The secret to going broke fast is simple. Just visit Atlantic City or Las Vegas and ask the first slot-machine player you see how to get a jackpot. "Don't change machines," they'll tell you as they pump the one-armed bandit. "Stay with it. Keep feeding it coins. If you stop to eat or sleep, someone else is sure to claim your pot."
But energetic single-mindedness is also the secret of success. A successful entrepreneur such as Bill Gates picks a single line of business and pursues it with devotion and energy. Some can focus on more than one thing at a time, but for most, to divide the focus is to risk failure.
An academic specializes. Most of those who work in more than one area risk being accused of intellectual flightiness, are taken less seriously than they should be, and fail to climb high in their fields. Our Carl Sagans are few and far between, and even they must struggle for their proper professional due.
Writers also specialize, concentrating on mysteries or textbooks or biographies. They build followings that way, and their editors know how to label them for sales purposes. If a mystery writer insists on doing science fiction, he or she often adopts a pseudonym for the purpose. Even Stephen King did this, writing mysteries as Richard Bachman before he grew so famous that his following would follow him wherever he went.
My own specialization is a little different. I'm a part-time college professor, a part-time science textbook author, a part-time science fiction book reviewer, a part-time science fiction writer, a part-time poet, and a full-time pursuer of what is known in the science fiction world as "sense of wonder." That is, I have long pursued that thrill of "Gosh! Wow!" to be found in the marvels of science and the novelties of science fiction.
In that pursuit, I have explored a number of themes--biological engineering, randomness, feeding the world, virtual reality, the search for aliens, skepticism, and more. My work over the last thirty years has fallen into clusters of fiction and nonfiction, each cluster centered on one of those themes.
You will find some of those clusters in this book. I hope you will find in them a portion of the wonder I felt in exploring them.
Tom Easton
Belfast, Maine
September 1999
I. STILL LIFE, WITH TABLOIDS
1. Is Science Fiction Just Tabloid Futurism?
2. The First Roachster
3. The Last Roachster
II. RANDOM THOUGHTS
4. Psychics, Computers, and Psychic Computers
5. Silicon Poetry
6. Four Poems
Slaughterhouse 65
Interstellar Arcs
Love Song for Lonely Aliens
From Pythagoras to Teller
7. To Fan The Flame
III. THE FRENCH FRY CONNECTION
8. Population and Food
9. Black Earth and Destiny
IV. UNREAL LIFE
10. "Virtual" Reality and "Artificial" Life
11. Micro Macho
12. Wallflower
V. SEARCHING FOR ALIENS
13. Searching for Aliens
14. Mood Wendigo
15. The Blue-Tail Fly
16. Needle and Thread
VI. DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE
17. Don't Forget Your Hip Boots
18. The Chicago Plan to Save a Species
19. A Love Story
20. Roll Them Bones
VII. THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE...
21. That Damned Lamb
22. To Clone a Man...
23. Social Climber
24. Down on the Truck Farm
VIII. About the author
IX. More Rocket Editions from Serendipity Systems
X. Register and get a free book
This essay has appeared in several versions. One ran in the pages of The New York Review of Science Fiction in April 1989. Another had a Boskone XXVIII audience rolling in the aisles.
And it's all true. Really.
The National Enquirer calls me a futurist.
Every few weeks I answer the phone to find one of that tabloid's writers wanting to know about the future of weight control, or transportation, or genetic engineering. I tell them whatever I can, based on my background as a biologist, my reading in the science press, and my imagination.
It all began when one of the Enquirer's reporters called Stanley Schmidt. Stan is the editor of the science fiction magazine Analog, for which I write a book review column. He has also published a number of my science fiction short stories and popular science articles, including one on the future of bioengineering.
The Enquirer writer wanted to know if Stan knew of a biologist with an imagination. Stan supplied my name, and now the relationship has been going on for years. The Enquirer's writers keep coming to me because.... Well, the day the topic was future methods of losing weight, I muttered something about using microwaves to melt body fat, inserting a needle, and sucking out the liquid lard. Within two years, LO! There was liposuction. It doesn't involve microwaves, but what the heck. Very few futurists get everything right, and most would give their eyeteeth to come that close.
