When Do Conspiracy Theorists Make Sense?

Cory Doctorow's column in the May issue of LOCUS discusses what we'd probably think of as paranoid conspiracy theorists, vehemently protesting imaginary global plots against our lives and liberties, who in Britain are often informally labeled "swivel-eyed loons."

The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point

Of course, we do have to distinguish the paranoid looniness from valid concerns. As he says, we all want to "save the children." Most of us, however, want to save them from "real threats who never seem to face justice," while the swivel-eyed loons obsess about "imaginary threats," e.g., "adrenochrome-guzzling Satanists."

Some issues about which he suggests they have valid points:

Automated license-plate recorders, presently used in London, really can constitute "a form of pervasive location-tracking surveillance." That kind of power has been used in the past to target "disfavored minorities" and organizations regarded as suspicious.

While “'Climate lockdowns' are a product of a conspiracist’s fevered imagination," it's nevertheless true that COVID restrictions have sometimes served as a pretext "to control everyday people while rich people swanned around having a lovely time." The powerful were happy to promulgate regulations they didn't consider to apply to themselves.

The "post-ownership society" fearfully anticipated by some conspiracists has already begun to infiltrate the economy. Our Kindle books, music files, and other software don't really belong to us; we lease them from companies that can delete them at will.

What about the futuristic promise of a cashless society, when institutions such as credit card companies will be nearly all-powerful gatekeepers? "Access to financial services is a primary means of extralegal control over whole sectors of the economy."

Doctorow's article offers several other alarming examples.

However, he exaggerates about the demise of DVDs. Yes, we can still buy movies and TV programs (and music) in physical media that we permanently own; they aren't likely to disappear anytime soon. (The choice of renting DVDs from Netflix will go away later this year, though. Sigh.)

"We live in a fraught and perilous time," he reminds us, "and powerful people really do want to capitalize on this situation to enrich themselves at our expense." How can we enjoy the benefits of technologies such as those mentioned in his essay while avoiding their threats to our privacy and autonomy?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Crisis and the Swerve

Cory Doctorow's column in this month's LOCUS, whether you fully agree with his view of the global situation or not, displays an impressive deployment of an extended metaphor:

The Swerve

This essay compares the climate change problem to a speeding bus about to crash off a cliff. Should we grab the wheel from the driver and swerve off the road at high speed, even at the risk of a disastrous crash? As you'll notice a few sentences into the essay, Doctorow holds an extreme view of the inevitable severity of climate change. Yet he ends with an ultimately (though guardedly) optimistic conclusion that total catastrophe can still be avoided. But, in his opinion, we've come too far already to evade the damage inherent in the swerve.

This is how he describes the scenario at the beginning of the article:

"We’re all trapped on a bus. The bus is barreling towards a cliff. Beyond the cliff is a canyon plunge any of us will be lucky to survive. Even if we survive, none of us know how we’ll climb out of that deep canyon. Some of us want to yank the wheel. The bus is going so fast that yanking the wheel could cause the bus to roll. There might be some broken bones. There might be worse than broken bones. The driver won’t yank the wheel."

In Doctorow's formatting, however, each of those sentences sits on a line by itself. Arranged that way, the opening can't fail to grab a reader's attention. The alarm and urgency of his message come through loud and clear. He goes on to condemn climate change denial, express his disapproval of "incrementalism," and discuss some of the public responses to the problem, positive and negative, that have been proposed or attempted so far.

It seems to me that one significant reason why many people don't believe we're about to drive off a cliff is that climate degradation is a "slow catastrophe." It doesn't evoke immediate alarm like an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The effects of global climate shifts sneak up on us over a span of years or decades. So those who think we still have plenty of time to deal with the crisis aren't necessarily greedy, callous, or oblivious.

