Jim Baen's Universe

What's New in The Future And You

Columns

August 2007

Written by Stephen Euin Cobb

Battlestar Galactica actor Bodie Olmos (son of Edward James Olmos) is joined by the authors Mike Resnick, Catherine Asaro, Robert Buettner, Randal L. Schwartz, Stoney Compton, Paula Goodlett and Hildy Silverman, as well as by Walt (the Bananaslug) Boyes for the July and August 2007 episodes of The Future And You.

The Future And You is an award-winning audio podcast about the future which may be downloaded and enjoyed, or even copied and shared, for free. Every episode contains numerous interviews which reveal a wide variety of ideas and opinion about the future from a wide variety of people.

July's episode features: Battlestar Galactica actor Bodie Olmos, Robert Buettner, Mike Resnick, and Randal L. Schwartz. August's episode features: Catherine Asaro, Randal L. Schwartz, Hildy Silverman and Paula Goodlett.

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Topics in the August episode

Topic: Will future ballet dancers augment their bodies for greater range of motion, endurance and strength? And will we develop faster than light travel (FTL) in the same way we developed quanta mechanics and the relativistic equations? Author and scientist, Catherine Asaro covers both questions with authority because her career has included both. Concurrent with earning her doctorate in chemical physics from Harvard, she started and ran the Harvard University Ballet dance company, which still performs. A former physics professor and researcher, Catherine Asaro has performed with ballets and in musicals on both the East and West coast of the United States, and her paper “Complex Speeds and Special Relativity” appeared in the April 1996 issue of The American Journal of Physics.

In her interview, Catherine addresses our prospects of achieving FTL, defines complex speeds and how they relate to relativistic travel, and voices her concern that today’s pressure on kids in ballet troops to be unnaturally thin can be a bit scary. Some companies, she says, are so thin it's unpleasant to watch. She admits that thinness is needed to look artistically beautiful, but when you can see their bones, it’s not fun to look at anymore.

Topic: Infertility in America is increasing. This trend has lasted for decades, has been verified through statistics, and shows no sign of slowing. But while infertility is growing a new openness in talking about the subject is allowing its stigma to fade. Achieving Families Magazine is the “only magazine dedicated to providing real-life informative stories and articles to guide you through the challenges of infertility.” Hildy Silverman is more than just one of its editors; she's a living example of how science and technology are bringing the joy of childbearing to those who would otherwise be left out. Her daughter was conceived through technological intervention.

Hildy describes new methods of conception, and the thorny legal problems they've created. For example: if a couple divorce, who owns their frozen embryos? And if, years later, the woman decides to use them to become pregnant, must her former husband pay child support for children he did not agree to conceive? And more fundamentally, is a frozen embryo a human being and therefore not capable of being owned by anyone?

Outside of fertility, Hildy Silverman also talks about her recent purchase of Space and Time Magazine which, founded in 1966 by Gordon Linzner, has been publishing horror, fantasy and science fiction for over forty years.

Topic: How soon will e-books be as cheap as candy bars; so cheap you can pass them out to any kid who wants one? Paula Goodlett is eager for that day. As a child, she sometimes lived in towns without a library, towns where there was little available for her to read. Today she's the Managing Editor of Jim Baen's Universe Magazine and of the Grantville Gazette, both of which were created by Eric Flint and the late Jim Baen to experimentally test the waters of electronic publishing.

So far the results of these two experiments are looking good: both magazines are thriving. Readership is growing; online reviews are enthusiastic; and the magazines' stories are beginning to win prestigious awards which have traditionally gone only to SF&F published on paper.

Paula describes, in her interview, how these experiments developed and grew, and what has been learned from them so far. She also provides hints of what changes are yet to be tried, and mentions the innovative submission method which involves hopefuls posting their stories for public critique on “Baen's Bar.”

Topic: With its reputation for being twitchy and crash-prone, do you really want MS Windows running the anesthesia and life support software during your next surgical procedure? And in the future, when nanorobots are ready to be injected into your bloodstream to protect you from heart attack, stroke and cancer, should you trust their AI software not to crash. Or more importantly, should you trust them not to get a bug that identifies, as a cancerous tumor which must be sliced up and removed, your heart or eyes or brain?

Randal L. Schwartz is a programmer familiar with the weakness and frequent glitches of software. He also talks of transcontinental remote surgery, cryonics, technology versus quality of life, and what he sees as the principal limitation of Strong AI in accelerating the rate of scientific advancement toward The Singularity.

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Topics in the July episode

Topic: From Battlestar Galactica, the actor Bodie Olmos (son of Edward James Olmos and grandson of Howard Keel) describes his work on the set of the science fiction TV show, as well as how it has affected his expectations of the future. He also talks of trends within his favorite hobbies: surfing and playing drums; and (in this interview taped June 2, 2007) reveals that Battlestar Galactica will end its run at the end of this season.

Topic: Mike Resnick talks of how his own medical conditions may someday require he use