Poetry – Extinction Rebellion

Posted on March 21, 2023 by Opher

Extinction Rebellion

The world is in a mess.

That’s not hard to see.

The plunder and the rape

Is killing bird and tree.

But there’s a rebellion against this extinction,

Carried out with distinction.

Superglued to trains and building barricades,

They’re fighting without blades.

They are fighting for the future;

They are making a huge din.

They’re trying to wake us up,

To what is happening.

For profit and gain,

We are busy plundering.

Without a care for pain,

Or a moment spent wondering.

But there’s a rebellion against this extinction

Carried out with distinction.

Superglued to trains and building barricades

They’re fighting without blades.

So long live the rebellion,

I hope it wakes us up.

Greed is so destructive,

We’ve got to give it up.

But there’s a wealthy bunch

Who just see the cash.

Unless they start to give a damn,

We’re heading for a crash.

But there’s a rebellion against this extinction,

Carried out with distinction.

Superglued to trains and building barricades,

They’re fighting without blades.

Opher – 24.4.2019

What we have done to the world over these last few hundred years is criminal. Without regard to the destruction or the agony of the creatures caught up in it we have devastated the environment.

Things have got to change.

Animal population numbers are decimated. Many face extinction. The wilderness is being destroyed.

Nowhere is safe.

Thank heavens some people are prepared to fight for a better future.

Anthropocene Apocalypse – Scenario 2 – The Population explosion and the future!

Posted on December 22, 2022December 22, 2022 by Opher

Anthropocene Apocalypse

In Scenario 1 the population continued to grow eating up space, wilderness and destroying all naturally living creatures. Technology dealt with the problems of food, water, energy, weather and even oxygen in the atmosphere. We lived in huge urban developments and the world is devoid of wild-life and natural areas.

Scenario 2.

The premise:

a. We realise the impact of our actions on the environment and limit our numbers, conserve the wilderness and wild-life, stop our habitat destruction and pollution.

b. We lay aside 50% of the planet for wilderness and wild-life. We do not allow roads, hunters or development in these areas.

We are extremely good at solving problems. We can easily create a sustainable future where wilderness and wild-life has a place.

The result:

a. We introduce contraception, education and family planning on a global scale and successfully reduce our population.

b. We use technology to produce better transport, housing, energy production, and food.

c. We do not have urban sprawl, deforestation, overfishing, or other unsustainable exploitation of the environment.

d. We raise the standards of life for all people globally so that there is no longer war, conflict or poverty. There are social services, pensions and sick pay enabling people to live without requiring large numbers of children to support them through hard times.

e. We produce technology that is not polluting and is sustainable. We have ample energy (probably through nuclear fusion and solar) and our farming methods are not cruel or ineffective. We can produce ample good food to support the population without encroaching on the wilderness areas.

f. The forests are conserved. Fishing is sustainable. The weather and global warming is controlled.

g. 50% of the world is teeming with wild-life that we can marvel at. The air, water and soil are not contaminated with carcinogens. We globally control the weather and global warming. Everything regarding conservation and pollution is controlled and enforced globally.

I know which of the two possible future scenarios I would prefer to live in.

The future is for our grandchildren’s grandchildren. In my own life-time we have destroyed over half of the world. I feel we are at the precipice. Will we jump?Posted in Ecology, environment, ExtinctionTagged conservation, Ecology, education, Extinction, idealism, journalism, Literature, Nature, Optimism, Politics, Population, Science, the future, Writing, Zeitgeist 4 Comments Edit

The Game

Posted on July 9, 2022 by Opher

The Game

The game of avoiding catastrophe

Played against an opponent

Who does not care.

What can be more important

Than fighting for the future?

Jumping off a cliff

Into the unknown

As the corals bleach.

Populations crash.

An ecosystem

That took billions of years to build,

Destroyed in decades

As time runs out.

People are ready for change.

We are desperate for hope.

Opher – 22.4.2021

We are standing on the brink of that cliff.

We are unbalancing the ecosystems.

We are killing the wildlife.

We are destroying habitats.

We are polluting the world.

We put money before the future.

Enough is enough.

It has to stop.

We have to start to repair the world.

It is too beautiful to allow it to die.

