Thoughts, ramblings and other stuff

Peter Watts unfortunately lives in distopian universe that is close to our own that we can still read his books and blog posts. In this universe Canadian SF writers get beaten by US border police when they try go back home and then become felons because of it. And routine biopsy in a private clinic ends with flesh eating disease that almost results in their death. Luckily Canada still has public healthcare so at least he is not broke.

Dr. Peter Watts either has the worst luck in the world or his life follows his novels to closely. In the blog posts about this latest misfortune he notices he just wrote about the whole flesh-eating bacteria and now he got to almost die from it. Of course one can also say he is lucky because he is still alive and he still has a leg. This is a disease that spreads so quickly it can kill in hours. it's because it's not really the bacteria that cause the necrosis but it's the overreaction of immune system to the bacterial toxin. It's the immune system that triggers the death of your cells and liquefies parts of your body. This type of sudden cell death is called necrosis (some people find pictures of that disturbing). Necrosis is the mostly uncontrolled cell death. They just burst and can poison the other cells in the vicinity. This type of necrosis that is triggered by bacteria is called Necrotizing fasciitis (even more disturbing photos). The only thing that can help is removing the affected body parts as soon as possible and it doesn't always work. It often ends in death and if you just lose your limb you can call yourself lucky. So him loosing just large part of his calf is very lucky indeed. His latest post on the subject shows how his leg looks like now. If you are squeamish and cant look at blood and open wound DO NOT click this link. There are cute cat and balloons photos but the rest shows large open wound with his calf muscles visible and large amount of skin missing. The yellow stuff is I think fat and dried out lymph. And filled with the dark gray foam it looks like tree trunks rescued with concrete.

This is something that seem like an SF disease but it's very real. Still the press titles like Canadian biologists/ SF writer contracts flesh-eating disease make it seem even more made up. It puts the small bad luck things I've been complaining about into perspective.

His books show the future that is both bleak and realistic and are best summed up by this blurb that he proudly displays on his site

The same sense of humour and detachment is showing through his blog posts about his misadventures. First over year ago when he had his border problems and now when he writes about his near death experience. The way he presents it makes me feel weird not because of the content but because this is something I would do. I keep documenting all my injuries and other causes of disfigurement. I suppose one becomes a biologist for a reason. It shouldn't surprise me that what we have in common is that there is that despite the fear and pain he still the need to record this between pain and unconsciousness he is taking photos of his leg. This is what I would do. So when I look at this photos there is a part of me that is very happy he survived and winces in empathy for the kind of pain he must feel but he other part thinks this is so cool - I can see all the mucles and ligaments and I wish he posted a video of him wriggling his toes. This is the part that looked inside my knee wound, saw the white of the joint capsule and thought "wow, so that how it looks like inside" before the blood and pain came. It seems it's one more of that little clues that indicated I'm going to end up in life science even back then.

As I wrote yesterday I voted for Blindsight in tor.com poll and the I was one of the many so it made it to 4th place. It's one of the best SF novels I've ever read. I'm glad that it made it and my happy he got there despite his problems with Tor as publisher. At least he lived to have his moment of evil glee. And because of that problems you can read his books free online so go and see if you like it too. I'll go buy Starfish. It just became my next read. Just after I finish latest Erikson.

The weather changed today. It was still pretty warm for this part of year till yesterday. Even during the night the temperature didn't drop below 0. But the forecast kept predicting cold and it came last night. The frost covered roofs but the water didn't freeze. Then the temperature kept dropping all day and now it's -2 and the puddles are covered with ice. The air feels even colder.I've been barely conscious these past few days and it may have something to do with the change in weather (or I'm going to be sick). Anyway I was so tired I came home yesterday, ate dinner and fall asleep. I slept with small breaks till 9 a.m. And would gladly go back to bed soon. I think I finally caught that famous winter solstice sickness which is used to explain feeling bad, sad and tired this time of year.

Anyway this was the reason I haven't posted anything lately, including yesterday when I should've noted that my visa papers finally came. Now all I need to do is to have a talk with somebody at the embassy and then get into USA. That last part may turn the most problematic as, as I learn today when I got up, even leaving US can tricky. As Charles Stross reports on BoingBoing Canadian SF writer Peter Watts got stopped at the border crossing back to Canada and was beaten, pepper sprayed and arrested by US border guards on Tuesday. What happened in Peter Watt's own words:

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

There is a campaign to raise money for his defence found as he writes a very interesting but also very hard SF which means he is not by any means a best selling author and the legal costs my prove debilitating. And since you can download his books (like Blindsight which I happen to own and which I loved and have been in heated discussion about lately) you can treat it as an exchange. There even is a sign for free the squid (marine biologist) movement. And I admit I thought of him today while writing the letters for Amnesty International :P

I've heard a lot of scary stories about people treated badly when trying to get into US. This is the first one about someone trying to get out. My mother asked me lately what will happen if they won't let me in - after all people are waiting and everything - I'm a little worried. Of course a lot of people went through US border without any problems as many friends of mine did. And as my father noted police forces are pretty much the same everywhere as they press charges for beating you in here too. So my plans in near future are to get an appointment in the embassy and choose the luggage I'll get for Christmas and to be nice to any officials.