When the topic was transportation, I told the writer about a piece I had done in 1976 for the now-defunct magazine Road Test. It described the tricentennial car as a Roachster, half cockroach (for speed) and half lobster (for size) with wheels growing out of its shell and a passenger compartment embedded in its back. Collisions are impossible, for when two meet on the highway, they stop to feel each other with their antennae.
The writer asked me to send him a copy of the article. The next thing I knew, he had treated that article as if it were an interview with me, moved the timeline up a bit, and run an article that actually prompted one Enquirer reader to call the tabloid and ask where he could get one now. There were also a number of calls from radio stations around the country, wanting to put me, via phone, on talk and interview shows. The story was even picked up by Omni, which ran it in its bright red "crackpot" pages.
When the topic was genetic engineering, I said that within twenty years, we would be able to design a virus that would implant "short" genes in every human being, so that the people of the next generation would all be no more than three feet tall. As it happens, I believe in this prediction rather more than I do in some of the things I come up with. The way genetic engineering is developing, we will indeed be able to design such a virus, and to do it very soon. On the other hand, predicting the ability is not at all the same thing as predicting that anyone will actually do it.
The nifty thing about such a virus is that it would quite naturally solve (for a while) the problem of resource shortages. Making people half-sized would mean that there would then be enough food, fiber, metal, and energy for twice as many people. The problems we face in resource shortages are less problems of too many people than ones of too many large appetites, and this is a point worth making in any way one can.
Just as nifty, this story did not only make the Enquirer, and numerous radio stations, and Omni. It also brought a trans-Atlantic phone interview with a London tabloid, and it later resurfaced on Canadian radio.
Then the Enquirer ran a story on the "Fantasy Feast Biochip." The writer had the admittedly hare-brained notion that sometime in the next few decades it will become possible to put miniature computers--biochips--in the brain. These biochips would be programmed to intercept and replace nerve signals, making it possible for someone to eat hot dogs and have them taste like lobster. This could be quite a boon for dieters, for whom celery might taste like chocolate decadence. And, of course, if you're on a guilt trip, you could eat lobster or chocolate decadence and have it taste like celery. Without the dip.
What did the writer want from me? First, he needed an academic with an appropriate Ph.D. who would let his name be attached to this idea, and he knew that I was generally willing to play the game of "what if." It is, after all, one of the very basic games of science fiction. Second, he wanted to know how it might work. I therefore fed him enough neuroanatomical and neurophysiological jargon to impress his editors and sent him happily on his way.
Still more recently-- well, one day the reporter wanted to know what I thought of the giant butterflies being reported from Russia. Over fifty pounds. Five-foot wingspreads. One had been shot down, like a duck. The photos were on the way to the Enquirer's office in Florida. Is this for real, Tom?
I told him that as I understood the square-cube law, butterflies that big just couldn't be. Either these things were utter fabrications. Or they were space aliens. Or maybe a space alien's pets. The story never appeared in the Enquirer, though a variant--involving giant grasshoppers--did make the front page of The Weekly World News (which issues from a dark back room in the Enquirer's headquarters building).
Then the question was toys of the future. I told him about "smart card" playing cards that keep their own score and remind you of the rules. Robotic playmates. Giant insect kiddy cars. Virtual reality for kiddy games. Paper books with built-in Hypertext features--touch a word, and the book tells you how to pronounce it and what it means.
And so on. The Enquirer keeps quoting me, calling me "a futurist who teaches biology at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine." Other media pick the stories up, in this country and abroad, all over the world. The readers respond, too. I get mail from people so desperate for solutions to their problems (such as overweight) that they will volunteer for the most bizarre of experimental treatments (such as microwave fat rendering). Others want to get their hands on Roachsters, giant pumpkin houses, glow-in-the-dark houseplants, and more.
