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The real Robinson Crusoe has been reimagined with historical accuracy - except for the talking goat
Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. You might think you've already heard a story about someone marooned on an uninhabited island who needs to fight for survival. The iconic image of Tom Hanks desperately calling for Wilson, the anthropomorphised volley ball in Castaway (2000), probably comes to mind. There is also the juggernaut reality series Alone, the popularity of which raises questions about why its followers are so fascinated by isolation and survival. And then, of course, there is Daniel Defoe's famous tale of Robinson Crusoe. Review: Cast Away: or, the Surprising Adventures of Alexander Selkirk - Francesca de Tores (Bloomsbury) Defoe's book - the full title of which is The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner - is widely considered the first English novel, though there are other contenders, including works by women who came before Defoe, such as Margaret Cavendish, author of The Blazing World (1666) and Aphra Behn, author of Oroonoko (1688). Published in 1719, amid the power struggle between the empires of England and Spain, Defoe's tale was a runaway bestseller. It is still in print. Robinson Crusoe was loosely based on the experience of Alexander Selkirk, who was rescued in 1709 after spending over four years marooned on an island in the Pacific Ocean. Francesca de Tores' new novel Cast Away returns to the inspiration for Defoe's seminal work. It is not only the story of an escape into the simplicity (and drudgery) of life on a deserted island; it is a timely and reassuring consideration of human resilience and resourcefulness. It is also a testament to de Tores's research: her willingness to draw from history and get elbow-deep in the goat skins. Research and authenticity Robinson Crusoe deviates from Selkirk's lived experiences in some key details. Crusoe's island is not in the Pacific but the Caribbean, where he is given the opportunity to attain dominion over nature and visiting humans for 28 years. Defoe also furnished his castaway with a shipwreck full of tables, chairs, tools, supplies and a dog, all of which helped him live a more comfortable existence. So did the fortuitous arrival of a human, whom he enslaved and named "Friday". Though he is self-reflective, Crusoe is a character written for an audience that was widely accepting of the ethics and practices of imperialism. Many readers at the time were persuaded that Defoe's novel was a true story. Its first-person narration proved a convincing technique to blur the edges of fact and fiction. These days, audiences demand more credibility from their historical narratives. We are bombarded with stories, in print and on screen. A discerning reader wants to shake out the dross and dedicate their reading time to something transporting and meaningful. This is an excellent reason why de Tores's novel should rise to the top of our to-be-read lists. Cast Away respects its historical research, even as it deploys fictional tropes made familiar by its predecessors. Extensive notes at the end of Cast Away clearly set out the line where historical facts limited the telling of a rounded story, and where de Tores took narrative leaps and made educated guesses. The honesty is refreshing. It enhances reader trust and does not diminish the enjoyment of the novel. It is evidence of the author's commitment to creating an immersive story. In a world flooded by AI slop, where we don't know what to trust anymore, this is important. De Tores reveals that she even took the time to learn how to cure a hide so this could be depicted with authenticity, as Selkirk cures goat skins for clothing, bedding and shelter. Rats, cats and goats Selkirk was a navigator on Cinque Ports, a ship accompanying explorer William Dampier on an expedition to raid and pillage Spanish galleons. The details of these preliminary circumstances are saved for late in the novel, but the questions around them hang in the air and maintain the suspense. In de Tores's novel, Selkirk is more experienced than his young commander Captain Stradling, and too honest for his own good. His reflections on the ethics of Dampier's journey of plunder leaves the famed explorer's reputation a little more stained that what we might have learned in primary school. The author's notes confirm: History did not record the story of the women in Selkirk's life, but the novel also includes a significant subplot which examines the lives of women involved with the sailors of the era. This offers us a convincing picture of gender disparity and bullying. Cast Away is not fast-paced, but it is pleasant to drift into the world of Selkirk and his struggle for survival. The novel is vivid on details of the ways he uses his meagre belongings, most of which were left with him when he was dumped on a tiny island in the Pacific's Juan Fernandez Archipelago, 650 kilometres off the coast of Chile. There are a lot of rats on the island, as well as plentiful cats and goats. Selkirk quickly drinks his "cask of flip" and realises the best remedy for the nibbling rats that keep him awake all night is to tame some of the island's many cats. Pickle and Sleek become comfort and protection, with the latter playing a key role in unpacking Selkirk's back story. Sleek is part of the novel's fiction, which is easy to discern, because the cat is given a speaking role, as is a grand old billy-goat: Reverend Vicarious Cronch. Their conversations with Selkirk begin at a point in the novel where he has been alone for some time and is contemplating his life at sea and in Scotland, which weigh on his conscience. As devices in the novel, these secondary animal characters are highly anthropomorphic. Like Tom Hanks and Wilson, they leave us in no doubt that Selkirk's sanity is a bit wobbly, and with good reason. The voice of history Author L.P. Hartley said "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there". They said things differently there, too. Contemporary fiction rarely uses words like "thus" and "shall", with the exception perhaps of high fantasy genre works. De Tores takes a gentle approach, defamiliarising English usage enough to capture a faux-archaic voice of the period without overcooking it: Crisp, correct grammar, with some deference to the 18th century, eases the reader into the narrative flow. It is very readable and captures a sense of time that is easy to escape into. Selkirk is marooned with his Bible, and after reading it end to end a few times, he takes to it with charcoal and begins to create erasure poetry. His redactions seem intended to make a point about religion, but the inclusion of these poems does not do much to enhance the narrative. Whole pages are devoted to blacked-out text, which yield short ambiguous