Alert your Harlequin-reading friends! Chasing the Light may take place in the future (from 2011 to 2020)... it may feature technological developments... but this is primarily a romantic adventure.
This is a "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy comes back to get girl" story at its base, complete with conflicting temptations, unsure futures, threats from the establishment, and the help of newfound friends. The story heads directly for a climax of wills, and is ultimately resolved by the power of love.
It also happens to take place within the United States' latest difficulties with energy and oil-reliance, and the story details a nations' efforts to make it through a power-poor time in our history. The story predicts overseas conflicts between other nations, underhanded politics and corporate dealings, and domestic conflicts as the American public must decide when enough is enough. And it describes new ways of living, getting around and working in a nation without excess energy, none of which are outside of the realm of possibility within the next decade.
The American energy situation may be the backdrop to the action, but it is the main character's quest to find the girl he loves, start a business and carve out a life for themselves that is its focus. Chasing the Light shows the reader how far people will go for love, and why it's worth every bit of the effort.
Chasing the Light was written to use the backdrop of the story to illustrate our likely energy future.
I wish I could say that I had better hopes for America's future energy situation. Unfortunately, many of the elements described in the story—such as the efforts of the oil industry to slow progress and deployment of alternate energies by buying up companies and rendering them ineffectual, and hogtying the government with their lobbying efforts—are all based on the past thirty years of recorded actions by oil and government. Without a government brave enough to stand up to oil lobbyists and take the hard line, the oil industry will continue to dominate America's energy future.
The story is populated with examples of the common man's efforts to free himself from the clutches of Big Oil (which has tried to rebrand itself as the friendlier-sounding "All Power"), via self-propelled electric generators such as stationary bikes and larger, flywheel- or gravity-run devices that require only the muscle to set them once a day, and even electricity-generating shoes. Hybrid vehicles, running on combinations of electricity and ethanol, and full-electric vehicles, abound, and parking lots feature plug-in stations that can automatically charge back the owner for any electricity used. And, of course, the main character hopes to manufacture his own solar cells, despite the efforts of All Power to prevent it through any legal and illegal means necessary.
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| These square spirals act as an antenna for infra-red light, and create electricity directly from heat. How cool is that? |
Tom's intended solar technology, while left to be a surprise to the other characters in the story, is in actuality not a vague theory or untested process invented for the story, but a design undergoing tests right now at Idaho National Laboratory, along with partners at Microcontinuum Inc. and Patrick Pinhero of the University of Missouri. These nano-antennas, each one 1/25th the width of a human hair, actually absorb infra-red light —aka heat—and convert it to electricity, just as a traditional solar cell converts visible light to electricity. A series of these antennas, covering any surface, would allow the surface to generate electricity from any heat source, from the Sun itself, to any bodies radiating heat on Earth. If this system is refined, it could lead to a simple coating on almost any surface to convert waste heat to electricity. (For more information, see Harvesting the Sun's Energy With Antennas.)
Our next decade will likely bring about major changes in American lifestyles, as we try to deal with the high price of fuel against our increasingly energy-hungry lives. Turning off lights will be the least of our worries, as we try to figure out how to get to work, whether or not large homes and vehicles make economic sense, and when we have to tighten our pursestrings and resort to providing our own power, or doing without.
Chasing the Light touches on many of these themes, as well as describing ways we might try to find our way out of these difficulties. The lifestyles and elements described in the story—such as community eating halls, multi-family homes, scooter-like personal transports, and working from home—should not be considered the only way in which we can survive, but a viable alternative... in many ways not so different from the way people live in places where energy is not so abundant or affordable as it is in America. In fact, this scenario could represent one of the more positive alternatives for Americans to look forward to... so it might be worthwhile to take notes.
The best lesson that can be learned from the story is the overriding power of self-reliance. Sitting back and waiting for others to do things for you, usually results in waiting a long, long time for nothing. We must all act to solve our own problems, whether they be problems with our lives, our loves, or our futures. And when the problem is big enough, we must all act together, to enact change for the better. Self-reliance founded the United States, and has carried the country through worse difficulties... it can get the U.S. through the energy crisis, too.
Copyright © Steve Jordan. All rights reserved.
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