I've even heard from cosmetic company researchers who wanted to know more about the wrinkle-hiding synthetic skin I once described. Not that they read the Enquirer, but one of their trade journals picked up on the story. I was taking off from the cultured skin being developed for burn victims. They wanted to know: Did I have a patent? An actual process? A real product? No? Well, they were sure I wasn't far off. And that suggested to me that hidden somewhere in their labs were people working on something very much like my half-baked idea.
The Enquirer's writers tell me that they enjoy working on futurism stories more than they do on scandals and celebrities. At the same time, they say, the stories make them feel they are doing something more constructive, for they convey to the tabloid's readers a tiny bit of science or a sense of the possibilities inherent in the future. That is, futurism stories let them feel like popularizers of science.
That feeling is accurate. Tabloid writers do indeed communicate small--sometimes very small--amounts of science, and they do so to people whose ignorance might otherwise be total. They also tend to demystify, to make familiar and comfortable, things that might otherwise seem alarming or frightening. They get ordinary people excited in a positive way about the potential of science and technology.
This is essential. Far too much of what people see in the more conventional press is alarmist. It stresses the dangers, the hazards, the risks of technology. It scares people, and while there are certainly aspects of technology about which we need to be cautious, there are many more aspects that we should welcome with open arms. Science and technology are life-enhancing, and this is what the tabloid writers stress.
Do you feel the tabloid writers aren't quite in touch with reality? After all, you don't see stories on how to tell whether your coworkers are space aliens in the New York Times and other major publications. You do, in the Enquirer. And yes, I consulted on that one, too, telling myself that it was just another variant on the familiar "what if" game of SF. (Try searching the 'Net using the terms "Easton alien coworker.")
The point remains: The tabloid writers do take a more positive approach. I think that they therefore serve a more valuable function than the "real" science popularizers who write for the Times. And I'm willing to help. Toward that end, I try very hard to be sure that what I tell the Enquirer's writers is within the bounds of reason. My extrapolations are firmly based in reality, in techniques and technologies now only germinating, in the nature of genes, tissues, behavior, and ecology. If I violate such basic principles as the square-cube law (which would surely limit the size of a Roachster to that of a kiddy-car), it is with full awareness of the violation and in order to make an example vivid. Given that, if I still seem to go further out on the predictive limb than most other academics, that's simply because I teach only part-time. Department heads and tenure systems hold no threat for me.
And besides, I'm not really a futurist at all.
I'm a science fiction writer. That Road Test Roachster piece was what I have called in the past a "science fiction non-story," lacking only plot to be a science fiction story. (Yes, it had a character--the "road tester.") Another Roachster story, including plot, has appeared in Analog (see below), and Roachsters, Bioblimps, Slugabeds, Mack trucks, pumpkin houses, and other wonders of gengineering appear in such other stories as my novel, Sparrowhawk. There are even airliners, the size of 747s, gengineered from birds--Alitalia, of course, flies a Cardinal.
And there's a distinct possibility that you will be able to see it all at the movies, for my "organic future" has been optioned by a Hollywood producer.
Intriguingly, when I don't use my tabloid notions to write the science fiction stories, someone else does. The "short people" piece appeared in the Enquirer on September 7, 1982. Much later, reading Andre Norton's collection Moon Mirror, I found that she had written a story, "Teddi," based on the same idea of stretching resources by shrinking consumers. I don't know when she wrote it. She may have come up with the idea entirely independently. Or perhaps she reads the Enquirer.
It is therefore worth asking: Is there a difference between futurism and science fiction, as far as the tabloids are concerned? Or as far as some science fiction writers are concerned?
The Enquirer's writers seem to think there is, at least in the minds of their readers, for they never identify me as a science fiction writer. They stress the Ph.D. after my name and my position on a college faculty. Their reason is credibility. They feel--and they are quite up-front about this--that the "futurist" label carries a much greater air of legitimacy. Calling someone a science fiction writer is calling that person a fantasist, an unrealistic dreamer whose pipe is fueled by unholy weeds, a bullshoot artist.
But "futurist"! Lay the stress on the ideas, and the readers will cry Gosh! and Wow! and Gee! and Whiz! And if you suspect that appearing in the Enquirer makes one a fantasist, an unrealistic dreamer whose pipe is fueled by unholy weeds, a bullshoot artist, well...