Star – A Sci-fi novel – A parody of the sixties set in the future. Galactic Rock Music is the focus.

Posted on April 21, 2022 by Opher

Star

Opher May 26, 2020

It’s the sixties – the three thousand one hundred and sixties.

The Federation is in conflict with the Confederation.

The Troman war rages …

There is a civil rights issue with the Androvians.

Young people all across the galaxy are in revolt. Rock Music, on an intergalactic scale, is the medium of the rebellion.

Zargos Ecstasy and the Terminal Brain Grope are providing the impetus for the rebellion.

Zargos, a larger than life character based on Bob Dylan, Hendrix, Jagger, Jim Morrison and Bowie, struts the stage, putting his poems to music and rousing the spacefreaks to seek social justice.

If you lived through the sixties you’ll recognise it all.

Extract

The beginning

Hilan Hilzar sat back into the posture form sensopadding of his couch seat. He was so full of tension that the living contouring did little to reduce the tightness of his muscles. He could not relax. The huge effort of holding back the excitement was making is body rigid. His mind was clamping down on his torso like a crushing weight so that the pressure welled up inside him. His heart felt swollen, writhing around in his chest. His flesh was actually jumping and twitching as if some high voltage current was flowing through his veins. He was worried that it would trigger the seat’s resuscitation unit. It might consider him at risk and ping him with a sedative.

For weeks now his whole existence seemed to have been building up to this climax. At first it had all seemed unreal – an eternity away. It had crawled towards him at a krank-snail’s pace; like it would never arrive. It had devoured his concentration leaving him unable to think of anything else. Then it had simply rushed and the impossible day had arrived.

The journey here was a haze of unreality. He had spent the entire time peering around himself in disbelief. It could not really be happening. Reality was divorced from the evidence of his senses.

He sat back into the seat and took a deep breath as the sensopadding rippled calmingly around him. His mind refused to operate properly. Only fragments of the journey were registering. He’d been in a dream. It was a wonder that he had got here at all. He had vague recollections of boarding the ship and then the jump. Somehow the surge had only barely registered at all. Who could believe that? He had burned through the colour shifts with all the interest of a veteran traveller or some spoilt rich kid to whom hyperspace was a regular event. Instead of being astounded by the brilliance he had just wanted it to end; to arrive. His mind had not been there at all. Even the re-entry was just a dream that washed over him. It was almost forgotten. It meant nothing. His mind was already ahead of him, dancing at his destination. In his head he was already there. This entire journey, no matter how amazing, had been no more than a necessary nuisance to be endured. The terminal had been awash with a multitude of beings as aliens mingled with humans and he allowed himself to be wafted along with the flood of the crowd. They were borne along on a babbling sea of excitement that engulfed them all.

It was as if he only really awoke when he entered the arena. He stood for a minute open-mouthed as the crowd washed past him, boggling at the immensity of it. He was here. He really was. Only then did he dare to let himself believe. He allowed himself to look around as he was checked by an automated usher, conveyed and deposited into his allocated seat. All the while he had been in a trance.

As he came to, excitement welled up inside him as he accepted that he was actually here. He had made it. He bounced to his feet and found himself jumping up and down madly waving to the various groups of friends in his immediate vicinity, the same friends he had not even registered on his journey here.

After a while he had calmed down sufficiently to settle back down into his seat. He could barely contain himself. There were still hours to wait.

A sun was up casting hard sharp shadows. The sky glowed with a deep violet blue bathing the audience with its soft gleam. It would be nightfall before anything happened. He forced himself to calm down. His body would surely give out if it continued at this pitch. He did not want to burn out before it even started.

The sun set below the curved horizon leaving a crystal clear void sprinkled with a billion stars like fine salt on black obsidian. They hung like a pall of smoke over the crowd. There were no gaps between the specks just differences of intensity. It was so clear that one could imagine there was no air or Plexiglas between them. It made him aware that this was a moon; no planet could possibly have created such clarity.

Hilan decided it was time to drop his tablet of Amaz.

Available in both paperback and kindle from Amazon.

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Today’s Music to keep me SSSAaaaaNNnnEEE in Isolation – Leonard Cohen – The Future

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Opher

I’m watching the future in Ukraine – it’s murder!!

