Fuel for the future

Original author: Iwan Rhys Morus
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Fantasies about new food sources to meet human ambitions appeared more than a hundred years ago. Will these visions of the past give energy to our future?




In the story "Let There Be Light," science fiction writer Robert Heinlein presented a source of energy that will feed his further stories and stories from the Future History series. The story, first published in the journal Super Science Stories in May 1940, described screens that process the energy of the sun and provide (almost) free and inexhaustible energy for future chapters of its alternative history. The technology was simple, robust and reliable. “They can be connected in series to get the right voltage; in parallel, to get the desired current; energy is completely free, with the exception of the installation cost, ”one of the inventors was surprised, studying the potential of a new technology to reverse the social order of the future.

Solar screens were enameled panels, absorbing sunlight and turning it into electricity with almost 100% efficiency, or working in the opposite direction, turning electricity into light. As in most stories from the “History of the Future”, readers were offered a fusion of technology and culture. Solar screens did not appear out of nowhere - they fit into the American history of inventions, emphasizing the struggle of men of genius with corporations - in the imagination of the masses they were descendants of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. The story carried Heinlein's easily recognizable attitude against corporations, emphasizing the responsibility of a person for his own future.


Installation of the first successful solar panel and solar array (array), October 4, 1955

Solar screens were needed by Heinlein in order for his future to work; that is, to solve the problem of the prosperity of technological culture in the world with a diminishing amount of resources. This problem was not new even in the 1940s, and now it is becoming more and more serious. The issue of nutrition for the future has never been so urgent. Will it be wind or wave energy? Will fuel cells, solar panels, or the "holy grail" of nuclear fusion be the answer to our problems? Or do we drive ourselves into oblivion? If we want to better understand how to argue about the energy of the future, we need to accept how old the history of such reasoning is (they come from the early Victorian period), and what this story contains like fabrications like those about which Heinlein wrote,

Heinlein's story is a good example. The technology described in “Let There Be Light” has its counterpart in the real world. The way electrical properties of selenium change under the influence of light was noticed by Telegraph engineer Willoughby Smith.in 1873, and a few years later, William Grylls Adams and Richard Evans Day managed to get an electric current, shining on the grid of selenium. But back in 1833, inventor Charles Fritts installed an array of solar cells consisting of selenium, covered with a thin layer of gold, on the roof in New York. Heinlein's imagination and his vision of the future were repelled by these technologies. Interestingly, a file with materials from the Heinlein archives relating to this story contains a clipping from a 1954 newspaper describing a solar battery just invented by Bell’s laboratory. The article was titled: "A solar-sand battery produces energy." Did Heinlein decide that his fictional technology preceded this real one?

Heinlein's Victorian predecessors of solar screens worked on the principle that in the 1840s a physicistWilliam Robert Grove described it as a "correlation of physical forces." Grove argued that:

Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical properties and movement are all interconnected, or interdependent. None of them, considered theoretically, cannot be called the main or immediate cause of the others, but each of them can produce or turn into the other - heat can indirectly or directly turn into electricity, electricity can produce heat; so with all others.

This is exactly what the solar screens did. Explaining the correlation, Grove offered his experimental demonstration in which light produced electricity, based on the experiments of physicist Edmond Becquerel , conducted several years earlier.

The gas battery Grove (the predecessor of modern fuel cells) gave another example of such a correlation. Describing his invention in 1842, he called it "the perfect embodiment of the correlation of natural forces." Interestingly, a gas battery generated electricity based on a combination of oxygen and hydrogen, instead of the usual liquid electrolytes. Although Grove himself never considered his battery a real power source capable of operating on a large scale, he was convinced that electricity would become the fuel of the future. "If instead of zinc and acids, which are rather expensive, and still need to be produced, we could collect electricity produced by burning coal, wood, fat or other raw materials in the atmospheric air, we would immediately have a real possibility of commercial use for electricity "He wrote.

And yet, fantasies about the future, fed by cheap and inexhaustible electricity, were often met in the Victorian period. In his (anti) utopian description of the underground civilization "The Coming Race" (1871), Edward Bulwer-Lytton clearly described that the technologies of the Vril-I race were powered by electricity. Vril-I lived in a world in which electricity (or lied, as they called it) fed all around. Electricity served as food for their cars, controlled the weather, helped to grow crops. It was also the source of their telepathic capabilities. Such theories worked well for the readers of Bulwer-Lytton precisely because they reflected the futuristic assumptions of the real Victorian world. Predictions that electricity will soon replace steam as a universal source of economic energy were expressed everywhere. Grove shared this optimism, although it cools down especially hot fantasies about the very early onset of such an epoch. When the British Association of Advanced Scientific Research gathered in Grove Swansea’s hometown in 1848, guests were invited to his friend’s luxurious manor in Penlerger to look at a boat cuts through the lake, powered by a nitric acid battery.

