George is a character out of Jack London. In this chapter he tries to make a crab trap (fail) and a spare paddle (success). Both projects use combos of natural material and tech material. The paddle is a spruce, plywood, and epoxy. Trap was a sapling plus beach-found junk netting
Conversation
Now “a wigwam... sweathouse... tepee of beachcomber plastic draped over a driftwood tripod.”
Something childlike about this but with adult competence. I used to do stuff like this in the yard as a kid.
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No-context George quote: “I’m on a different level...I’m building a different thing. I know it’s strange. But I’m an expert on this business of inner space and outer space, and how one is a manifestation of the other.”
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This book is slow going because I’m reading a paper copy like a barbarism and I can only read for a half hour or so on the balcony before I lose paper book stamina. Kindle ebooks so much better.
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Ok a horrible cruise director type character has arrived and killed the energy, so George who has been making mystical preparations to leave, is leaving with author. 2-person baidarka trip back south. On to chapter 27, back to Freeman.
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Short Chapter 27: Freeman dreams up a huuuge nuclear rocket concept to go to alpha Centauri. I guess with Orion canceled might as well wrap up on a speculative high note. Chapter 28: George plans a huuuge canoe. Brower isn’t subtle about his juxtapositions.
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“For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.” — Freeman Dyson
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3 deft chapters on Freeman. On starship concepts, anecdotes from an exobiology conference, and one on space colonies. Philosophical differences with neighbor Gerard O’Neil of O’Neill cylinder fame.
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O’Neill got famous for dreaming up large, comfy, expensive middle class space colony concepts. Iirc the thing in Neuromancer is an O’Neill cylinder? Freeman wants scrappy shoestring budget tin-can colonies modeled on the Mayflower economically. Pilgrims. Planters and adventurers.
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George and Ken are heading south in the baidarka. Arctic huck finn type voyage.
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That was a long languorous chapter on the voyage. Now some commentary. Brower declares both father and son romantic reactionaries but votes for the nostalgia of the son over that of the father. Freeman’s techno-utopian linear evolutionary visions of Freeman are judged misguided.
Replying to
Chapter on George and Ken recovering from exhaustion of 20h of rowing in Tyee, an abandoned cannery town. Both have fevers (coronavirus? 🤔). Hunter graffiti to which George adds:
Didn’t hunt,
Didn’t kill,
Came here
And sat still
— Dyson, 1974
Heh I was born in 1974
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George on pea soup made from a mix: “It’s amazing the stuff they pass off as food. It’s barely enough to let you survive. Just enough to let you sit in front of a TV set.”
He’s suspicious of writers though he became one himself later. In this bit he and Ken aren’t getting along.
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Chapter 37. How to reduce cost of space exploration by 3 factors of 10: fewer people, more risk-taking types willing to die, better tech. 10^3=1000.
I think Elon is shooting for ~100
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Freeman thought one space strategy was to simply wait a century after government programs quit and get junk for cheap, like Mayflower was a cheap private voyage more than a century after Columbus expensive state-sponsored exploration. With space it’s taken ~50 post Apollo.
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George and Ken are scouring a junkyard for an aluminum pole and plate to make a rudder. It’s a year after their big voyage (which Ken quit in Ketchikan). The book really likes to lay it on thick re these father/son juxtapositions.
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Now in a chapter on George’s enormous 48-foot 6-person canoe, Mount Fairweather. Built 1974-75. Dude’s a total Quixote. Apparently a legend in boatbuilding circles. I’d like to see it.
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Big canoe about to launch. On a mad poet present for occasion:
“His lines did not scan, but ended wherever he ran out of room. The poem itself ended similarly...Henry produces poetry the way a factory loom produces fabric — by the yard, and it can be cut off almost any place.”
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Chapter 41: Ken goes to La Jolla to meet Freeman as weird sort of emissary from George. They take walks and stuff, discussing space, nukes, etc. Now on to Chapter 42, the reunion! Starship father meets Canoe son. “Luke, I’m your father” moment.
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This collision of worlds is lit. Freeman checks out the treehouse and then goes with teen daughter Emily, and Ken, to rendezvous with George on some island. The journey itself is a gem of a vignette. The movie scene would be great.
GIF
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“The plexiglass domes [on canoe manholes] were in place...Freeman repeated...that the canoe was beautiful. He confessed that he thought he would like it better without the domes — just the classic Aleut lines. The astrophysicist, oddly or not, did not like the spaceship look.”
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This story is full of colorful side characters, like Will Malloff, a weird frontier guy who ran a 1-person lumber mill and bred Rhodesian ridgeback dogs (lion hunting dogs) on Swanson island, where Luke Dyson met Anakin “Darth Orion” Dyson.
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“The Mallloff settlement testified to the energy that two isolated people...can unleash. Here, I could not help thinking, was the kind of small colony [Mayflower mode] that Freeman Dyson advocates.”
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This whole bit reminds me of the “Amazing Crusoes of Lonesome Lake”, also set in the region, which I read as a kid as a Readers Digest condensed book. Looks like British Columbia is the true last human frontier. amazon.com/Crusoe-Lonesom
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Damn. 2 other characters present, Ron and Julie Moe, are ex lighthouse keepers. I guess this breed had not entirely been automated out of existence in 1975
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Father-son moment:
George: “What do you think about this idea of a radio? Some people think I’m crazy to want to put one in this canoe.”
Freeman: “I think a radio in the canoe is a good idea. That’s what I like about you—you’re not a purist.”
Next: paddle in a starship? 🤔
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Freeman says he’s working on theory of what holds galaxies together
Daughter Emily: “epoxy” (which George swears by for canoes)
Now that’s a good family joke
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George and Ken save 2 men from drowning on last day on Hanson island. This book is just endlessly eventful.
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Book closes with some wonderfully meditative and poetic short chapters. This whole thing has been an epic read.
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Ok done. That was a totally wonderful book, and I’m glad I read it in sips sitting on my balcony in a pandemic. Thank you for the reco.
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