In 1971, a now-iconic billboard was positioned on the sting of city that learn: “Will the final particular person leaving SEATTLE — End up the lights.”
The Supersonic Transport (SST) undertaking had simply been canceled by the federal authorities. 1000’s of Boeing staff have been laid off. The aerospace growth went bust, and Seattle fell into certainly one of its cyclical spirals of hand-wringing and reinvention.
That historical past constitutes one of many primary timelines in my novel Supersonic. Though Boeing isn’t named within the ebook, “America’s Preeminent Aerospace Firm” may be very a lot a gravitational pressure within the story, warping the lives of atypical individuals and shaping the collective mythos of the town.
A lot of the ebook’s 1971 timeline is grounded within the star-crossed romance between Larry Dugdale, a disgraced Navy seaman turned junior aerospace machinist, and Ruth Hasegawa, an earnest teacher-in-training craving for one thing past the longer term her mom has scripted for her (a script that positively didn’t embrace any Larry-Iike romantic leads).
Larry pins his sense of private price and his hopes with Ruth on the promise of the SST, a futuristic jetliner that might fly at practically Mach 3, revolutionizing the probabilities of worldwide journey. “He’s going to be any individual,” the novel insists, “and play his half in one thing enormous and make it possible for Ruth is aware of all about it.”
In fact, he isn’t. And he doesn’t. The SST undertaking by no means flew a single flight. It was by no means even constructed, except you rely a balsa wooden mannequin. And with its fairly literal failure to launch, the town’s economic system and technological desires have been grounded (for the foreseeable future) together with Larry’s imaginative and prescient of a brighter, higher self with Ruth.
From the Archives
What Occurred to Seattle’s Relationship with Boeing?
Article
The aftermath of the Alaska blowout revealed that the connection has been slowly unraveling for many years.
A Transient Historical past of Seattle, in Three Disasters
Characteristic
After the Nice Seattle Fireplace and the Boeing Bust, the town confirmed a knack for reinvention. May that very same spirit pull us out of the pandemic?
Quick ahead fifty-some years, and right here we’re once more: The lights are nonetheless on in Seattle. However the Boeing leviathan is once more stumbling about, wreaking collateral injury. Federal investigations. Whistleblowers. Lacking bolts. Door panels flying off at 16,000 ft. Manufacturing facility slowdowns. Management shakeups. I didn’t intend to put in writing about modern points in Supersonic, however it appears that evidently we’ve discovered ourselves within the sequel nobody requested for.
Native Books
Seattle Met E-book Membership
Could 20, 5pm at College E-book Retailer
Be a part of the Seattle Met ebook membership in particular person for a dialog with creator Thomas Kohnstamm.
In Seattle, we’ve at all times had a codependent relationship with Boeing. Elation when it soars, existential dread when it falls, betrayal when it threatens to take up with a brand new household in South Carolina or Chicago. That blend of civic delight and optimism, stretched over a scaffolding of abandonment points, hasn’t modified in a long time.
To me, the issue isn’t “America’s Preeminent Aerospace Firm” itself—it’s that we preserve hitching and re-hitching our future to company giants that faux to be household till the share value drops and the masks inevitably slips. Now, a minimum of, we now have a rotation of like three or 4 mercurial stepdads as an alternative of only one. I think about some future novelist will discover a darkly comedian storyline about the entire HQ2 bait and swap.
