Galveston, oh Galveston

Here's Bruce Sterling, the SF writer who's consistently played the Jeremiah regarding global warming, long before it became fashionable. Wrote Heavy Weather, a prophetic book about tornado chasers in a planet with a ruined climate; started the Veridian Design movement to make green design cool as opposed to a form of do-gooder self-flagellation. Judging by the quantity of hair, this picture was probably taken in the late 80s or early 90s.

Anyway, here he is at the historical marker in Galveston, Texas, commemorating the storm of 1900. Sterling has taken a sheet of paper with a hole cut in it and covered most of the sign, revealing only the words: FUTURE STORMS. As if to say: Listen up people; there will be future storms, and they'll be bad.

Now, Hurricane Ike is slamming Galveston. Sterling, out of good taste, has removed this pic from — as far as I can tell — all his various blogs. To avoid the petty, snotty I-told-you-so connotation, no doubt.

Here, in the interests of bad taste, is the pic.