Doctorow estimates that in 1992 we still had the option of "building a bridge" across the canyon. By now, he asserts, we've lost the opportunity of "averting the disaster" and instead must focus on "surviving the disaster." Still, he comes to an optimistic conclusion, for a certain value of "optimistic." He describes the potential "happy ending" in terms of the extended metaphor this way:

"We’ll swerve. The bus will roll. It will hurt. It will be terrible. But we won’t be dead on canyon floor. We’ll fix the bus. We’ll make it better. We’ll get it back on its wheels. We’ll get a better driver, and a better destination."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

The October 2021 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC features a pair of lead articles about "green" power for aircraft and cars, mainly electric. The cover optimistically proclaims, "The Revolution Is Here." The issue abounds with information about the past as well as the future of electric-powered transportation. I was surprised to learn that in 1900 electric cars held over one-third of the market. Gasoline-powered internal combustion automobiles came in third, after steam (!) and electric. Then as now, the main obstacles to widespread acceptance of electric cars were battery weight and range. On the other hand, electric vehicles are quiet and emissions-free, and they have fewer moving parts to maintain. In the early twentieth century, "cheap oil and paved roads" enabled the internal combustion engine to dominate the market by the 1930s. Now auto manufacturers are embracing EVs with fresh enthusiasm, not only the big names such as Tesla, but even Volkswagen. Driving range and charging times are improving as prices decrease to become comparable to the cost of gasoline-fueled cars. Driverless, electric-powered delivery vehicles may eventually become commonplace. Meanwhile, Amazon and FedEx are switching their fleets to EVs.

This NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC's second article on the energy revolution deals with flight. Commercial airliners produce vast quantities of fossil-fuel pollution. France is considering a ban on all domestic flights to destinations that can be reached by train in less than two and a half hours. Implementing that policy, of course, would imply a passenger rail system adequate to efficiently serve the needs of the traveling public. In most of the U.S., a situation like that is an incredible fantasy. Peter Kalmus, a NASA climate scientist, insists on "the hard fact" that "we don't need to fly." What world does he live in? Most vacation travelers crossing the Atlantic or Pacific can't afford the cost of a cruise ship or the extra time off work for the round trip by sea. If you have to get to the opposite coast of the U.S. for an emergency such as a family funeral, you certainly do need to fly; you can't drive that distance in a day or two.

For large aircraft, electric power runs into the problem that a battery of adequate size would weigh as much as the plane itself. One type of clean airplane fuel being contemplated is liquid hydrogen. For small aircraft, however, electric engines can succeed. A California company named Wisk is one of several working on designs for "air taxis," self-flying, vertical-takeoff-and-landing small electric aircraft. In fact, our long-awaited flying car may soon become a reality, although not owned and operated by individual consumers (thank goodness, considering the typical level of driving skill on the roads).

Each proposed solution, naturally, carries problems of its own. But, as Isaac Asimov maintained, the solution to such difficulties isn't to give up on technology but to develop better technology. If you don't subscribe to NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, do try to pick up a copy of the October issue at the library or newsstand, especially if you're a fan and/or writer of near-future SF.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Catastrophes and Fiction Writing

The annual ChessieCon was held virtually this past weekend. One session explored how catastrophic events influence literature. The panelists mentioned works of fiction inspired by real-life disasters, whether sudden and traumatic or longer-term "slow catastrophes," and discussed the ramifications of choosing to compose stories about such events. Authors may write about characters caught up in the real-world event itself, a science-fiction scenario that transforms the actual situation into speculative terms, or a near-future society that reflects the ongoing effects of the catastrophe.

They considered some advantages and disadvantages of making art out of contemporary catastrophes. Pro: It's a way to form a deep emotional connection with the audience. A story that mirrors the trauma and anxieties of the present time can feel immediate and believable. Moreover, SF and fantasy can, of course, offer a fresh perspective on events that may seem overwhelming if faced straight-on. Con: Authors may find themselves writing the same kinds of stories as everybody else inspired by the same event. A story about a pandemic, for instance, may get lost among hundreds flooding the market at the same time. Another potential pitfall is the accusation of exploiting a grave crisis for personal gain by writing fiction about it.

