In a recent issue of the excellent CBC New website, journalist Bob MacDonald describes a new Canadian coin that honors the 25th anniversary of the first spaceflight by a female Canadian Scientist-Astronaut, Dr. Roberta Bondar. The coin, beautifully-designed, has two remarkable features. Concave on one side and convex on the other, it carries a sense of the roundness of Earth. And its colorful rendering of the image-map of Canada from space glows in the dark to reveal patterns of man-made lights in that northern country. (The Canadians were also kind enough to include a good part of their neighboring nation to the south on the coin.)
Since this is a silver coin, durably made, it will be a long-lasting — “a deep time” — reminder of North American geography as it appeared the early 21st century.
In his article, MacDonald emphasizes what he seems to consider a new idea – that space and conservation are two sides of the same coin. The article is well-written, and will open up that idea for the first time to many readers. But the idea is NOT new – NASA is tasked, to do ecological research. And that, in part, is certainly because George R.Stewart, nearly a quarter of a century before the NASA organic act was written, and 33 years before the first Earth Day, in Ordeal By Hunger and his ecological novels, presented the concept to a massive audience of literate, general readers.
Ordeal By Hunger, written in 1936, opens with a view of Nevada from orbit so accurately described that when International Space Station Astronaut Dr. Ed Lu photographed Nevada from space his images matched Stewart’s words almost exactly. Stewart’s history of the Donner Party then comes down to Earth, to focus on the role of the ecosystem in the fate of the emigrants. Thus, he completes what has become known as The Whole Earth vision – understanding Earth from within its ecosystem, and from without, as one small, beautiful, place in the universe.
Stewart follows that same approach in his first ecological novel, Storm. The novel begins with a view of Earth from Earth orbit; moves into the ecosystem to tell its story; then ends by taking the reader to an imaginary platform on Venus, describing the tiny bright light called Earth from millions of miles away.
Once again George R. Stewart proved to be a prophet, and trailblazer for our time. His books helped lay the foundation for the view of Earth found on the new Canadian coin, and for our sense of the Whole Earth.
the EARTH ABIDES project 