Do you know how the Enquirer's own writers describe that tabloid's ideal story? It is the sort of thing that will make George Everyman, ensconced in his recliner after dinner, in front of the TV, a beer in his fist and the Enquirer spread upon his lap, yell: "Hey, Mabel! Didja see this?" (Mabel, of course, may yell, "Hey, George!") They call it a "Hey, Mabel" story.
The reaction they try to provoke is the same mental kick that science fiction writers and fans have called "sense of wonder" almost ever since science fiction first appeared as a distinct branch of the tree of literature in the 1920s.
The big difference between science fiction and the tabloids is that science fiction restricts its focus to things linked at least peripherally to science and the future. The tabloids take the same wide-eyed approach to science, medicine, mass murderers, and show-biz celebrities, not to mention UFOs, space aliens, and freaks of nature. With the science and future stories, they seek campus-based Ph.D.s like myself to lend the stories credibility. With everything, they keep the stories short and sweet, the ideas simple, and the reading level low.
And the tabloid readers lap it up. The Enquirer sells six million copies every week and claims eighteen million readers.
Another difference is that the tabloids never admit that their fever dreams are anything but the purest, most unadulterated of truth, and anyone who claims otherwise is a member of some vast international conspiracy of hoodwinkers--or perhaps a lawyer.
Science fiction is fiction. No one claims otherwise. On the other hand, both the writers and readers of science fiction do claim that science fiction has other values than those of sheer story. The writers, like me, do pay attention to new discoveries, new technologies, new ideas. Many of them have perfectly valid academic credentials--they include linguists, physicists, biologists, physicians, mathematicians, chemists, astronomers, economists, and more. They try very hard to imagine how new discoveries, technologies, and ideas might affect the future.
They try to imagine the forms the technology might take. For instance--you've surely heard of the early-forties Astounding story that described the A-bomb so closely that it brought the FBI down on editor John W. Campbell's neck. But how many of you remember the seventies, when hand-held calculators were still fairly new? That was when Analog carried a story that featured a calculator that would figure horoscopes. Within months, just such a product was on the market. That's the best predictive "hit" I've ever seen.
They also try to imagine how the technology will affect people's lives. It thus serves as a forewarner of disaster--the environmental crisis was a staple of science fiction long before it came to dominate the headlines--and a vaccine against future shock.
Mostly, however, science fiction does not predict accurately. It is a shotgun, scattering possibilities across our minds. Whether any of those possibilities actually come true is beside the point. By forcing us to think of something other than the conventional, the traditional, the expected, science fiction prepares us to accept and deal with the unconventional, the untraditional, the unexpected.
This preparation is something from which we can all benefit. The future, with all its shocks and surprises, comes to us all, intellectuals and tabloid readers alike. Neither group has any monopoly on being hidebound. On the other hand, perhaps the tabloid readers do need the preparation, the exposure to the possibilities ahead, a little more. After all, they do not get much exposure to new ideas.
They don't have much patience with science fiction, either. That's "Buck Rogers" stuff. It makes great movies. But it's not real, right?
So the tabloids feed them futurism. Many of the ideas of science fiction are there. Many of the basic ideas of science are there.
And the tabloids present the ideas of science fiction as serious predictions. They make those ideas believable by attaching them to the names of people with academic credentials. If those people are the science fiction writers with the ideas, so much the better. If they are not, then the tabloid writers go looking for academics they can quote to "prove" that the predictions are reasonable.
Are the tabloids cheating in what they do? What they offer is as much fiction as anything that bears an explicit "science fiction" label. It's also sensationalized, and the writers strip whatever an expert--including me--might offer of all the qualifiers. "Might" and "maybe" and "could" become "WILL!" "By the year 2100" becomes "Within the decade."
And yes, to be utterly frank, the end result is sometimes embarassing.
But... It is a basic tenet of futurism that any futurist's projections of the future, whether he calls them futurism or science fiction, no matter how bizarre they seem, will in time prove too conservative. That is, futurists fail because even when they try to be bizarre, they are not bizarre enough.