images, such as "the water shall not be forgiven". There is merit in experimentation in fiction, but this aspect of the novel does not add to its depth. Selkirk is already "full of goat meat and metaphors" without the erasure poems. In the context of the other exquisite writing in the novel, however, it is forgivable, with metaphors such as this: "I am impaled on the curve of time, as sharp and inevitable as the horn of a goat." Surviving alone Loneliness and isolation are key themes, yet Selkirk retains some agency, not only within the circumstance of being cast away, but in the choices he makes to pursue a life at sea. Selkirk the historical figure, and the character in this novel, had incredible resilience. Given an opportunity to be on reality television, this guy would certainly take home the prize. After damaging his flint, he eventually masters lighting a fire without one, pushing through the sore hands and lost embers. The novel captures the grim reality of his survival: the repetitive nature of foraging, hunting, feeding and building shelter; the cycle of destruction by human interference, goat, rat and storm. It doesn't take a genius to realise that our affluent lifestyles are balanced on a precipice that would be terrifying to a wild mountain goat. Lessons of resilience, of simple comforts, human strength and the beauty and provision in nature seem like things we need to hear in this time. To be marooned now in such a place might mean more plentiful materials washed up on the shore, but the business of hunting and gathering are more alien to us than they were to 18th century sailors. Cast Away is not an instruction manual for Alone contestants, but it does reassure us that human resilience is still there. If the contemporary pirates of the great empires dump us on the shore, we will make the best of what we find. This article is republished from The Conversation. It was written by: Donna Mazza, Edith Cowan University Donna Mazza does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
xAI Adds $2.8B in Gas Turbines as SpaceX Pitches Space Solar
Tesla Mission Gap: xAI bought $697 million in Megapacks and $131 million in Cybertrucks over two years, but no meaningful Tesla solar panel purchases. In its IPO prospectus filed this week, SpaceX disclosed that xAI plans to spend an additional $2.8 billion on natural gas turbines to power its AI buildout. Alongside that disclosure, the same filing pitches an orbital alternative as the long-term answer to AI power demand, framing terrestrial energy as a binding constraint: "the power shortage may be far greater than what research estimates suggest". SpaceX has signalled orbital solar arrays as the long-term answer to AI compute demand, even as xAI's near-term plan doubles down on fossil-fueled compute. That combination would sideline Tesla's earthbound solar business at the moment Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, xAI, and SpaceX, is steering record amounts of power into AI. Filed this week, the disclosure lands while xAI is already in court over unpermitted turbines in Mississippi. xAI's Gas-Turbine Reality xAI currently runs its data centers on dozens of gas turbines, and the new commitment extends that footprint rather than starting from scratch. Between late March and early May, xAI added 19 portable turbines at its Colossus 2 site in Southaven, Mississippi, taking the campus count to 27 unpermitted natural gas turbines. Potential emissions from that installation alone reach more than 1,700 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides per year. SpaceX's filing concedes a heavy reliance on natural gas and gas-turbine technology, and flags that injunctions or rescinded permits would adversely affect the AI business. Regulators have already moved. Federal officials ruled earlier this year that xAI was operating its mobile turbines in violation of federal air-pollution law, and a Clean Air Act lawsuit led by the NAACP is still pending. Abre' Conner, the NAACP attorney leading that case, frames the post-ruling expansion as a public-health issue rather than a permitting dispute: "A data center should not be a potential death sentence for a community's health. By looking to evade clean air laws to operate dirty turbines that emit pollution and known carcinogens, these companies are following a shameful, familiar pattern: asking Black and frontline communities to bear the toxic brunt of innovation." The Tesla Mission Versus the xAI Spend Tesla's stated mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy, and Tesla's Master Plan Part 3, which outlined a plan to eliminate fossil fuels, was released roughly three years ago across the company's product line. Musk made the broader case in stronger language two decades earlier, when Tesla was still a tiny electric-car startup with no battery business of its own. "the overarching purpose of Tesla motors...is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy." Current spending tells a different story. xAI has spent $697 million on Tesla Megapacks over the last two years to smooth peak load on its data-center grid. SpaceX's filing separately discloses $131 million spent on 1,279 Tesla Cybertrucks over the same period. On solar panels, the technology Tesla still markets as central to its mission, xAI has not bought meaningfully from Tesla. Peer Trend and Orbital Economics xAI is not alone in choosing combustion. Microsoft, Chevron, and Engine No. 1 announced a West Texas plant in early April; Google's 933 megawatt gas project with Crusoe in North Texas dates to the same month; Meta added seven gas plants at its Hyperion site in Louisiana. AI training requires electricity delivered 24/7, and battery-backed solar still costs more upfront than a gas turbine to clear that operational floor. SpaceX argues that terrestrial power is the binding ceiling, saying space-based solar arrays can generate more than five-times the energy of comparable panels on Earth thanks to uninterrupted sunlight. The company is exploring solutions that would require launching data center components on Starship rockets to access solar power in orbit. Economics are less reassuring. Power for Starlink satellites costs multiples more per unit than power at a terrestrial data center, leaving a wide gap between physically possible and financially defensible. Andrew McCalip, an engineer assessing orbital-data-center economics, framed the question bluntly: "it's only a question of whether this is a rational thing to scale up economically". A pending 2026 NAACP-led Clean Air Act suit over xAI's 27 unpermitted Southaven turbines is the near-term gate, and a federal ruling against the company would strip Colossus 2 of its trailer-mounted generators. Without those units, xAI would have to source the site's power within weeks of any injunction, well before the first orbital array could reach the launch pad.