Literature, of course, has always reflected the catastrophes and traumas of its time. C. S. Lewis, in an essay about the impact of the King James Bible on English literature, points out the difference between influences and sources. One can hardly understand many of the great English classics without knowing the biblical stories they mine for sources. The influence of biblical prose on the style of later writers, on the other hand, isn't nearly so widespread, if only because "Bible language" stands out so obviously. Likewise, disasters, whether natural or human-caused, supply fiction with endless sources of material. "Influence," as I conceive it, refers to a more subtle, indirect effect that pervades the cultural atmosphere even when not explicitly mentioned. Many early twentieth-century authors were influenced by World War I in both senses of the term, whether they wrote war fiction or not. Hemingway wrote war stories, but he also wrote about characters living with the social and psychological aftereffects of the war. Those effects show up in genres where you might not expect them, such as Lord Peter Wimsey's posttraumatic stress (as we'd call it now) in Dorothy Sayers's detective novels. The recent Great War shadows the background of the literature of the period.

In the 1950s and 60s, many science fiction works explored nuclear war and its aftermath, such as ALAS BABYLON, ON THE BEACH, and Heinlein's FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD. A bit later, pollution became a dominant theme. For instance, I own an old paperback about which I've forgotten everything except the title, THE SEA IS BOILING HOT. Nowadays, numerous authors confront the potential short-term and long-term effects of climate change. After the 9-11 attacks, most TV series continued their story arcs (if any) in an alternate present wherein the attacks were never mentioned. A few, though, incorporated the aftereffects of the catastrophe into their plotlines, such as NCIS and a series about firefighters and police officers in New York City. NCIS and its spinoffs continue to inhabit a world where terrorism remains an ever-present concern. As far as "influence" is concerned, most fiction set in the present day or near future takes for granted an environment of security checks at airports and our country's perpetual involvement in anti-terrorism campaigns.

A striking example of the long-term cultural influence of a "slow catastrophe" appears in "Thoughts and Prayers," by Ken Liu, reprinted in THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY 2020, edited by Diana Gabaldon. This story combines our society's free-floating anxiety about mass murder rampages with the total devastation of privacy made possible by the internet, in the harrowing experience of a family whose teenage daughter has been killed in a school shooting. Aside from some near-future computer technology that doesn't yet exist but can easily be imagined as realistic, there's nothing in this story that couldn't happen right now.

One downside (in my opinion) of including acute catastrophic current events in fiction wasn't mentioned by the panel. If a writer incorporates such material into a story while the disaster is either ongoing or fresh in memory, it almost has to dominate the work. That's fine if the story is "about" the crisis itself or the protagonist's confrontation with an aspect of it. What if you're writing about some other dimension of a character's life with the disaster looming in the background, though? After the disaster recedes from current events into recent history, the story becomes dated. That's why I haven't mentioned the pandemic or its societal effects in my recent fiction. The three pieces I've had published last year and this year, as well as the novella I'm finishing at the moment, fall into the light paranormal romance subgenre. Allusion to the present crisis would throw those stories completely off balance. Also, it would "date" them in a way I don't want. Assuming our current plight won't last forever, I chose to set my stories in an alternate present where the pandemic doesn't exist, so that if anyone happens to read them (let's say) two years from now, they'll still feel contemporary.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Tyranny of Now

The November/December issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER contains an article by psychologist Stuart Vyse titled "COVID-19 and the Tyranny of Now." The phrase refers to our tendency to choose immediate rewards over potential future benefits. Our instincts drive us in that direction, since we evolved in environments where basing choices on short-term results made sense. There was little point in worrying about one's health in old age when one might get eaten by a saber-toothed tiger long before reaching that stage of life. Vyse's article summarizes this tendency as, "Smaller rewards in the present are chosen over larger ones in the future." Understandably, our first impulse is to go for the immediate, visible reward instead of the hypothetical future one that may or may not become reality. That's why people living in high-risk situations tend to heavily discount the future; if a young man in a dangerous neighborhood frequently sees friends and neighbors getting shot, the wisdom of long-term planning may not seem obvious to him. In the context of his physical and social enviroment, that choice makes sense.

Vyse reflects on climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic as two current high-profile examples. We have immediate experience of the inconveniences and hardships of changing our lifestyles to minimize the effects of those two phenomena. The potential rewards of self-denial, on the other hand—a return to being able to lead "normal" lives without catching the disease, a cleaner and more stable environment—exist in a future we have to take on faith. In connection with the pandemic, the fact that any effect of precautions or lack thereof shows up weeks (at least) after we change our actions makes it harder for us to judge the value of restricting our behavior. Another factor is that a drop in cases as a result of lockdowns can lead to the tempting but irrational response, "What we've been doing has worked, so now we can stop doing it" (my summary of Vyse's analysis). In short, delays are difficult. We have to make a deliberate, analytical effort to resist immediate impulses and embrace long-term gain. As Vyse quotes from an anonymous source, "If the hangover came first, nobody would drink."