Although our concerns about the energy of the future are now mainly related to climate change intruding into our lives, Victorians were more worried about the future energy belonging to the Empire: the energy of the future that fell into the wrong hands, and the consequences of this were favorite themes scientific novels "Feng de Sekl". In his story "The Air Criminals" (1895) [The Outlaws of the Air], George Griffin imagined two hostile groups of anarchists (utopians and nihilists) fighting fiercely at sea and in the air using electric gunboats and airplanes with electric weapons. In The Angel of the Revolution (1893), Griffin imagined revolutionary anarchists with access to a new source of energy, capable of controlling the air, and terrorizing European countries. In both stories, the social organization of the future depends on whose hands the necessary energy is in. Understanding that control of the energy of the future will be a necessary condition for maintaining (or overthrowing) the social order, made stories about how this energy falls into the wrong hands, at the same time, frightening and exciting.

These fictional stories were picked up by inventors and entrepreneurs. Indeed, forecasting is part of the process of the invention. Much of Tesla's reputation at the peak of his career depended on his ability to carry out his plans for generating and transmitting energy. In the 1890s, trying to get a contract with George Westinghouse for the supply of electricity for the World Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893(this is practically providing energy for the future) and developing a system for generating hydroelectric power at Niagara Falls, Tesla fantasized about turning the planet into a device for transmitting electricity. “I firmly believe that in practice it is possible to change the electrostatic state of the Earth with the help of powerful machines, and thus transmit clear signals or perhaps energy,” he argued.

Similar reasoning rushed between facts and fiction. In the story “Some Possibilities of Electricity” [Some Possibilities of Electricity (1892)], William Crookes, on the basis of recent advances in physics, talked about the transformative possibilities of electrical energy. He depicted a world where electricity helped grow crops and control the weather (did he read Bulwer-Lytton?), And in which “the ideal way to light a room would be to create a powerful, rapidly changing electrostatic field in which you can move and locate anywhere a lamp, and light it without metallic contact. ” Inventors from everywhere drew inspiration from scientific novels, the authors of which built a fictional future based on the latest scientific achievements. And this interaction continues today.

X-rays and radioactivity also promised future energy. Shortly after Wilhelm X-rays discovered the rays in 1895, Edison registered a patent for an X-ray lamp. Frederick Soddy, a radioactivity researcher in 1909, was surprised that "in ordinary, everyday matter, enormous reserves of energy are languishing, the use of which at present for life's purposes is kept only by ignorance." Hacking the secret of radioactivity would mean that the “struggle for existence” that characterized modern culture would be perceived in the future simply as a memory of the “transitory phase”. Such reasoning served as the basis for the adventure stories “The Radium Casket” [The Radium Casket (1926)] and its continuation “The Radium Island” [Radium Island (1936)] by Lawrence Born,

Understanding what the future will be is still dependent on the interaction of facts and fiction. Not only because today the links between modern debates and their Victorian and Edwardian predecessors are clearly visible - although they are often forgotten in modern discussions about the future. It turns out, however, that making up a future can be an effective way of understanding it and getting to know it. When commentators and businessmen argue about the worlds of the future, in which energy will be generated using solar panels, fuel cells, wind farms or nuclear fusion, their options for the future make sense to us mainly because they seem familiar to us. And they seem familiar to us because we already know the fictional versions of the future that work the same way - and, although it may not seem so obvious to us, because

In other words, our inventions offer ways of fixing future energy technologies in the form of cultural expectations. Heinlein's future alternatives are exploring how different energy technologies can evolve, which gives energy futurologists space to think about what worlds with different fuel options of the future can become. As science fiction writer Cory Doctorow wrote in 2014: “There is nothing strange in a company ordering a story about people using technology to decide whether to engage in the development of this technology. It’s like an architect creating a virtual tour of the building. ” Creating future scenarios based on both fact and fiction is becoming an increasingly important part of managing the energy of the future. In this process, the boundaries between fictional and actual worlds of energy become flexible, and in rather interesting ways. Just as it happened in the fiction of the Victorian era.

At the heart of the connectedness of our ideas about the future and its energy and visions of the future of Victorians are two elements. Like them, we believe that energy innovation will be the result of the work of individuals, not groups. And like their Victorian predecessors, our energy innovators consciously use fictional futures as the strategy for implementing their technologies.

Heinlein’s fictional Douglas-Martin solar screens were the invention of two independent engineers (one of whom was a woman), outside of corporations and exposed to threats from them. And even in the story from the “History of the Future”, where space travel was invented - “The Man Who Sold the Moon” (1951) - D.Harriman, the protagonist and supporter of space travel, appears to be an independent outsider, despite his affiliation to the corporation. There is a temptation to reflect on the extent to which Ilon Musk tries to be like Harriman, whose introductory remark in the story sounded like: “We must believe!” And Edison served as a model for Harriman, who brought to perfection the showy image of an individualized individual who replaced the image of the head the corporation he really was.

