'The Book' starts with some explanations about the planet Furaha, how humanity got there, why anyone would choose to go there, as well as some other background material. The image above gives the reader an idea how large the planet and its two small moons are in comparison to Earth and its large moon.
A variety of techniques were used to make it. First of all, for something like this a 'digital elevation map' (DEM) is needed, showing elevation on a grid of longitude by latitude. Such maps are easy to find, for Earth that is, and Matlab's mapping toolbox offers many ways to play with maps. Obviously, I had to make my own DEM for Furaha. The intermediate stage is to make a nice digital map in which colours represent elevation. Second, take a suitable 3D-program and set up a scene with spheres in it. I still use my 2014 copy of Vue Infinite to do so. Then you just wrap the maps around the spheres, set up some light, and you get a nice picture comparing two globes, one representing Furaha, one Earth.
However, I increasingly felt that the image I used for Earth might not be appropriate for the future. Mind you, I have never settled on a period in which the future history of Furaha is to take place. Is it the 24th century, like Star Trek? Sometime earlier or later? I do not know and do not care too much. However, the Institute of Furaha Biology is at least some 200 years old, so at least two centuries are needed for that. Moreover, a 'Faster-Than-Light' drive, or an 'Around-Light' drive for that matter, does not seem around the corner, so perhaps we need to give that some time as well. Overall, we are probably looking at at least four centuries. Would the overall contours of the continents look different?
The
recent report on global warming makes me wonder how much sea level might rise. Humanity is causing global warming, and it is too late to prevent all of it, but part of it can be prevented. If people act in time and wisely, that is. Will they, or will it be a case of too little, too late?
The Book is a science fiction project, so the choices are fictional. In the Furaha setting, in that far future, wrong choices were made. All of the Greenland ice melted, and all Antarctic ice, and so the sea rose. By 70 meters. I found that number on the internet as a rough estimate of what would happen if all the ice melted.
Wikipedia tells me that Greenland is good for a 7.4 meter 'sea-level equivalent', and Antarctica supplies 58.3 meters, so together they account for 65.7 meters. That is still a sizeable amount.
I took the elevation data and adapted them to reflect a 70 m rise. I then had to edit some areas manually, because the program found some inland areas that it now regarded as 'sea', even though those areas had no access to the oceans. Large parts of the UK are gone, as well as the Netherlands, Denmark, Bangladesh, etc. No current coastal city would escape unharmed. I have no idea how such a change would affect the climate, pollution of the seas and myriads of other matters.
In the Furaha universe civilisation endured, because otherwise I would have nothing to write about. But I think these fictional future people would look back to their past, our future, with perhaps some new hard-won wisdom. The citizens of the Furahan Institute of Biology passed a unanimous vote to change the formal scientific name of mankind. They abandoned the old familiar name 'Homo sapiens',
meaning 'wise man', and changed it to 'Homo semisapiens': man who is half wise. They felt that wisdom must have two parts: the first consists of the ability to think, and the second requires that those thoughts are acted on. According to the Institute, humanity passed the first criterion, but failed the second.