Here's an article explaining this phenomenon in terms of a struggle between the logical and emotional parts of the brain:

Why Your Brain Prioritizes Instant Gratification

"The researchers concluded that impulsive choices happen when the emotional part of our brains triumphs over the logical one." The dopamine surge can be hard for the rational brain to resist. The article explores some methods for training oneself to forgo immediate pleasures in favor of later, larger gains, such as managing one's environment to avoid temptation.

This Wikipedia article goes into great detail about the neurological, cognitive, and psychological aspects of delayed gratification:

Delayed Gratification

It devotes a section to the famous Stanford marshmallow experiments of the 1960s and 70s, in which preschoolers were promised two marshmallows if they could resist eating a single marshmallow for a certain time span. Children who succeeded devised strategies to distract themselves or to imagine the tempting treat as something less appetizing. Interestingly, this article reports that, according to some studies, 10% more women than men have the capacity to delay gratification. It also mentions that the ability to exercise that kind of self-control may weaken in old age. "Declines in self-regulation and impulse control in old age predict corresponding declines in reward-delaying strategies...."

It's easy to think of a different reason why some elderly people may abandon the "rational" course of postponing rewards. The choice not to delay gratification may result from a perfectly sensible cost-benefit calculation, rather than surrender to the "emotional brain." In the absence of a diagnosed medical condition that poses an immediate, specific danger, if you're over 90 do you really care whether too much ice cream might make you gain weight or too much steak increase your cholesterol?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

AI and Human Workers

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS essay explains why he's an "AI skeptic":

Full Employment

He believes it highly unlikely that anytime in the near future we'll create "general AI," as opposed to present-day specialized "machine learning" programs. What, no all-purpose companion robots? No friendly, sentient supercomputers such as Mike in Heinlein's THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS and Minerva in his TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE? Not even the brain of the starship Enterprise?

Doctorow also professes himself an "automation-employment-crisis skeptic." Even if we achieved a breakthrough in AI and robotics tomorrow, he declares, human labor would be needed for centuries to come. Each job rendered obsolete by automation would be replaced by multiple new jobs. He cites the demands of climate change as a major driver of employment creation. He doesn't, however, address the problem of retraining those millions of workers whose jobs become superseded by technological and industrial change.

The essay broadens its scope to wider economic issues, such as the nature of real wealth and the long-term unemployment crisis likely to result from the pandemic. Doctorow advances the provocative thesis, "Governments will get to choose between unemployment or government job creation." He concludes with a striking image:

"Keynes once proposed that we could jump-start an economy by paying half the unemployed people to dig holes and the other half to fill them in. No one’s really tried that experiment, but we did just spend 150 years subsidizing our ancestors to dig hydrocarbons out of the ground. Now we’ll spend 200-300 years subsidizing our descendants to put them back in there."

Speaking of skepticism, I have doubts about the premise that begins the article:

"I don’t see any path from continuous improvements to the (admittedly impressive) 'machine learning' field that leads to a general AI any more than I can see a path from continuous improvements in horse-breeding that leads to an internal combustion engine."

That analogy doesn't seem quite valid to me. An organic process (horse-breeding), of course, doesn't evolve naturally into a technological breakthrough. Development from one kind of inorganic intelligence to a higher level of similar, although more complex, intelligence is a different kind of process. Not that I know enough of the relevant science to argue for the possibilities of general AI. But considering present-day abilities of our car's GPS and the Roomba's tiny brain, both of them smarter than our first desktop computer only about thirty years ago, who knows what wonders might unfold in the next fifty to a hundred years?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

