Clean and inexpensive power has been percolating in innovators’ minds for centuries.

Far longer ago, alchemists and wizards sought the supply of ultimate power somewhat differently, calling it magic.

The financial consequences of low-priced clean power would be tremendous. Envision energizing rural Africa or infusing India’s poorest neighborhoods with uninterrupted low-cost energy. All that brain energy just waiting for an opportunity to connect with a funds-generating notion could make substantial adjustments in technological development, not to mention financial could.

So far, however, that pursuit remains unrealized. Recall cold fusion? How about the mythic magnetic power generator, a device that purports to generate “totally free” electricity.

Alas, it really is a crock. So far, anyway.

Pursuing clean power

That doesn’t quit the pursuit of some almost free power source. Or the daydreaming. Or the bona fide study bringing current clean energy technologies extra in line with the expense of standard carbon-producing fuels.

Writers on a regular basis take on the challenge, imagining star travel as the most likely result of conquering power. Isaac Asimov’s universes had been fueled by atomic power. Even Albert Einstein and Otto Stern envisioned a hidden source of power in all issues. They known as it Nullpunktsenergie, which was later translated to zero-point power. Imaging that is one point. Tapping it is a different.

With this in mind, I decided to do some study. For mean that meant seeking up the sci-fi masters. Of course, clean power wasn’t the only thing on my thoughts. Reading gives equal-opportunity inspiration.

Back to the barn

Employed book shops exude a musty eclectic chic. Normally they are stuffed with sort-packed cast-offs just waiting for somebody to give them one more appear.

At the recently expanded and somewhat aptly named Book Barn in my town of Clovis, Calif. I tagged along as my higher college English teaching wife, Peggy, scoured the shelves for teen lit. Werewolves, vampires, angst and drama. The usual stuff.

Meanwhile, I hit the science fiction shelves. I dug around in the recesses of my memory for authors I as soon as read and scanned the meticulously sorted titles. Excellent lord, Gardener F. Fox had a couple of books. He wrote in the style of the incomparable Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian. Fox’s publisher didn’t have something on the author in the series of skinny little paperbacks offered, so it really is not surprising he’s totally out of print nowadays.

I nabbed 1, even even though it read like one thing I had consumed prior to. Lots of occasions prior to.

Charlton Heston’s legacy

On the next shelf over, I located a number of by Harry Harrison, who startled my generation in 1966 with the story, “Make Room, Make Area,” which explores the consequences of unchecked population development. Most recall the somewhat altered film version, “Soylent Green,” starring Charlton Heston in the top role of detective Thorn and Edward G. Robinson as his roommate Sol. It was to be Robinson’s final film.

Harrison has penned a number of novels in a variety of sci-fi sub genres, and numerous contained themes of social commentary. Even though not so a lot with the “Stainless Steel Rat,” a space criminal anti-hero who had a bit of a soft side. I believed I had consumed practically all of his books but located a couple in the Book Barn that proved me wrong. “Invasion Earth” tells the story of an invasion by aliens by means of a higher-stakes con job, and “Skyfall” outlines the struggles of a U.S.-Soviet (the Reds still had stamina in this 1978 novel) project to ship a deep space solar collector into the heavens to offer clean, inexpensive energy to the globe.

In “Skyfall,” the project is not effortless. In truth, disaster lurks at just about just about every turn. Not surprising. In fact, the story is somewhat timeless, other than the Soviet connection. Swap CCCP characters for Russians and it could spark interest a decade from now when climate transform is a freakish reality, sending residents of island nations and low-lying nations like Bangladesh into their neighbors’ garages and outbuildings.

“Skyfall” is not Harrison’s ideal. It drags. Its characters have all the zip of a lead brick. The pilot is an idiot chauvinist. The U.S. president is a jerk, not as “crooked as Tricky Dicky, but he’s craftier.” The Russian female pilot is underdeveloped and somewhat two-dimensional. The narrative doesn’t zing like most of the author’s function.

Space-primarily based solar

But the Prometheus Project sounds good. The concept is to deploy enormous unfurling solar collectors exactly where they could collect solar power with no nighttime interruption and beam it through microwave to points on earth. The cost is immense and the project massively controversial. The book’s antagonist is a Newsweek reporter who desires to write about nothing at all but potential doom.

Coretta Samuel, one of the crew, tells him at one point, “Just the physical reality that, at the present rate of consumption, we’re going to burn up all the Earth’s oil in a couple far more years. So we’ve got to do one thing drastic about it.”

Undertaking one thing. Sounds great to me. Back when this book was published, I was considering about earning gas funds for my mini truck and enjoying the spoils of refined fuel even though spinning broadies in the East High parking lot in Anchorage.

Present political discourse has all but ignored climate alter. That’s an issue for our kids, apparently. They will have to make the hard decisions simply because there will be no alternative. Most likely they will curse the previous generation for short-sightedness.