Status Updates From Fixing the Sky: The Checker...

Ah! Now I understand this "middle road" that Fleming's gone on about (but not clearly explained until now). Oh, and scientists seem to have this obsession with shooting things into the sky . . . or just plain shooting the sky.

Global warming is boring. Methods for "fixing" global warming are exciting - like covering the oceans with particulates and sending dark dust into the atmosphere. Fun!

Fleming writes like an author with an agenda, stylistically speaking. But I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that agenda is. His theses are slippery (don't say that too quickly or you'll get some really strange looks).

Wha? The military wanting to use weather as a weapon and spending millions on research to that end? Who woulda thunk? My dad was a military weatherman with classified clearance. I'll be asking him about this next time he calls. Of course, he's told me there are some secrets that will die with him. Curious.

The book was losing it's "oomph" for a bit there. Probably because it started really getting good when people were blowing clouds up. Then there was a lull. Now . . . now, there are curtains of fire carving the fog off of runways during World War II. What's not to like about that?

For centuries, in Austria, farmers would shoot consecrated guns into the clouds, sometimes loaded with nails to kill the witches that were flying around up there stirring up storms. How cool is that?

hydrogen balloons laden with torpedoes being sent up into clouds to break them open. Now we're talking business!

Now we begin diving into the actual history of the subject. Much better!

I hope all the fictional stories Fleming recounts are included for a reason. Seems like a lot of fluff to me at this point. I mean: Porky Pig? I love loony toons and will be the last one to criticize them, but do you really have to point out that Porky Pig was a rainmaker in one cartoon? To what purpose?

I'm very excited about the subject matter. The writing is adequate, but nothing spectacular. Could be a slog, but I'm already learning a lot and the speculative pistons in my head keep firing . . . this could lead to many short stories from my pen.