SF Seasons

Happy New Year! The days begin to lengthen, even if imperceptibly at first, but nevertheless I have to brace myself for over two months more of early darkness and damp cold. We temperate-zone residents are used to a year divided into the conventional four seasons, recurring in a predictable annual rhythm. My family had a funny encounter many years ago at King's Dominion (an amusement park) in northern Virginia, while standing in line to check out of the hotel adjacent to the park. This happened on a day at the height of summer, and the weather was as expected in a Virginia summer, high humidity with temperatures in the eighties or low nineties. An apparently British couple in line with us asked whether "it was always this hot" all year around. Mentally (not aloud, of course) I collapsed with laughter. In this area we have four seasons just like most other locations in North America, with pleasant springs and falls and miserably cold winters. If our family's experience of living in Hawaii in the 1970s was typical, tropical regions have two basic seasons, rainy and dry, with little variation in temperature or length of daylight.

Science fiction and fantasy often feature imaginary worlds with seasons different from those familiar to us Earth dwellers, but the stories don't always take full advantage of the possibilities. The setting of the Game of Thrones saga famously suffers winters that last for years, whose timing and duration vary. Yet I don't remember noticing in either the novels or the TV series an explanation of how human civilization in Westeros survives those ordeals. How could enough food possibly be stored to sustain entire nations over a multi-year winter, especially with no way of knowing when the cold season will descend upon them? Maybe the southern regions of the inhabited world escape mainly unscathed and supply provisions for the affected areas? The economic effects would be calamitous, though, even if most people managed to scrape by. Isaac Asimov's classic story "Nightfall" takes place on a planet in the middle of a cluster of stars, so that it experiences full darkness only once in several centuries. Although a short story can't cover every aspect of worldbuilding, admittedly, even in the story's later novel-length expansion I don't recall any consideration of how different a culture that develops in perpetual light would be from ours. Agriculture alone would evolve in ways strange to us, wouldn't it? Recently I read SHADOW AND LIGHT and SHADOW RISING, the first two books in an excellent fantasy series by Peter Sartucci. They're set on a planet that revolves around a double star. No results of having two suns, in terms of either circadian rhythms or climate, are developed. As in "Nightfall" with its planet of multiple suns, not only weather but seismic phenomena would surely be affected. With more books to come, however, maybe this aspect of the setting will be elaborated later.

One novel I've read within the past year takes full advantage of its setting's weird seasons, as the title indicates: THE FIFTH SEASON, first book in the Broken Earth series by N. K. Jemisin, offers a devastating, in-depth portrayal of a world periodically ravaged by geological disasters of apocalyptic scope. Fifth Seasons appear at unpredictable intervals and can last from a few months or years to an entire century. At those times, worldwide tectonic cataclysms cause earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis, with side effects such as climate change, crop failures, poisonous fungal growths, etc. Appropriately, this world's cultures are crucially shaped by the Fifth Season phenomenon, which includes the ambiguous role of the few people with the gift of controlling seismic events.

Here's a page that lists eight SF novels about climate change:

Sci-Fi Books That Highlight Climate Change

And here's a different list of fourteen novels focusing on climate catastrophes (including some overlap with the previous one, naturally):

Sci-Fi Books for Earth Day

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Pre-Human Civilizations?

Could some other species have built a civilization on Earth long before we evolved? Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, considers that possibility:

Are We Earth's Only Civilization?

If a society of intelligent, nonhuman beings existed before the Quaternary period, 2.6 million years ago, mainstream geology tells us no material evidence of them would remain. "Go back much farther than the Quaternary and everything has been turned over and crushed to dust." Then how would we know about their civilization? The preservation of fossils and artifacts, even if that hypothetical nonhuman society had flourished recently enough to possibly leave such relics, depends on sheer chance. Schmidt speculates about how we could know they existed, as a thought experiment exploring what evidence, if any, from our own society would survive millions of years in the future. He suggests plastics, changes in sedimentary nitrogen patterns (from using so much of it as fertilizer to feed our population), and the appearance in sedimentary layers of "rare-Earth elements used in electronic gizmos." Above all, our intensive burning of fossil fuels should leave evidence in the form of shifts in the balances of carbon and oxygen isotopes. Schmidt wonders, if our own Anthropocene epoch is in the process of depositing traces in the Earth's bedrock, "might the same 'signals' exist right now in rocks just waiting to tell us of civilizations long gone?"

