by Tom R. Pike
Tom R. Pike delves into the fascinating and not-so-distant history of climate science that informs his latest story, “Strange Events at Fletcher and Front!,” from our [January/February issue, on sale now!]
Let’s not bury the lede: George and Walter Cove were real people. George Cove really invented working solar panels in 1905. The panels really did supply all the electric needs of a household at that time. Popular Mechanics really did write a piece about climate change in 1912. Several of the things George says in the story are direct quotes from him. And George Cove did face an abduction attempt in 1909.
The largest truly fictional component of the story—and this will be no surprise—is the time traveler who saved George.
Typically when I write alternate history, I don’t focus on the moment of departure. I once wrote a 28-episode webseries where the difference from actual history was that Wernher von Braun had defected to America prior to World War Two rather than after, and this was never mentioned in the dialogue. It was just an easter egg buried deep in a production blog. But in “Strange Events”, I centered the departure from history in the first scene, because I wanted to examine how George felt about the pressure he felt had been placed on him to save the world alone.
Many people who work in climate policy, as I do, feel a crushing amount of pressure. And those of us who grew up in the West were raised on a diet of the “great man theory of history”, wherein complex historic movements and societies are reduced to a single “great man” (and it is always a man) who initiated historic events. Because that’s what I learned as a child, I feel a deep need to be there when the fossil fuel companies finally die, and, like Olenna Tyrell, I want them to know it was me who killed them. But I won’t be there, and I won’t kill them, because I am not a “great man”, and moreover, no one is, because the “great man theory of history” is not how history actually works. Every event in history is brought into being by a thousand people whose names you have never heard but whose voices joined in a chorus, to change something that seemed unchangeable.
My interest in George Cove was sparked by the publication of an article by Dr. Sugandha Srivastav, who examined what might have happened had Cove never been kidnapped. I was intrigued by her conclusion: that it would have made a difference, but it would not have immediately destroyed the fossil fuel industry. I wondered whether, if the fossil fuel industry failed to ruin Cove one way, they would have tried another. Dr. Srivastav’s job is that of a sober scientist who is not allowed to speculate quite so wildly as a fiction writer may, but this kind of extrapolation was right up my alley.
Every event in history is brought into being by a thousand people whose names you have never heard but whose voices joined in a chorus, to change something that seemed unchangeable.
I wanted to bring Cove’s story into hard science fiction, where I hoped I could get some readers to question whether fossil fuel supremacy had been an economic inevitability, or a policy choice made by legislatures and corporations without the consent of the people. I felt the key piece of evidence I needed to present was the Popular Mechanics article from 1912, one of many “smoking guns” that proves that scientists, and the fossil fuel industry itself, have long known that the industry is engaging in a slow-moving mass murder. When, in my job, I ask members of the public to guess when the first solar panels were invented, or when fossil fuel companies knew the full horrors of climate change, they guess the 2000s most often, 1980s at the earliest, and are horrified when they learn the truth. The problems and solutions have been known to us for over a century, yet we have been forced down a path of misery and destruction so that a handful of corporate executives can reap extraordinary profit at our expense.
I combined Popular Mechanics with as many other primary sources as I could. I read archived newspaper articles about Cove. I read his press releases. I read Cove’s patents, and analyses of these patents by modern physicists.
Some fascinating details didn’t make it into the story. “Strange Events” describes Cove’s panels as working strictly due to thermocouples. The narration generally uses a third-person limited perspective that cannot supply much information beyond what George himself knows. He didn’t know that he had probably also accidentally added a photovoltaic effect that increased the output of his device. I chose third-person limited narration because of the way it allows me to describe the intervention without explaining the intentions of the intervenor, so it was important to keep that, even if it meant leaving out a little science. Ah, well. Can’t win them all.
Speaking of the intervenor: if most of the characters are real historical figures, who is the time traveler?
Some readers have asked me if it is Walter, which is an interesting theory, but not the one I personally subscribe to. I believe they are some other minor figure, who may even be alive and among us today. They are not a “great man”. They are someone like you or me who is given the opportunity to stop an evil act from occurring. Perhaps if it were me, I’d have tried to find a way to save George without violence, but there probably wasn’t one that, as a writer, I could describe and move on from so quickly. The intervention needed to be instantaneous. There’s a possible version of this story where the time traveler could have traveled with allies, integrated themselves into 1909 society undercover, and staged a more elaborate and nuanced intervention. But a heist story about the intervention, while interesting, would have compromised a crucial emotional arc of the story I truly wanted to tell: George wondering why he was worth saving.
Also, we wouldn’t have that striking centerfold art by Tomislav Tikulin.
Given the importance of their research for this story, I dedicated “Strange Events at Fletcher and Front!” to Dr. Sugandha Srivastav, Dr. Svante Arrhenius, Kris De Decker, Philip Pesavento, George & Walter Cove, and to all who toil either in fame or obscurity to make the world a better place. May we each live our lives as if given a second chance by a time traveler.
The Astounding Analog Companion 