Fixing the Sky by James Rodger Fleming Page B

Arkwright, a young British engineer, develops a machine that modifies the weather by drilling atmospheric holes to redirect the winds and clouds. This invention promises to make him the “master of the fate of the world.” 10 Working through investors in the World Weather Syndicate, Arkwright sets up a chain of mountain stations equipped with “atmospheric disintegrators” that project impulses powerful enough to break up and dissipate clouds while creating partial vacuums or “holes” in the atmosphere. By coordinating its efforts, the Syndicate can determine the direction of winds and weather over any area within the range of its stations. Controlling the weather of the whole world, then, is simply a matter of multiplying the number of stations. The Syndicate “will enable us to run the world’s weather and sell it out to the countries which need any particular brand at our own price” (86). For example, the Gulf Stream can be altered by this technique to benefit those willing to pay. Arkwright’s love interest, Eirene, the daughter of his chief investor, introduces moral objections:
    Now I think it’s wicked. You’re going to upset the order of nature, you’re going to make hot countries cold and cold countries hot, just so you can make profits out of them; but have you thought of all the misery and starvation and all sorts of horrors that you are going to bring upon innocent work-people who won’t have a notion of what’s really going on; how you will make fertile places into deserts and ruin farmers and manufacturers and all the people depending on them just because the Government of the country won’t pay your price for the weather they want? No, it’s just wicked. (12)
    An opposing syndicate has a “pretty big idea” of its own (15). It proposes to dam the Arctic Ocean across the Bering Sea, Baffin’s Bay, and Spitzbergen to stop all the icebergs from coming south and bottle up the Arctic Ocean until ice builds up there. The excess weight will then shift the axis of the Earth and cause a general redistribution of the map of the world—land, sea, and weather all included. If this evil syndicate gains control of the Earth’s axis, a struggle will ensue for control of the world’s weather, which can “only result in disaster to mankind” (73). Arkwright thus finds himself “at the beginning of a war for the economic control of the world,” and he proposes to win “by any means
within his power” (17), yet Eirene refuses to marry him until she sees how he plans to wield this power.
    Eager to prove its dominance over weather, the World Weather Syndicate triggers a snowstorm in London on July 6 designed to impress the British foreign secretary. This time, the voice of Arthur’s conscience is his Aunt Martha from Lancashire: “I tell him to his face that it’s a sin and a shame interfering with the course of nature. For shame on thee, lad! ... why canna’ thee let the good God manage His weather in His own way? Dost’a want to bring a great city like this, and maybe all England to ruin, just to make thy own business pay?” (55).
    Arthur replies that he and his investors have altruistic intentions:
    Now to be quite frank, we simply want to make money, and incidentally, increase the fertility of the world by turning deserts into paradises, for which, of course, we should expect to be paid, though not extravagantly. As the work develops we should also hope to put a stop to war ... by just freezing the fleets of the belligerents up in their harbours, and producing such a degree of cold on any given battlefield that fighting would be impossible. (73–74)
    Another female voice of conscience, Arthur’s sister Clarice, worries about “all the poor people who will have to suffer” if the Syndicate engineers a frosty British winter: “[T]he people who won’t be able to get