{Character Interview} Daniel Danten of 'The Heatstroke Line'
We’re thrilled to be talking to Daniel Danten from Edward L.
Rubin, The Heatstroke Line. It
is a pleasure to have him with us today at Pimp That Character!
Thank you for your interview, Dr. Danten. How old are you and what do you do for a
living?
I’m thirty-nine years old, and I’m a research entomologist
on the faculty of Mountain America
University, one of the few
universities left in our country, or anywhere in the former United
States, after the climate change and the
Second Civil War.
What would I love the most about you?
I genuinely care about people and I want to help them. The thing I like most about being an
entomologist is that I’m able to help the farmers who are suffering from insect
infestations. This has become a much
more serious problem, even apart from the biter bugs, since the climate has
gotten so much hotter. So farmers really
appreciate my work, and that makes me feel good. One of the things I hated most about being
held captive below the Heatstroke Line is that I didn’t know what was going on,
and whether the things I was being forced to do, or had to do in order to
survive, were helping or hurting other people.
And I couldn’t figure out a way to help Deborah, even though she was of
such great help to me.
What would I hate the most about you?
I guess I have to admit that I’m pedantic. When anyone asks me something about my work –
anything about insects, really – I want to tell them everything I know about
the subject, and so I tend to run on until someone stops me. I’m not usually inattentive to other people’s
feelings. I think the reason I do this
is that I’m trying to convince myself that I’m really interested in what I do.
I never realized this; it was Deborah who pointed out to me that I was still
upset about the fact that I had to give up my real aspiration, which was to
become an astronomer, and study something practical, like combatting insect
infestations. So my over-enthusiasm
about my work may be a way for me to suppress my regrets.
What is the trait you most not like about yourself?
I don’t have very good judgment. I didn’t realize this until recently, when I
made some important decisions that turned out very wrong. The worst one was thinking that I could go
below the Heatstroke Line and do something about the biter bug problem. That’s what lead to my capture -- and to
Stuart’s horrible death. It made me realize how important it is to think ahead and
avoid giving in to the needs of the moment.
The decisions that we make at any given time have consequences for the
future, and sometimes those consequences can’t be reversed, no matter how much
we regret them.
What is your greatest fear?
I’m terribly afraid for my family – everyone is so
vulnerable these days. My wife,
Garenika, has seemed so fragile for the last few years, although she turned out
to be much stronger than I expected when she had to be. I’m also afraid for our society, and for all
the larger things I care about. I see us losing all the admirable and gracious
aspects of our culture – one by one – under the stress of climate change. Our coastal cities are gone, our country has
broken apart, most of it is no longer under democratic government, none of it
is producing any art or culture, and people seem to be getting more ignorant
and mean. Things are better in Canada,
where I live now, and where I’ve managed to find a relatively safe place for my
family. But who knows how long that’s going to last.
Who is your best friend?
My best friend is dead.
His name was Stuart McPherson, and he was my colleague at the
University. A leading expert on American
history. He was killed – hideously
tortured to death – by the people below the Heatstroke Line. Those people are -- were – all crazy, but the woman who
killed Stuart -- I call her the leopard
woman because she was wearing a leopard print dress when she did it. I never did find out her name. Anyway, she was not only crazy but a vicious
sadist. I’ve wound up with a good
position here at the University of South
Baffin Island
-- I was lucky, in the long run – but I miss Stuart.
Do you have children?
I have three children, Joshua, Senly and Michael. Actually, that’s not true, but I still think
that way. Michael died while I was being
held captive. He’s one of the many
people who got sick as a result of the climate change. I could see he was declining rapidly and I
had a sense, when I was in captivity, that he was going to die. Even so, it was devastating when I got back
home and my wife told me he was dead. My
great regret is that I feel that I ignored him while he was alive. That was partially because of my work, but
also because he was quiet, and my other two kids have more forceful
personalities. Joshua, who’s seventeen
now, is a wonderful student and a serious, mature human being –- he impresses
everyone. I used to think that he was
pretty close to a perfect child, but after my own horrific experiences, I worry
that he’s trying too hard and lacks a real center. Senly is fourteen and just as smart as Josh,
but she’s hooked on Phantasie and filled with cynicism – she has no ambition. Ever
since I brought Joanna home, though, she’s mellowed out a bit. She’s great with Joanna; I don’t know how we
would have managed the situation without her.
