Analog SFF, May 2007
Page 25
The book is Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, and among the questions he addresses is the classic one of who's in charge here. Does technology push us around? Does it shape our behavior and our social arrangements? Or do we shape and control technology? Many critics of technology insist on the former view; we are at the mercy of our technologies and we have little say in the way they are chosen or used. Yet, says Nye, technology matters because it is at the heart of what makes us human. And there are a number of examples to show that we can choose how to use technologies. One of those examples involves oil and automobiles, which dominate the US partly because our early choices led to a massive infrastructure that is very difficult to change. Some European countries have chosen differently. Denmark, where Nye lived and worked for many years, gets a large amount of its energy from wind and remains a very bicycle-friendly place. And in most of Europe, cars are much smaller than in the US, per capita energy usage is about half that in the US, and the standard of living is comparable.
This issue is only one of ten that Nye takes up in turn. He begins with whether we can define technology and moves steadily through the predictability of technology; whether it encourages cultural uniformity or diversity (Levittown, PA, has long been cited in support of the former, yet a visit to Levittown reveals that people—enabled by technology—have layered their own diverse preferences atop the uniformity of mass-produced housing); sustainability; the impact on jobs and work; whether technologies should be chosen by the market or (somehow) the people; whether technology makes us more or less secure; and whether it adds to our awareness of the world or removes us from equally legitimate (older) modes of understanding. The questions are important because they imply that we have a choice of futures, some of them surely more benign than others, and Nye frequently cites science fiction for its explorations of how things may turn out. The answers are perhaps another matter, for there are examples to be found to support more than one. The point, again, is choice, and “the burden of my argument has been that there is no single, no logical, and no necessary end to the symbiosis between people and machines. For millennia, people have used tools to shape themselves and their cultures [with] many unexpected and not always welcome consequences.... For millennia we have used technologies to create new possibilities.” The lack of pat answers leads Nye to quote Rilke that “we must ‘try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.'” Only thus can we preserve our choices.
I teach science, technology, and society courses (among others). This book may well find a place on a future syllabus, which will ensure that my students read it. You I can only urge to read it. It's worth your money, time, and thought.
Copyright © 2007 Tom Easton
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BRASS TACKS
Dear Dr. Schmidt,
In the fifteen or so years that I've read your magazine, one overarching theme has been the tendency for articles related to the medical field to contain significant rubbish. Your Jan/Feb editorial continues this arc. What starts out as an interesting treatise on the (usually inverse) roles of personal and societal responsibility devolves into “sloppy-minded” (your words) thinking. On the factual side, your idea about bringing evolution into the medical realm won't work for the conditions you discussed. While it is true that smokers, drinkers, and over-eaters do tend to shorten their lives, they typically do it long after their reproductive years are over. Therefore, these life-style choices don't exert any evolutionary pressure on the gene pool. After thirty years in the medical profession, I can assure you that smokers, drinkers, and overeaters have no problem with reproducing. Also, since these are primarily learned behaviors, people who make these life-style choices tend to “breed true,” producing offspring with similar behaviors. However, if you want to bring evolution into play in order to lower medical costs, I'd have you look into not treating juvenile diabetes, asthma, sickle-cell anemia, and cystic fibrosis. These diseases are either strongly or completely genetically influenced, and the untreated would definitely suffer reproductive consequences.
On the opinion side, I would find this medical “triage” to be reprehensible. Besides, it is a short and slippery slope from not treating genetically flawed patients to searching them out and sterilizing them or otherwise inhibiting reproduction. This could be done “Southern Style” (the eugenics approach), or “German Style” (the cataclysmic technique).
In regards to having patients pay for (some of) their health care, after bringing costs into line—nice idea, but it won't work. Some people are so mired in poverty that even if health care was priced like, say, car repair, they still couldn't afford it. In fact, a lot of them can't afford car care, or even cars. Now you are left with the choice of either having a subsidized health system for qualified individuals (back to square one), or denying health care based on income (social Darwinism). As an added point, if you think that making people responsible for their health care costs would make them more likely to improve their life-styles, what do you make of the Europeans? They all have cradle-to-grave health care. Does one then conclude that they make poor life-style choices any more often than Americans? I doubt that research would bear this out (autobahn driving perhaps an exception).
What disappoints and worries me most when I see medical malarkey is the possibility that editorials and fact articles on other subjects might be equally flawed. I'd like to think that all those articles on physics, cosmology, and such are carefully vetted and that I'm being treated to a reasonably accurate picture of how these fields of science are evolving.
K.A. Newman M.D.
Prairie Village, KS
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Looks like it's time for another reminder of the difference between fact articles (which we do try to keep as strictly factual as we can) and editorials and Alternate Views (which are at least partly opinion pieces intended to provoke further thought, sometimes by espousing viewpoints which are deliberately outrageous or at least tongue-in-cheek).
Nothing I said, though, is anywhere near as outrageous as your suggestion of denying treatment to people with genetic diseases, which is utterly alien to the spirit of anything I said or thought. You latched onto my parting afterthought about evolution as if it were my main topic. It wasn't; I was talking about finding ways to get people to be more personally responsible. They are not responsible for their genes; they are responsible for their behavior. You're right that the evolutionary effect of my suggestion would be minor (though not nonexistent), but there are plenty of other reasons to encourage and require people to take responsibility for their own actions.