I remind myself of this whenever I catch myself wondering whether I am leading the Enquirer's writers--and readers--too far out on the futurist limb.
The following prophetic, if somewhat conservative, report first appeared, in slightly different form, in the November 1976 issue of Road Test magazine. In due time, I altered the technology behind the Roachster to genetic engineering and used the critter in my "organic future" stories (one of which comes next).
With the final exhaustion of the fossil fuels in 2018 and the tragic failure of the Federal Fermentation Program half a century ago, it was only natural that the world turned the clock back to meet its needs for transportation. Horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, and even dogs were pressed into service in various places and times, and the problems of sanitation and stabling they brought in their wake were quickly solved.
But they cost our grandfathers one of their most valued pleasures. They met the needs of the commuters, the shoppers, and those who never drove their cars (remember them?) more than a few miles. They did not meet the needs of those who liked to escape from their city homes and cruise through the countryside, covering 100 or 200 or even more miles in a day at high speed. Resorts suffered. Summer homes were sold for a pittance. And the Interstate Highways were allowed to decay. All long-distance travel had to be done by rail, and if you couldn't get there on a train, you mostly didn't go.
Two generations grew up with these restrictions on their freedom. They accomodated themselves to a narrow-guage world without even knowing they were doing so. And they would never have known what they were missing if it were not for General Bodies, the firm which first gave us the Sui Generator and made it possible to turn our garbage into a richly fermentable manure.
A decade ago, GB's bioengineers began to address their efforts to the problem of transportation. They reasoned that a fast and efficient personal vehicle was still needed and that they were the only ones likely to provide it. Machines were impossible for lack of fuel, and animals were too slow. They would therefore produce a vehicle which was both alive, so it could run on such fuels as hay, and wheeled, so it could achieve convenient speeds.
It would also, of course, be large enough to carry up to four passengers and their luggage, breathe air, go for many miles between stops, and be easily controllable. It sounded like an impossible order to fill, and indeed the first models were shabby, crippled affairs, not even comparable to a pushcart. But GB did succeed in the end: this year it introduced a truly successful replacement for the automobile, and we can once more know the pleasure of the open road.
How did they do it? The only simple step was choosing the kind of animal to start with. It had to have the potential of growing wheels, which meant it had to be a hardshelled insect or crustacean. In fact, it had to be both, the one for its lungs (or spiracles) and the other for its size.
They thus began with a cockroach and a lobster and took a few thousand cells from each. They then fused the cells, a pair at a time, into hybrid cells and grew them into half-roach, half-lobster chimeras. Since the cell fusion process is not perfect, but usually results in the loss of some of the genetic information from each "parent," the resulting creatures varied greatly, allowing GB's bioengineers to pick several which showed promise.
The next step was to grind each prototype into its constituent cells, irradiate them to produce mutations, and grow a second crop of adults. They could then select a new generation of likely prospects and repeat the process until they had an air-breathing creature over ten feet long and covered with enormous holow warts. Only then did they turn the technology of genetic surgery to the task of giving the beast wheels.
Since a lobster's or cockroach's shell is laid down by an underlying membrane, and since the chimera's warts were only in the shell, they were able to adjust the genes which controlled the shell-making membrane's behavior. When they were done, the membrane produced two layers of shell instead of one. The layers were joined in such a way that they could be cut to leave a wheel turning upon a central pivot.
The last step was one more round of grinding, irradiating, and cloning to select specimens with a wheel-wart beneath each leg and another, larger wart atop the thorax to be used as a passenger compartment. The resulting creatures could not, however, move--the wheels interfered with the action of the legs. It has taken all of the last four years to produce a model whose legs are not only hinged backward, but are also small enough and mounted high enough on the body wall to run atop the wheels, thus propelling the Roachster along the road.
The first production models went to police departments around the country, who found the heavy claws, retained from the original lobster, very convenient. But it was not long before clawless models were offered to the public. They were snapped up so quickly that GB could not keep up with the demand. Waiting lists grew to unreasonable lengths, and not even RT could get its hands on a test model in less than eight months.
