exists in the oceans of our Homeworld. They could have taken that, and probably nobody here would have noticed until it was all gone, and there wouldn't have been much we could have done about it.
But "V" wasn't really about science fiction; it merely had the trappings of science-fiction. "V" was about Resistance Movements. It was about how oppression may arrive at your door all smiles and helpfulness, and the next thing you know, you're living in a technological fascist police state with friends and neighbors being "disappeared".
In terms of that sort of plot, "V" has everything: evil alien overlords, a "fifth column" operating in the alien ranks, an emerging Resistance Movement, human Collaborators, and millions upon millions of clueless victims.
Just in case nobody's ever noticed, I have a mindset which once was quite valuable. I am what is referred to as "an informed paranoid with strong fact-checking instincts". If I ever experienced a moment when I was not deeply suspicious and always assessing risk -- and also assessing my ability to assess (danger lurks at this crux of the syndrome) -- I would know that either I was on lots of extremely powerful drugs, or perhaps that I'd died and gone to heaven and there was nothing more that could be of concern.
How did I get this way? Just lucky, I guess.
I do happen to love the sort of fiction where this sort of mindset turns out to be an asset, a survival skill.
That means that I like creepy horror, spooky stuff, and nothing is as thrilling a read for me as a good old fashioned subterfuge-and-invasion story.
You know, the sort of thing where it starts out with a few Hard Working Illegal Alien Yardworkers filtering into town, and the next thing you know, no American citizen is allowed to have a job unless they speak fluent Spanish, so they can take orders from the new overlords.
But I digress.
"V" -- the 1983 version -- has a moment when the Resistance movement is discussing whether to attack the main Mothership and risk either total victory or global annihilation by the Visitor's self-destruct "doomsday device".
One of the characters says "I don't feel like I'm able to gamble with the lives of Three Billion People..."
This was practically shocking.
In 2009, only a quarter century later, the world population is above Six Billion People.
At this rate of population increase, in 2045 or so, we'll have Twelve Billion People.
Of those, only about 700 million will be American or Canadian. About 500 million, at most, will be European. About 900 million will be Chinese. About 1.5 billion will be on the Indian subcontinent. The remaining 8 billion will be about evenly divided between Africans and Latin Americans.
In 1983, when the first "V" was televised, with a global population of only 3 billions of people, if the fictional Visitors had used some super ray gun to wipe out our technology, after a period of adjusting to going back to horse and oxen for power, about 2 billion people would still be alive and eating fairly well, on average.
In 2009, if the fictional Visitors used some super ray gun -- or simply electromagnetic pulse weapons -- to wipe out our technology, a minimum of 4 billion people would either starve to death or have to resort to eating each other.
If the fictional Visitors came in 2045 or so, and carried on as above, about 10 billion people would either starve to death or have to resort to eating each other.
And about 2060 or so, we won't need any Visitors to turn off the electricity, since that is about when all of the planet's accessible oil will be effectively exhausted.
And given the same rate of population expansion as seen between 1983 and 2009, that would be some 18 billions of people, all of whom would be fighting over each other's scraps, and the scraps of each other.
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