Furthermore, I explicitly said that I was not presenting a finished solution, but rather a starting point for discussion that might lead somebody to come up with a better one. Merely lambasting what I said as “rubbish” or “malarkey” is not much of a step in that direction.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
by ANTHONY LEWIS
29 March—1 April 2007
WORLD HORROR CONVENTION 2007 (Horror conference) at Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Center, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Guests of Honor: Michael Marshall Smith, Nancy Kilpatrick; Artist Guest of Honor: John Picacio; MC: Sephera Giron; Publisher Guest of Honor: Peter Crowther. Editor Guest of Honor: Don Hutchison. Info: www. whc2007.org; Amanda@whc2007.org.
30 March—1 April 2007
CONBUST 07 (central Massachusetts SF conference) at Smith College, Northampton, MA. Guests: Patricia Briggs, Lynn Flewelling, Jeph Jaques, Diane Kelly, Allen Steele, Jess Hartley, Jim Cambias. Registration: $18 ($6 Friday, $8 Saturday, $6 Sunday). Info: sophia.smith.edu/conbust; conbust @gmail.com.
6—9 April 2007
CONTEMPLATION (58th British National SF Convention) at Crowne Plaza (a.k.a. Chester Moat House), Chester, UK. Registration: GBP45 attending, GBP20 supporting. Info: contemplation. conventions.org.uk; membershi
p@contemplation.conventions.org.uk; 379 Myrtle Road, Sheffield S2 3HQ, UK.
13—15 April 2007
WILLYCON IV (Nebraska SF conference) at Wayne State College, Wayne, NE. Guest of Honor: James Alan Gardner; Artist Guests of Honor: Taki Soma and Zach Miller; Fan Guest of Honor: Terry Hickman and Will Pereira. Info: www.willycon.com; scifict@wsc.edu; WillyCon, c/o Ron Vick (or Stan Gardner), Wayne State College, 1111 Main St., Wayne NE 68787
20—22 April 2007
RAVENCON 2007 (Virginia SF conference) at Double Tree Hotel, Richmond Airport, Sandston, VA. Guest of Honor: Robert J. Sawyer; Artist Guest of Honor: Steve Stiles; Fan Guest of Honor: Jan Howard Finder. Registration: $35 until 19 April 2007, $40 at the door. Info: www.ravencon.com; info@ravencon. com.
30 August—3 September 2007
NIPPON 2007 (65th World Science Fiction Convention) at Pacifico Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan. Guests of Honor: Sakyo Komatsu and David Brin. Artist Guests of Honor: Yoshitaka Amano and Michael Whelan. Fan Guest of Honor: Takumi Shibano. Registration: USD 220; JPY 26,000; GBP 125; EUR 186 until 30 June 2007; supporting membership USD 50; JPY 6,000; GBP 28; EUR 45. This is the SF universe's annual get-together. Professionals and readers from all over the world will be in attendance. Talks, panels, films, fancy dress competition—the works. Nominate and vote for the Hugos. This is only the third time Worldcon will be held in a non-English speaking country and the first time in Asia. Info: www.nippon2007.org; info@nippon2007.org. Nippon 2007/JASFIC, 4-20-5-604, Mure, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-0002. North American agent: Peggy Rae Sapienza, Nippon 2007, PO Box 314, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701, USA. UK agent: Andrew A. Adams, 23 Ivydene Road, Reading RG30 1HT, England, U.K. European agent: Vincent Doherty, Koninginnegracht 75a, 2514A Den Haag, Netherlands. Australian agent: Craig Macbride, Box 274, World Trade Centre, Victoria, 8005 Australia.
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Jack Williamson
1908-2006
Jack Williamson died peacefully on Friday, November 10, at his home in Portales, New Mexico, at the age of 98. The numbers barely hint at one of the most astounding careers in our field, and a life ranging literally from covered wagons to computers. He didn't just coexist with those things: he used them in everyday life.
Jack was born on April 29, 1908, in an adobe hut near the mining town of Bisbee, in the territory that had not yet become the state of Arizona. His family moved at least once to Mexico and at least once by covered wagon, eventually winding up as homesteaders in Pep, New Mexico. He had little opportunity for formal education, but read voraciously, finding a particular fascination in the pulp magazines. In 1928 he became part of them, with his first story, “The Metal Man,” appearing in the December 1928 Amazing.
That marked the beginning of a career that included professional publications in nine decades. His first story in Astounding (as Analog was then known) was in March 1931, in the second year of the magazine's history, and he appeared here in eight decades. That would be remarkable enough in itself, but he didn't just persist; he continued to grow and adapt to changing times. He had a “slow” period in the 1950s and ‘60s, which he overcame by collaborating with such notables as James Gunn and Frederick Pohl, and then came back up to full power, producing memorable new work almost until the end. His July 1947 novelette “With Folded Hands...” grew into the 1949 novel The Humanoids, which remains a chilling cautionary tale more relevant now than ever. His novella “The Ultimate Earth” (published here in 2001) won both Hugo and Nebula awards, and his last novel, The Stonehenge Gate, was serialized here just a couple of years ago. In 1976 he became the second recipient of the Grandmaster Nebula awarded by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
In addition to being an important producer of science fiction, he was a key pioneer in gaining academic respect for the field. In the late 1940s he earned degrees from Eastern New Mexico University (in Portales) and the University of Colorado. He taught at ENMU until he “retired” in 1977, but he retained a very active connection with the university (a library there is named for him), and throughout that period was extremely helpful to teachers all over in introducing science fiction to curricula.
His wife, Blanche, died years before him, but he is survived by a brother, a stepdaughter, five stepgrandchildren, and an enormous literary family who will miss him very much.
—Stanley Schmidt
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