Wisconsin-born writer Mark O’Connell loves science fiction — that’s what drove him to write for “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” But he believes real-life science is just as interesting.
O’Connell’s new book, “The Year Science Changed Everything: 1957’s International Geophysical Year and the Future of Our Planet,” tells the near-forgotten story of how thousands of scientists from more than 60 countries set aside politics and rivalries to map the unknown. They joined forces to gather data from all over the globe, and in the process, turbocharged our understanding of Earth and space science.
Weaving together interviews, history and narrative, O’Connell explores just how monumental this year was, and what that might mean for the challenges of today.
“I was so surprised to find out how little we knew,” he said. “There were so many things we didn’t know about how the world worked, how the sun worked, how the solar system worked.”
O’Connell is now based in Atlanta. He’ll visit Madison on Saturday, Oct. 25 for a discussion with Kristina Slawny at the Wisconsin Book Festival. He spoke with the Cap Times recently about what inspired this latest project.
Did you first learn about the International Geophysical Year (IGY) because of the Steely Dan song?
I first learned about IGY, actually, when I was writing my first book (“The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs”). But once I started thinking about IGY in terms of writing a book about it, then, yes, the Donald Fagen song “IGY” came to mind. It was a huge song.
Of course, what he was talking about in that song really wasn’t real. He was singing in that song about this utopia, a future world where everything’s clean and bright and happy. Spandex jackets for everyone.
Was that an accurate portrayal of the feeling around IGY? Were people optimistic about a future utopia?
The general public was definitely ready for a utopia after the horrible years of World War II and then the space race and Cold War of the ’50s. People were sick of things like that. So IGY, which brought to light all these wondrous developments in our science and our thinking, was really welcome.
Your first book was about UFOs. How are those two topics connected?
The scientist I wrote about in my first book, J. Allen Hynek, was a well-known researcher, so when IGY started up, several jobs went to him. A big part of IGY for both the United States and the USSR was to launch the first orbital satellite into space. A lot of people thought it couldn’t be done. And here’s this young astronomer Hynek, who was given the assignment to develop a way to track our first satellite as it moves through the night sky.
That became a big project for IGY, getting the global network together, which involved thousands of volunteers around the world who would set up their telescopes at night and just scan the skies, watching for a bright pinpoint of light that moved across the sky and didn’t belong. It wasn’t until we could get satellites up above the outer atmosphere that we could turn around and look back down at the Earth and see what was going on.
It ended up being Russia who got their satellite up there first. The same astronomer, J. Allen Hynek, was literally the first scientist in America to learn that Sputnik had launched.
One of the scientists you interviewed said the U.S. intentionally let Russia win that particular race for peace relations, right?
The story was that President Eisenhower, when we were all set to launch our satellite and beat the Soviets into space, Eisenhower said, hold off. We’re going to let the Russians be first this time because we want to promote the useful, peaceful use of space.
If that’s a true story, it’s pretty mind-blowing. The gentleman who told me the story … he got it secondhand, so there is room for doubt. But boy, it’s a fascinating story if it’s true.
Can you say more about the geopolitics? It required a time of peace to put this effort together. Did this also inspire a bit more peace in turn?
Absolutely. The case in point is the Antarctic Treaty. Close to 20 different countries established bases in Antarctica during the course of IGY. All of the countries that had bases in Antarctica all agreed to sign a treaty that basically said there can be no nuclear arms in Antarctica, there can be no military installations in Antarctica. Nobody gets to own Antarctica. We all share it equally. That’s a big deal. That was the first and only time that the US and the USSR ever actually agreed to something like that.
Do you bring tools from fiction writing into your narrative crafting for nonfiction, too?
I like to tell stories, so if I can find a way to tell a story, then I’ll go for it. For the new book, I had all sorts of information but I didn’t have anything to draw it all together like I would normally do with a fiction piece.
But then it hit me, if 6,000 scientists could get together in 1957 to try to solve the mysteries of the Earth, maybe scientists can do that again today to pool their resources, pool their knowledge and talents and try to address the climate crisis.
In the book you sometimes frame with: “I’m going to ask a beginner question now.” Was it important to make the science accessible to beginners?
When I first started on the book, I was talking to my editor and I said, what I’d really like is for this book to have sort of a Bill Bryson-esque feel to it. I’d like to take the approach of writing something about which I know very little, assuming the reader will know even less than me, and would like to have a journey of learning that the reader can follow. Let’s learn about this together.
The golden age of science fiction was right around the time of IGY, in the ’50s and ’60s. Do you think it’s a coincidence that these two things overlapped?
No. It was part of a major cultural shift. We were starting to get used to the idea of launching not just satellites but eventually people into space.
At the same time, science fiction was taking off like a shot. Pulp science fiction magazines all over the place. And in the ’50s, every studio wanted to get in on the science fiction movie game. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind those two forces were very much aligned. There was a huge shift in what people believed was possible.
What do you think Kirk and Spock would have to say about climate change?
They would be extremely concerned. Spock would raise an eyebrow and say it’s totally illogical that the human race has not dealt with this yet when they’ve known about it for so long. And Kirk would take a more gut level response. Kirk would probably be swearing up and down the bridge of the Enterprise.