Posthuman Blues

Hurricanes So Strong They Need a New Definition

Due to global warming, which heats up the surface of the tropical waters where hurricanes form, hurricanes are becoming stronger than ever -- so strong, in fact, that scientists say we need a new way to categorize them.

Imagine a not-too-distant future Earth besieged by a perpetual storm akin to Jupiter's Great Red Spot. I'm serious. Might cyclonic storms represent a form of life, however minimal? Is the Red Spot a gargantuan organelle? Admittedly, it's difficult to anthropomorphise -- let alone sympathize with -- something as unremittingly destructive as a super-hurricane; then again, we waste little time worrying about the plight of many animal species.

Life isn't a "thing"; it's a pattern. As such, a self-sustaining hurricane or tornado seems to fulfill at least the basic definition of "life." It "seeks" to persist. It "responds" to its environment. It even "reproduces," albeit asexually.

I've even started a short-story in which massive, self-aware cylcones have eclipsed humans as Earth's dominant species, forcing survivors to seek shelter deep underground amidst the remains of a once-thriving biotech industry. But I stopped writing when I realized the heroine would eventually have to confront Earth's inscrutable new overlords. After all, how exactly does one communicate with a weather pattern, however evolved?

Science fiction writers delight in crafting thoroughly nonhuman aliens, but most of the time they're at least palpably flesh-and-blood (or the xenobiological equivalent). Surprisingly, we might have more in common with sapient whirlwinds than we might think; the human form, viewed in four dimensions, is essentially an ever-changing amalgam of molecules, as fleeting and tenuous as the winds that conspire to form a funnel-cloud. The atoms in our bodies are constantly replenished, effectively "teleporting" us in to the future with every breath. We are patterns. So maybe we have some common ground with my fictional cyclones after all, and dialogue isn't as impossible as it might seem.