The article concludes, "By asking about civilizations lost in deep time, we’re also asking about the possibility for universal rules guiding the evolution of all biospheres in all their creative potential, including the emergence of civilizations." Could guidelines for such "universal rules" help us predict what we may find on alien worlds?

While Schmidt and the author of the article don't believe such a nonhuman culture actually preceded us on this planet, the possibility is interesting to consider. And since it's hard if not impossible to prove a negative, especially regarding events so unimaginably far in the past, we can't be sure one didn't exist. Unless time travel were invented, we would never have any contact with the builders of such a civilization or even know what they were like. That is, unless we somehow found long-buried structures such as the vast city of the extinct Elder Things in Antarctica in H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness." These creatures arrived on Earth when the moon was young and became extinct long before advanced terrestrial life evolved. The Elder Things also coexisted with giant penguins, and interestingly, the fossilized bones of penguins about the size of human adults have been found in New Zealand. They came along much too late to be alive at the same period as the Elder Things, though:

Giant Penguin in New Zealand

Suppose we discovered an abandoned city like that, miraculously having avoided being "crushed to dust," inhabited only by monstrous, amorphous shoggoths that survived and continued to reproduce after their creators died off? Hmm, I wonder what we could do with tame shoggoths. . . .

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Day The Earth Stood Still (yesterday, on TV, at 8pm)

I missed the first eleven minutes of this remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still", because I was watching an absolutely gripping bit of political theatre.... and perhaps if I had seen the very beginning, I might have enjoyed the movie more.

How is a debate a "debate", if people vote from remote locations without any solemn or otherwise obligation to listen to, and weigh, the arguments for and against the motion? I hope the Jury Trial system never goes the way of the Senate!

My husband tells me that I am in for a real treat when I see the original movie.  He rates the original a 10, and this version a 3.

Reviewers are kinder here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970416/

I give kudos to John Cleese for his endearing and totally charming performance as a true world leader, a Nobel prizewinner who keeps a blackboard and chalk in his living room.

The other fine supporting performance was by Jaden Smith as the bigoted little boy who probably did more than his stepmother to convince the unsmiling alien that mankind was worth saving.

The blubber premise grossed me out, frankly. I won't say more even though I don't consider it a major spoiler... unlike the idea of carrying a bit of ones own blubber/placenta around with one in a little jar in case of accidents, and even smearing some of it inside an inconvenient policeman's mouth.

Major spoiler:

That the explosion-proof, diamond-bit drill-busting robot turned into bifurcating cockroaches and ants bothered me. That they flew around in a cloud reminiscent of starling flock formations (currently on display in the Artology exhibition at the Cranbrook Institute of Science) was cool. I could have wished that they'd focused on eating something more to the point than one big truck and a few roadsigns.

If mankind is going to radically modify its alleged, environmentally destructive behaviour, a few missing truckers and roadsigns won't impress an out-of-touch President in his bunker. Those metal munching cockroaches ought to have eaten all the airports, and all the ships, and all the world's nuclear reactors. And the tree cutters and earth movers and shakers, such as Caterpillar, John Deere, Hewlett Packard, Google, and Goodyear... (You can't run a mine without rubber, apparently).

How the world has changed since this movie was made, by the way.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20091120/bs_ibd_ibd/20091120issues01

However the physics of mass confused and upset me the most. It always does. It's my pet peeve with science fiction. In fact, the cockroach size issue was my biggest hurdle... my wall-banger moment. It surely could, and should have been photographed with more care and sensitivity.

Oh, and there was another issue of mass. Keanu Reeves asked an apparently smaller man what size that man's clothes were. He then asked the man to undress. Unfortunately, we were not permitted to see this feat. Moments later, the tall Keanu left the room in a perfectly tailored, exquisitely well fitted suit.

Continuity is ok. But, what was Keanu going to wear if he did not take the man's clothes, no matter what size they were? Ask a silly question!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_bNDv0-ZrU

Bottom line, though. I'd have given The Day The Earth Stood Still (Remake) an extra two points at least if they'd shown that particular logistical detail. My philosophy when telling a fantastic story is to show everything that is --or could be-- plausible.