{"id":68520,"date":"2024-06-09T16:45:36","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T21:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68520"},"modified":"2024-06-09T16:45:36","modified_gmt":"2024-06-09T21:45:36","slug":"the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68520","title":{"rendered":"The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?<\/a><\/h3>\n

An evolutionary biologist and a science fiction writer walk into a bar \u2026 and mull over survival.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I<\/span>\u2019ve known Dan Brooks for 40 years now. Somehow we\u2019re still talking to each other.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve followed radically different trajectories since first meeting back in the \u201980s. Over the decades, Dan built a truly impressive rap sheet as an evolutionary biologist, with over 400 papers and book chapters, seven books, and too many awards, fellowships, and distinctions to count on your fingers and toes. I, in contrast, left an academic career in marine biology in a huff (industry funding came with, shall we say, certain\u00a0a priori\u00a0<\/em>preferences concerning the sort of results we\u2019d be reporting) and became a science-fiction writer. It\u2019s a position from which, ironically, I\u2019ve had more influence on actual scientists than I ever did as an academic\u2014admittedly a low bar to clear.<\/p>\n

And yet our paths continue to intersect. Dan offered me a post-doc in his lab around the turn of the century (DNA barcoding\u2014I really,\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0sucked at it). A few years later I helped him relocate to Nebraska, leading to an encounter with the armed capuchins of the United States Border Patrol and eventual banishment from that crumbling empire. The protagonist of my novel\u00a0Echopraxia<\/em>\u00a0is a parasitologist suspiciously named Daniel Br\u00fcks. And I once ended up one creepy handshake away from Viktor Orb\u00e1n, when Dan finagled a speaking gig for me at Hungary\u2019s iASK Symposium.<\/p>\n

The dance continues. Sometimes we hug like brothers. Sometimes we feel like punching each other\u2019s lights out (also, I suppose, like brothers). But one thing we never do is bore each other\u2014and whenever Dan\u2019s in town, we manage to meet up at a pub somewhere to reconnect.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest oft he article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt? An evolutionary biologist and a science fiction writer walk into a bar \u2026 and mull over survival. I\u2019ve known Dan Brooks for 40 years now. Somehow we\u2019re still talking to each other. We\u2019ve followed radically different trajectories since first meeting back in the \u201980s. Over the decades, Dan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[141,150,34602],"class_list":["post-68520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-climate-change","tag-collapse","tag-peter-watts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68521,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68520\/revisions\/68521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}