Victorian innovation historians, such as Samuel Smiles, the author of Helping Yourself (1859), turned innovators into the embodiment of effective and disciplined self-improvement. Take, for example, James Watt. From Smiles' point of view, the steam engine was the result of the work not of a single genius, but of character. Watt succeeded in developing the engine that became the energy of the future, not because he was a genius, but simply because he continued to try. Or perhaps his genius was his stubbornness. There are other role models of individuals who shaped the future. Edison and his supporters touted his image as the Menlo Park Wizard (after the New Jersey lab founded by Edison in the 1870s), a man ahead of his time with unique ideas about how to pave the way to the energy of the future. Such a look at inventors as people

What is important, a change in the sensation of how the energy of the future will be mined entails a change in the way the energy past is recorded. A good example is the Grove and fuel cells. Until recently, the Grove was an almost imperceptible figure in the history of Victorian science, and its gas battery was a forgotten technological wonder. However, his current recognition as the father of fuel cells and the reopening of the gas battery as the precursor of our hydrogen economy will mean the need to rewrite the Victorian energy technology. I want to present the future in which Grove will replace Watt as an icon of Victorian energy. An increasing number of fuel cell entrepreneurs are already starting this process, making it easier for their technology to go to the future, assigning it the right past.

Indeed, sometimes it seems that finding the right past for new energy technologies is an essential part of the search for their future. Changing Grove's story is one example. The position of Tesla in the future, created by Mask - another one. Tesla himself clearly understood that exciting stories about his ideas about future energy options were an important part of their advertising. Inventing stories about options for the future of his inventions was part of their implementation. Musk also believes that exciting stories about the future are important for his projects: he understands that in order to get into the future, you need to tell stories about him (because the company and the car are called Tesla).

The recent launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that carried a car into space into Mars orbit is another example of Mask’s ability to combine fantasy and reality plots to advertise his ideas. Seeing these images, I am sure that I did not remember one of the scenes from the Star Trek: Voyager television series (1995-2001), in which the team met up with a pick-up truck in space. Mask's plans for the colonization of Mars also use images from science fiction, and Tesla's electric vehicle puts technology using clean energy into a vehicle designed to evoke associations with the future sci-fi. Mask knows how to offer feasible ways to achieve a fantastic future.

And he is not the only modern man bringing the future closer. Bill Gates encourages people to invent their own way out of the problems associated with climate change, and this also evokes associations with the future, in which there is unlimited pure energy. The persuasiveness of such attempts to bring the future closer is based on a long history of using the possibilities of technological innovation to transform worlds - as in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Martian trilogy . The same can be said about today's discussion of how geoengineering can help cope with climate change issues.

Today, solar energy, which fueled Heinlein’s fantasy “Let there be light,” has become a big industry. Maybe its business prophets are not as recognizable as Musk or Gates, but they tell similar stories in order to connect their technologies with the future. The story of the leading company First Solar originates from the inventor Harold McMaster, stubbornly clinging to his unique vision of the future, powered by solar energy, despite all the obstacles. This is another example of a fearless lone genius.



We imagined the future of energy and the worlds that it will generate for more than two centuries, and the cross-exchange of ideas between inventors and their literary counterparts continues to shape our fantasies, among which individualism is not the least. It seems that we are trying to move away from the notion that energy technologies have a single point of origin, since these points must be distributed among individuals. Side by side with such individualism, it is often assumed that in the future, fictional or real, domination will remain with one type of fuel - whether it be hydrogen, wind or solar energy. Just as coal and steam fed the 19th century, and oil and electricity, the XX, our future fuel stories suggest that one basic form of energy is solar,

If we want to overcome these fictional restrictions, we need to rethink stories about the future and the past, in which energy, its origin and culture are involved. And although we are watching the energy revolutions taking place through the actions of individuals rather than teams, the danger of such stories — even if they are seductive and potentially useful — is that they offer the future and the energy of the future belonging to someone else. To overcome this situation, we need to understand that in order to ensure the desired future we need a collective peer review.

As the author of cyberpunk novels William Gibson wrote in the 1990s: "The future is already here - it is simply not very evenly distributed." The importance of this comment is that it emphasizes that the ingredients that make up the future are already parts of our present and past. If access to these ingredients is unevenly distributed today, then the future composed of them will suffer from the same problems. Therefore, in the case of energy feeding the future, it is important to deal with our history. The stories of the propagandists of the energy of the future attract us because they seem familiar - they all have a single story. If we want to make sure that the use of energy in the future will meet all our interests, it is important to ensure that all the stories about the future and all the paths to the future that they tell about, included in this process all people. In short, we need to change the history of the future.

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