Jim Baen's Universe

What's New in The Future And You

Columns

April 2010

Written by Stephen Euin Cobb

Frederik Pohl (who turned 90 last November) and Gregory Benford (a mere child of 69) each spent an hour sharing their thoughts of the future, memories of the past, and surprising anecdotes of the humble beginnings of their famous and celebrated friends.

Fred, for example, (best known for his SF classic Gateway) while working as a literary agent, became Isaac Asimov's first agent and sold Isaac's first novel: A Pebble in the Sky (1950). He later bought Larry Niven's first few professional short stories while working as the editor of various SF magazines including Astonishing, Galaxy and If. This was also when he hired a dwarf as his secretary at Galaxy Magazine even though she knew nothing about Science Fiction at the time. (Later she went on to work at Ballantine Books, marry Lester del Rey, and become so influential at Ballantine that they put her in charge of an imprint and named it after her. Her name was Judy-Lynn del Rey.) Fred also described: how he was excluded from attending the very first WorldCon; how he came to write for Playboy Magazine; why he wrote under thirteen different pseudonyms; why in Arthur C. Clarke's declining years Arthur asked him to finish a book Arthur had started but could not complete; his co-founding of The Futurians in 1937; his contribution to democracy in Moscow; and how he became Encyclopedia Britannica's first official authority on the Roman Emperor Tiberius.

Gregory Benford (best known for his Galactic Center Saga novels) also shared many inside anecdotes such as: the short story he wrote that horrified his friend Ray Bradbury; his going to school with Vernor Vinge (and how they differ in their expectation of The Singularity); the work of his friend Stephen Wolfram (inventor of Mathematica); and the new book he and Larry Niven are working on.

I'd like to offer a special thanks to Gregory Benford for encouraging me to interview Frederik Pohl and for helping me to contact him. He and Fred have been friends for decades and he knew I and my listeners would enjoy an inside peek into Fred's life.

Thank you, Greg.

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Recent Guests

Frederik Pohl is a science fiction writer best known for Gateway—the classic science fiction novel which won the Nebula, Hugo, Campbell and Locus awards. He has also been a book and magazine editor, as well as a poet, critic, literary agent and teacher. He edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine If, winning the Hugo for If three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

Gregory Benford is a science fiction writer with over twenty novels to his credit; has won the Nebula Award twice; in 1989 was host and scriptwriter for the television documentary series A Galactic Odyssey; and also served as scientific consultant for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Within academia Gregory Benford: has a doctorate in physics; is a professor of physics at the University of California; conducts research in plasma turbulence and in astrophysics; has published well over a hundred scientific papers; and has served as an advisor to the Department of Energy, NASA and the White House Council on Space Policy.

Dr. Anders Sandberg is a computational neuroscientist, futurist, transhumanist and author. He is currently postdoctoral research assistant for the Oxford group of the EU ENHANCE Project at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is also a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute (Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University). He is cofounder of and writer for the think tank Eudoxa. And between 1996 and 2000 he was Chairman of the Swedish Transhumanist Association. Other interests include: artificial intelligence, cognitive science, information visualization, intelligence amplification technologies, and the philosophy and politics of human enhancement.

J.C. Hutchins is the award-winning novelist of the 7th Son techno-thriller trilogy. He has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Italian National Radio and the BBC.

Vicki Stein is program director of (FPSPI) Future Problem Solving Program International, which teaches children a step-by-step method of problem solving which can be used for the real-life problems they will face outside the classroom and all through their lives.

Jessica Holsinger, Nick Lilovich, Autumn Rains, Alex Webster, and other college students from Student Pugwash.

Shashi Parulekar of Natural State Research (a company working to make motor fuel out of waste plastic).

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Recent Topics

The Neanderthal Genome Project and the two teams working to bring back the Woolly Mammoth.

The growing cultural bias toward those who remain openly religious.

Possible problems with autonomous robots in warfare attempting to decide which humans not to kill—such as the obvious one waiving the white flag, and the less obvious one waiving a white shirt, and the not at all obvious one holding the handwritten sign that reads, "All our us are belong to you."

IQ enhancing drugs in widespread use on campuses today.

The social ramifications of greatly extending human lives.

The new life extension product Gregory Benford is using which will be publicly available in the summer of 2010.

The ethics of military and law enforcement use of less-than-lethal weapons.

How human memory works and how it might be enhanced.

Recent developments in computer emulation of the human brain.

Benefits we may get with our first neural implants (such as full internet access at the speed of thought).

The good and bad cultural effects of the far more powerful IQ enhancing drugs we will see in the future.

Augmentations we already have and some we may have soon.

Current use of Modafinil (an alertness drug) by surgeons, athletes, truck drivers and nuclear power plant operators.

Ways global warming might be mitigated using geoengineering methods such as carbon capture.

The Americanization of the world (witnessed by traveling to more than 50 different nations).

Goals of The Mars Society and of The L5 Society.

Why e-books have the big New York book publishing houses terror-stricken.

Innovative approaches to marketing fiction used by J.C. Hutchins and Cory Doctorow, and the results they have been seeing.

The new online calculating engine Wolfram Alpha (created by the inventor of Mathematica).

An owner's impression of the Amazon Kindle.

The robotic future of automobiles.

Impressions of the 3D movie Avatar.

And what your host expects to happen during the next ten years.

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You can learn more about Stephen Euin Cobb here, or here.

And more about his podcast: The Future And You here, or here, or even here.