Brexit, Johnson, Oban, Trump, Bolsonaro, Le Pen, global warming, war, mass immigration – things are gonna slide in all directions!

Quantum Fever – a Sci-fi novel – a futuristic vision of a capitalist system.

Posted on April 16, 2022 by Opher

Thanks for all the great reviews and buying the books!!

Quantum Fever

Opher August 27, 2019

The System is made up of thousands of planets housing trillions of people in tiny doms arranged in tiers.

The Consortium are a group of wealthy capitalists who live above the metropolis in floating mansions. The name of the game is expansion and profit.

The Quships cross quantum space in search of planets to either colonise or plunder for resources in order to maintain the system.

Quantum Fever is a disease that affects people who jump the weird reaches of quantum space.

Was Tahsin Roeg suffering from Quantum Fever or were the Consortium seeking to control her?

What of the alien planet she discovers?

Were the Primitives going to achieve their dream?

Extract

Chapter 1

I hate every minute of being in such an elite club. I play the game and I know I do it well but it really is not me. Inside I am still Tahsin Roeg, the ordinary girl from the deeper beltways of Haven.

Having this rare ability has been my ticket out of the lower tiers. At first, I revelled in it. Who would not feel good about being able to do something that so few other people could do? For someone like me, now in my middle age, short, rather dumpy and plain looking and possessing a phobia about Nano surgical recontouring, it surely proved a lifeline for my ego.

Who would not feel great about being made to feel so special, or having the potential to be elevated into such a high position in society? That skill provided me with a status that was otherwise unattainable.

My rare ability transformed the future for my entire family and gave me a pass to a life, that as an otherwise rather average girl, I could only have imagined – attaining that place in the sky we all dream of.

The skill made me wealthy and famous, but it had not made me happy and now I was finding that it was not at all fulfilling either.

Disillusionment leaves a rancid taste.

I began to see it for what it was – emptiness – sheer emptiness – all sham, all front.

We thought we were part of their club but we really were not. All we Quship Skippers were being used. We were expendable. They, ‘The Consortium’, exploited our talent, paid us handsomely but would discard us as soon as we were of no further use to them. We moved in their world but we were not part of it.

Worse than that – they thought they possessed the right to control us.

There was an epiphany when I woke up to what the Consortium was really doing. For some reason I had shut my mind to it. Now my eyes were opened. I could clearly see what game they were playing. It was so obvious.

No matter how much I tried to kid myself that I was doing a good job and bringing back the resources that everyone needed, I knew I was really working for a bunch of crooks who I did not think were very nice. They certainly were not doing it for the people – that was for sure. The whole business made me feel used and grubby. Somehow, despite all my best intentions, I had lost contact with the friends I used to have in the lower tiers. Looking back now I can see that the moment I left to start the intensive training was when I subconsciously broke away from my roots. I severed that umbilicus. It was something I was now regretting. I was starting to wonder what had become of my friends. We had shared so much. They must have felt abandoned, betrayed.

This book is available from Amazon in both paperback and kindle versions:

In the UK:

Buy the book – click here

In the USA:

Buy the book – click here

In India:

Buy the book – click here

In Canada:

Buy the book – click here

In Germany:

Buy the book – click here

In Australia

Buy the book – click here

Or from your local Amazon Store.

Today’s Music To keep me SsSsSaaaaANNnnneEE in Isolation – Leonard Cohen – The Future

Posted on March 3, 2022 by Opher

I was hoping for a miracle or two!!

Poetry – Robots for good!

Posted on January 12, 2022January 12, 2022 by Opher

Robots for good!

Let us bring in robots!

Do away with work!

Then quarter the population.

A new age of fairness and prosperity!

Let us have a new age

Of unity with nature,

Of reverence for all,

Of oneness with respect and dignity!

Opher 26.11.2019

The world is being ravaged by mankind. We are destroyed nature. Our greed and numbers are killing everything in our path.

Time to change.

Maybe AI can be a force for great good – if we harness it for the good of all, and not just the wealthy few, we can all become prosperous. We can work less.

But we will need to bring our numbers down so that our impact is less. Nature cannot stand the strain. We are changing the climate; we are causing extinctions on a catastrophic level.

Time to change.

AI could be the solution (or it could be the final straw).