Hot Earth Dreams Sample
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November 3, 2015, 2:44 am
Filed under: book, futurism, Hot Earth Dreams, Real Science Content, Speculation | Tags: books, ebooks
Filed under: book, futurism, Hot Earth Dreams, Real Science Content, Speculation | Tags: books, ebooks
Well, I was hoping to get that book out by now, but thanks to life intervening and Ol’ BigMuddy doing something interesting with the formatting, not to mention another round of copy editing, I’m planning to release it November 15, although that’s a soft deadline. The release will be a paperback version and a Kindle version, both available on Ol’ BigMuddy, in as many markets as I can get it into.
To whet your appetites, here’s a pdf sample from the paperback. Enjoy!
(update: you can see where to buy it here)
18 Comments so far
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Putting the life back in science fiction 
I look forward to reading the entirety.
Comment by a scruffian November 3, 2015 @ 4:13 amI enjoyed this sample. I liked the introduction and the proposed approaches, including the zen-like issue of getting past binary thinking. The informal style works for me too, rather like a fireside discussion.
Have you got any plans to try to market this book so that it doesn’t get lost in the noise?
One quibble – the title. “Dreams” doesn’t quite have the right connotation to me. I assume there is a reason for its use that is escaping me.
Comment by Alex Tolley November 4, 2015 @ 3:29 pmThanks Alex.
Admittedly, marketing it is going to be somewhat difficult, but I’m hoping to get it blurbed by some more famous people and to get the word out online through various forums. One nice thing about self-publishing is that changing the cover to reflect incorporate blurbs is straightforward, as is fixing simple mistakes in the text.
As for the title, it’s about marketing too. I’d considered many other titles, only to find out that (in one case) dozens of other people had already used them. No one else has used Hot Earth Dreams, and that makes it easy to find on searches. The title also captures the essential fact that this is speculation, not prophecy, and certainly not dogma , and I hope no one loses sight of that. The point of this book is to make it easier for everyone to understand what a climate changed Earth might look like, what that will do to our descendants, and how they’ll cope.
Comment by Heteromeles November 4, 2015 @ 7:55 pmI’ve seen your comments on Charlie’s Diary and always enjoyed them so it was really interesting to see your ideas in more detail. I found the sample really readable and thought provoking, albeit based on a quick scan during a lunch break. I look forward to seeing more 🙂
Comment by John Kent November 4, 2015 @ 8:51 pmHere’s a thought I got from your discussion about ocean shipping:
You argue that it will be hard to do shipping when ports drown quick and quicker than expected. But if we need ocean shipping, then we will find a way to load and unload cargoes that does not require a port city. Perhaps a container ship could quickly unload to a floating warehouse which one way or another sends containers ashore when their transport arrives.
We built our current port cities the way we did because we could depend on the oceans not to rise. We can find other ways.
I don’t know the constraints. Is it better to have smaller ships so that in catastrophic weather some of them are not lost, or larger ships that are stronger and harder to destroy? Submarines are expensive but might be used for high-value cargo. Surface ships face rogue waves etc, and apparently submarines are far less likely to run into destructive shear forces.
Comment by J Thomas November 5, 2015 @ 12:32 amGreat stuff, and VERY much needed! I figured your book would be excellent from the quality and thoughtfulness of both your blog posts and your comments on Charles Stross’s blog. What I’ve read so far has outdone my high expectations by about a thousandfold. You’ve gone places I haven’t seen ANYONE else dare to go, and put pieces together that other people haven’t. Awesome stuff!
Nitpick: If I did my math right, there’s a misplaced decimal on page 18 of the PDF, where 11 million should be 11,000. Which means the 0.0000729% figure should be 0.0007%.
Also, I suggest you add to your PDF your website URL, and a link where people can sign up for email notification of your book’s release.
Comment by Joy Livingwell November 5, 2015 @ 3:47 amThank you Joy! I double-checked the calculation, and you’re right, so thank you for catching that. I’ll have to fix that…
Your other suggestions are extremely good too. [later addition] and I made the changes.
Comment by Heteromeles November 5, 2015 @ 6:07 amWhich just goes to show how right you are to point to big numbers being a source of confusion!
I’m glad I could help. I very much want your book to succeed big-time and change how people think about the future and environmental issues.
Comment by Joy Livingwell November 6, 2015 @ 2:32 am[…] را میتوانید اینجا مطالعه […]
Pingback by کنفرانسِ پاریس: خیلی کم، خیلی دیر - یوتوپیا: سواد اکولوژیک برای همگان December 28, 2015 @ 7:24 pmThis looks to be a fine work, thank you for the time and effort. Your appreciation of our roots in deep time is most welcome.
Comment by Scott Honn December 29, 2015 @ 10:04 pmThanks!
Comment by Heteromeles December 29, 2015 @ 11:56 pmThanks I just ordered your book!
Comment by nancylaplaca December 30, 2015 @ 7:06 pmFound you via Archdruid. Happy to read you both. The first 5 chapters of your book are well-written. I will read the whole book as soon as I finish my current readings.
Comment by RF December 31, 2015 @ 1:25 am[…] {11} https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/hot-earth-dreams-sample/ […]
Pingback by Too Little, Too Late | Bill Totten's Weblog January 2, 2016 @ 11:11 pmErrata:
Page 22: “the sun will probably engulf the Earth as it expands something like 1,000,000,000 years from now” is not correct. The engulfing on the Earth will happen in about 5,000,000,000 years but it is true that human life will no longer be possible on Earth in about 1,000,000,000 due the fact that all the water will have boiled away as the Sun expands so you might want to rewrite that bit.
Page 24: “TAing” should probably be “taking”.
Page 35: “we fart out the carbon the next century or so” should be something like “we fart out the carbon over the next century or so”.
Page 28: “US Marine Corps” should be something like “US Military”. The Wikipedia page that you quote doesn’t refer to the US Marine Corps specifically. They refer to the US Military as a whole. Perhaps it was different a year ago when you last looked at it.
Comment by raf January 14, 2016 @ 12:05 amThanks! The one note is that TAing is what TAs (teaching assistants do). Otherwise, I agree with the comments. That floating “over” is very much appreciated, since I’ve spotted it and lost it twice now.
Comment by Heteromeles January 14, 2016 @ 12:57 am[…] First five chapters of Frank Landis’ Hot Earth Dreams […]
Pingback by Bookshelf: Hot Earth Dreams by Hank Landis – Ecologise April 29, 2016 @ 7:17 pmI think your scenario is based on ‘business as usual’ model of our society. I think economic collapse will come much earlier and so new emissions will decrease. The reasons for collapse, in my opinion, are: On going recession since 2008, increasing inequality and resource depletion of non renewable resources.
Comment by T. Vijayendra May 6, 2016 @ 2:08 pm