In Earth terms, we only have one Earth, and when it goes, if it goes, our descendants in the next 500 years will be goners, too. It's come to that. Ponder this and write your cli-fi novels, oh ye who are not afraid to ponder our fate.

A few years ago, on November 16, 2009 to be exact,  while I was in the midst of busy schedule teaching English at a local college and working on a ''cli-fi'' PR campaign, I had a nice little heart attack one grey fall afternoon while
bicycling to work, and while the recovery has proceeded swimmingly --
and I feel
marvelous! -- there's been a stent in my heart since then keeping the blood
flowing and I've been put on alert: my days are numbered, according to my cardio guy at the local hospital in south Taiwan.

Well, for all of us our days are numbered, only we never pay attention
until death knocks at the door.  It's been seven years now of appreciating
life in  a way I could never have conceived of before, and 7 years of
expressing a renewed kind of gratitude just to be alive on this
amazing planet. I almost passed to the
other side. I've got a few more good years left.

Thanks to great medical care in Taiwan, a wonderful heart doctor and a
crew of friendly nurses, I'm still here to tell the tale.

Doc says I've got a good 20 more years to live, if all goes well and I
exercise properly and watch my diet and take my meds.

Not a day goes by that I don't personally sing the praises of  my cardio doc half
my age who saved my life when half my heart had stopped working due to
a very clogged artery.

I am still working the cli-fi PR campaign, just as hard as I always way back then in 2009 and even more so today, and I had this thought the other day in the middle of the night when I got up to pee as we older men are wont to do as part of our four-times a night get up and pee routine. Wait till you turn, 70, my friends. (I don't think women have this kind of bladder routine in old age, do they?)

So I woke up and wrote these thoughts down:  The Earth has a disease and it's Man-made Global Warming (AGW) and it's as if our planet is having a long and slow heart attack to its planetary system and we need a stent now to keep the place going swimmingly. What will the AGW stent consist of? Time will tell.

But even with a AGW stent in place, that will only buy some time, as my own stent has bought me some much-appreciated time. But who knows how long the AGW stent will hold and how long before the Earth is going to collapse under the weight of accumulated AGW impact events in the Anthrocene.

Will our descendants some 500 years from now -- 30 generations from now -- be ready for this very possible eventuality? Or will they still be in denial until the very last day of humankind's extinction on this lovely 3rd Rock from Sun?

This is where cli-fi novels and movies come in. They can help prepare this genertion now and future generations over the next 30 generations for what may very well be coming down the road. And cli fi novels and movies can go whatever way their authors or screenwriters want to go -- dystopian or utopian in approach or theme. I hope to read more cli fi novels before I die, and see more cli fi movies, too. I am not ready to kick the bucket, and I don't really have bucket list. I did everything I wanted to do in this life. I am ready to go anytime. It's been a wonderful 60+ orbits around the Sun and if I make it up to 70 and 80 orbits, more power to my beating heart.





I still see my cardiologist every few months or so for a check up, and
he's been kind enough to show me some sonar images of my "new and
improved" heart, so I can compare the images with what he showed me a
year ago, when even he admitted
things were looking bleak. Those sonar "x-ray" images I will never
forget. You only get one heart, and when it goes, you're a goner. So I
am on my best behavior now, eating well, exercising daily and ready
for what comes.


In Earth terms, we only have one Earth, and when it goes, if it goes, our descendants in the next 500 years will be goners, too. It's come to that. Ponder this and write your cli-fi novels, oh ye who are not afraid to ponder our fate.