The wait was well worth it, however. I have been privileged to frive a 1978 Volkswagen for a mile and a half--as far as half a pint of bootleg gasoline would take it--and the 2076 Roachster is definitely an improvement. It is smoother and quieter at low speeds, and it handles nearly as deftly. It is roomier and offers more sheer comfort. And it is cheaper to operate than even the Volkswagen was in its heyday.
When you visit the GB dealer to pick up your Roachster, the first thing that strikes you is the beast's sheer size. The photos in the brochure are no clue to the truth--over twenty feet long and seven feet high, it dwarfs all possible conception of an insect or lobster. But at the same time, its ancestry is unmistakable. The stalked eyes are flanked by headlights, the antennae are covered with filigreed metal tubes, the mouth parts are tucked neatly behind a rubber bumper, and the eight legs are precisely positioned over their matching wheels.
The second is the way the Roachster seems all one piece. The only additions to the animal body are the bumper and the various pieces of electrical equipment--the lights, antenna sheaths, radio, control board, and air-injection pumps--and even they are sculpted and colored to blend into the Roachster's own contours. The passenger compartment--walls, seats, and doors--is genetically tailored to require an absolute minimum of modification. All the engineers needed to do was make a few cuts and install glass, hinges, and upholstery.
When you climb into the driver's seat, you are amazed at the comfort. There is plenty of legroom, the control board is in easy reach, visibility is nearly perfect, and the seat itself fits you like a skin. And the slight quiver of the underlying muscles is a pleasant allusion to the power you are about to tap.
The inconspicuous control board bears no steering wheel, and there are no floor pedals. Instead there are a sinmple right-left slide and a throttle knob, both wired directly into the Roachster's nervous system. These two controls are mounted just below a curving display of meters and indicator lights, and they fall as easily to hand as a set of reins. To start the Roachster, you turn the board on, twist the throttle to "slow," and use the slide to steer it onto the test track. To stop it, you pull the throttle knob toward you, whereupon the legs cease driving the wheels and the spiked tail digs into the ground to slow you down.
The up-and-down jerks of the legs in your peripheral vision are disquieting at first, but you soon get used to them as you concentrate on the smoothness of the ride and the sense of power that fills you as the massive Roachster responds to your every wish. When you advance the throttle again, the legs begin to blur, the air-injection pumps begin to hum audibly, and the Roachster picks up speed. It does not accelerate rapidly, but in a few seconds you are up to 10 mph and heading into the first turn. At 20 mph, you discover a tendency to sway. At 30, your ears begin to feel the clatter of the legs and the growing scream of the pumps. At 35, you are all too happy--for now--to have found the Roachster's top speed.
Once you have the hang of it, the dealer lets you off the track and onto the streets--streets not yet so crowded with other Roachsters that the horses don't shy warily at one more of the things. You steer carefully between and around other vehicles and pedestrians, and after a block or two you learn why the Roachster already has a reputation for safety--when two meet on the street, they invariably stop dead to feel each other with their antennae. Head-on collisions are impossible, and since the necessary delays are brief, the Roachster's speed is more than ample compensation. Once you have it on the open road, there are no interruptions and you can enjoy it to the full. In fact, it doesn't take you long at all to get used to the beast's noise, and you soon wish it could go even faster. You certainly wish GB had gotten on the stick a lot sooner.
But the Roachster does have its limits, the least of which are its slow acceleration, its noise at high speed, and its misleading speedometer (see the Test Results). Far worse is its proportion of down time, for being an insect of sorts, it must periodically slough its shell for a new one. Not only is this the only way to replace a worn-out wheel, but it also requires a visit to the dealer--and some expense--to have the thing's equipment reinstalled.
This drawback will probably prevent the Roachster from being sought by commuters or anyone else who can afford only one and must use that one constantly. It will not, however, affect those who are willing to use it only seasonally or who can afford several, so the Roachster is thus ideal as a taxicab or a municipal vehicle, and it will certainly permit a rediscovery of the joys of driving for pleasure. Rallies have already, in fact, been held, and the Down East Lobster Pot bids fair to become an instant classic.