Cascadia's Fault - Jerry Thompson [152]
Anna obligingly paged through the synopsis, marking it up with her red pen while the camera crew captured a serious book editor at work. Much to my good fortune, she wasn’t just faking it. Anna was reading and paying attention. Finally she mumbled under her breath, “You realize there’s a book in this, don’t you?” And so here we are. Thanks ever so much to Anna Porter, not only for planting the seed but also for personally talking about it to her friends and colleagues in the publishing industry. I’m convinced she helped get this book over the transom and near the top of the slush pile in record time.
More than two years later, when I had written a draft of most of the chapters, I returned to the source, to the quake hunters, oceanographers, and other seismic sleuths who did the muddy detective work that unraveled the mysteries of Cascadia’s fault. A dozen of them found time in their hectic schedules to read and comment on parts of the manuscript. I want to acknowledge and sincerely thank John Adams, Brian Atwater, Eddie Bernard, Gary Carver, Lori Dengler, Chris Goldfinger, George Plafker, Garry Rogers, Mike Schmidt, Vasily Titov, Kelin Wang, and Bob Yeats for their insights, clarifications, and valuable suggestions. In the final draft, of course, all errors of fact or interpretation are my responsibility.
I’d also like to express my deep thanks and appreciation to Harper-Collins and editor Jim Gifford for making this journey and the learning curve such a pleasant and rewarding experience. Jim brought fresh eyes and an organized mind to a dense thicket of complex material. The book is all the better for his efforts.
And finally, I thank Bette, my partner in life and everything else. Without her encouragement and support, without her voluminous research—she can find anything!—and razor sharp attention to detail, this book would never have been completed. She carried the heaviest burden of several other projects we were committed to (not the least of which was organizing and running our lives) so that I could indulge in the luxury of chasing a story down convoluted alleys to its logical end. BT, I’m eternally happy to be on your team.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
A chronology of scientific articles, proceedings, working papers, and books that trace the evolution and mystery of Cascadia’s fault from early continental drift to plate tectonics and to the current reality.
1924
Wegener, Alfred. The Origin of Continents and Oceans. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924.
1949
Benioff, Hugo. “Seismic Evidence for the Fault Origin of Oceanic Deeps.” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 60 (December 1949): 1837–66.
1962
Hess, H. H. “History of Ocean Basins.” In Petrologic Studies: A Volume to Honor A. F. Buddington , edited by A. E. J. Engel, Harold L. James, and B. F. Leonard, 599–620. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962.
1963
Vine, F. J., and D. H. Matthews. “Magnetic Anomalies over Ocean Ridges.” Nature 199, no. 4897 (September 1963): 947–49.
Wilson, J. Tuzo. “Are the Continents Drifting? A New Look at a Controversial Question.” The UNESCO Courier no. 10 (October 1963): 3–11.
———. “Hypothesis of Earth’s Behaviour.” Nature 198, no. 4884 (June 1963): 925–29.
1964
Benioff, Hugo. “Earthquake Source Mechanisms: Although Progress Has Been Made in the Understanding of Earthquakes, Many Problems Remain.” Science 143, no. 3613 (March 1964): 1399–1406.
1965
Plafker, George. “Tectonic Deformation Associated with the 1964 Alaska Earthquake.” Science 148, no. 3678 (June 1965): 1675–87.
Press, Frank, and David Jackson. “Alaskan Earthquake, 27 March 1964: Vertical Extent of Faulting and Elastic Strain Energy Release.” Science n.s. 147, no.