Joanna’s the daughter of the family I was placed with when I was below
the Heatstroke Line. I brought her with
me when I escaped because her own family was gone. She’s thirteen now. So, as
I think about it, I guess I really do have three children after all.
What is your favorite weather?
My favorite weather is late Autumn, when the last leaves are
falling and the air is turning crisp. It
doesn’t happen in Mountain America
any more, or anywhere in the former United
States, but I read a lot of nineteenth
century literature and I love the scenes that are set at that time of
year. I can’t say I feel truly at home
in my new position here in Canada
-- at the University of South
Baffin Island -- but we do get a real fall here
and that’s been a pleasure for me. When
I get a chance, I go hiking with the kids -- all three of them. Senly and Joanna complain about the cold, but
they’re getting used to it.
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you
grew up?
I wanted to be an astronomer. Astronomers
- -in the U.S.
and other places -- had discovered a number of Earth-like planets in the years
before the country broke apart as a result of the climate crisis. I think we were on the verge of making some
amazing discoveries at that time. My dream –when I was a kid -- was to pick up
that kind of research again and learn about the way other civilizations had
managed, and maybe did a better job than we have. It was a childhood fantasy of course. The climate crisis and the Second Civil War had
put an end to any research of that kind more than a century ago. So I went into entomology, one of the few
areas where we’re still doing research.
That’s because it has practical uses of course – there are so many
insect infestations as a result of the warmer climate.
If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would
you do today?
I would say goodbye to my wife and children. I would ask them to remember me for the
things that I’m proudest of –- my commitment to them, and the good I tried to
do for other people. It’s terrible to
lose someone without being able to say goodbye, to be able to look into their
eyes and hear their voice that one last time.
That’s what happened with Michael, who died while I was being held
captive below the Heatstroke Line, and also what happened with Stuart and
Deborah. I think those who are left
never get over the loss of that final chance for some sort of closure.
About the Author
Edward Rubin is University Professor of Law and Political
Science at Vanderbilt University. He specializes in administrative law,
constitutional law and legal theory. He is the author of Soul, Self and Society: The New
Morality and the Modern State (Oxford, 2015); Beyond Camelot: Rethinking
Politics and Law for the Modern State (Princeton, 2005) and two books with
Malcolm Feeley, Federalism: Political Identity and Tragic Compromise
(Michigan, 2011) and Judicial Policy
Making and the Modern State: How the
Courts Reformed America's Prisons (Cambridge, 1998). In addition, he is the author of two
casebooks, The Regulatory State (with
Lisa Bressman and Kevin Stack) (2nd ed., 2013); The Payments System (with Robert Cooter) (West, 1990), three edited
volumes (one forthcoming) and The
Heatstroke Line (Sunbury, 2015) a science fiction novel about the fate of
the United States if climate change is not brought under control. Professor
Rubin joined Vanderbilt Law
School as Dean and the first John
Wade–Kent Syverud Professor of Law in July 2005, serving a four-year term that
ended in June 2009. Previously, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law
School from 1998 to 2005, and at the Berkeley School of Law from 1982 to 1998,
where he served as an associate dean. Professor Rubin has been chair of the
Association of American Law Schools' sections on Administrative Law and
Socioeconomics and of its Committee on the Curriculum. He has served as a
consultant to the People's Republic of China
on administrative law and to the Russian
Federation on payments law. He received his
undergraduate degree from Princeton and his law degree
from Yale.
.
He has published four books, three edited volumes, two
casebooks, and more than one hundred articles about various aspects of law and
political theory. The Heatstroke Line is his first novel.
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About the Book:
Nothing has been done to prevent climate change, and
the United States
has spun into decline. Storm surges have made coastal cities
uninhabitable, blistering heat waves afflict the interior and, in the South
(below the Heatstroke Line), life is barely possible. Under the stress of
these events and an ensuing civil war, the nation has broken up into three
smaller successor states and tens of tiny principalities. When the
flesh-eating bugs that inhabit the South show up in one of the successor
states, Daniel Danten is assigned to venture below the Heatstroke Line and
investigate the source of the invasion. The bizarre and brutal people he
encounters, and the disasters that they trigger, reveal the real horror climate
change has inflicted on America.
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