The Lure of Bridges

The lure of bridges ironbridge

Geoff Nelder

Whether it is a subject for art, films, books or poetry sooner or later we are drawn over or under a bridge. They are the subject of international competitions because they link territory and by metaphor, people with their cultural differences. (Ironbridge in Shrophshire from a bike ride)

As a climatologist I have been fascinated by and measured the effect of bridges on microclimates. In Chester, UK, the Grosvenor Bridge was the world’s largest single stone span for 30 years, when it was built in 1832. High above the waters of the River Dee the bridge separates airflow, mainly from the west so that it jets over the parapet threatening to blow this cyclist into the path of buses. Three miles downstream is the village of Eccleston where Chester’s coldest spot can always be found under a road bridge. The road dips to go under and so katabatic cold air pools there. The first survey of Chester’s urban heat island effect was undertaken by me leading a group of adult student across the city waving digital thermometers and the results published in 1985. Our coldest spot for that night and others was under the bridge in Eccleston often 5 degrees Celsius lower than in the city centre. The absence of sunlight reaching under the middle of the bridge also grosbrdge keeps it cool, along with the cool air flowing down into it. Another cold spot is under the Bridge of Sighs in Chester. The bridge used to be the last walk for prisoners trudging to the gallows on Northgate bridge nearby from the old prison, now Bluecoat Hospital School.

Illustration from Nelder, Geoff Chester’s Climate: Past, Present and Future (1985)

In science fiction literature there is hardly a more iconic bridge than in William Gibson’s Virtual Light. Here is my review.

Virtual Light by William Gibson

Penguin, 1993 ISBN 0-14-015772-7

First in the science fiction Bridge trilogy. Great though rather preposterous dystopian concept of a community living on the San Francisco Bridge.

Chevette Washington, a bike messenger, steals VR glasses at a party she crashes. Corrupt police, private security and other mysterious people are after her. One, Berry Rydell, rescues her from a security abduction even though he is part of it. He begins to fall for her though their relationship develops very late in the story without time to properly develop.

The bridge concept comes from a short story Gibson was commissioned to write by an architect group in SF. In the novel, one character is a rather shy (as opposed to all the others) Japanese sociologist, Yamazaki. He is in awe of the bridge and their people as shown in this superb setting piece: Note the poetic prose – repetition and echoing normally expunged by editors.

‘He’d first seen it by night, three weeks before. He’d stood in fog, amid sellers of fruit and vegetables, their goods spread out on blankets. He’d stared back into the cavern-mouth, heart pounding. Steam was rising from the pots of soup vendors, beneath a jagged arc of scavenged neon. Everything ran together, blurring, melting in the fog. Telepresence had only hinted at the and singularity of the thing, and he’d walked slowly forward, into that neon maw and all that patchwork carnival of scavenged surfaces, in perfect awe. Fairyland. Rain-silvered plywood, broken marble from the walls of forgotten banks, corrugated plastic, polished brass, sequins, painted canvass, mirrors, chrome gone dull and peeling in the salt air. So many things, too much for his reeling eye, and he’d known his journey had not been in vain.’

A difficult novel to get into and I might have given up too soon had it not been written by the iconic Gibson. The first chapter is in the point of view of an anonymous ‘he’ so we don’t feel engaged. We never find out who he is and there are more though dwindling similar pieces. So many characters are introduced early with mostly unexplained actions and provenance that a new reader might be better off reading a Wikipedia summary of the plot before enjoying the novel.

The plot has a dichotomy of the super rich buying security, and the jobless scraping a living from scraps. Whether this is truly a sociological class division is dubious to me. By 1993 when it was first published such sub-plots had run their time. Besides which the poorest characters, such as Skinner (my favourite grumpy old man) is rich in his thoughts and relationships more than the wealthy characters.

Although I like the idea of the famous bridge becoming a home, it seems unrealistic even in a post-affluent, possibly post-apocalyptic society. It is dangerous in high winds, subject to many summer advection fogs and cold winters that there must be safer and easier places on dry land to inhabit. The middle plot occurs in a storm on the bridge but the feeling of cold and danger is barely there even though the blackouts and wet are.

In spite of the credibility gap of the bridge, it is that community that makes the dystopian nature of the narrative more human and warm. A better book, in several ways than Neuromancer. It is cyberpunk, a hard-nose crime story and characters and action set in the future.

In Virtual Light, no one actually crosses the bridge. In reality, we want to get to the other side, hoping for a better future. Some only make it halfway, using the bridge as a suicide high point, so to speak. The bridge being then a crossing from this life to … something else, or nothing. For most of us bridges are feel good symbols. Good luck with your bridges.

Nelder News

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This week I’m writing a short hard science fiction story: Locked Out. An astronaut on an observation spacecraft orbiting Mercury has been locked out of the spaceship by his colleague. She thinks he’s an android about to sabotage the mission. However, he thinks she’s the android: oh heck.

Geoff’s UK Amazon author page http://www.amazon.co.uk/Geoff-Nelder/e/B002BMB2XY

And for US readers http://www.amazon.com/Geoff-Nelder/e/B002BMB2XY

Geoff facebooks at http://www.facebook.com/AriaTrilogy and tweets at @geoffnelder

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