Comments on: Ray Bradbury: When the Writer Mistakes His Books for Himself

By: josh

josh — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:01:55 +0000

Hey Mike, I’m a writer out in New York and I’m working on a story about cryonics. I was out in AZ at Alcor the week before last. I’ve tried to find an email for you online but have so far struck out, so I’m trying this (inspired by the Dutch reporter!). Can you drop me a line and I can explain further?

By: Mark Plus

Mark Plus — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 22:34:06 +0000

>As Peter Thiel has recently observed, most kinds of engineering and practical scientific research have become illegal to do, absent extensive and oppressive governmental control.

Speaking of Peter Thiel, has any disbursements from his fortune spent on allowable technologies produced results yet? I’ve gathered that the money he invested into the Andregg brothers’ Halcyon Molecular startup company has gone to waste.

By: billswift

billswift — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:47:12 +0000

>Some are idiots and fools. But others are sincere, caring and compassionate people who are certain they are acting from the best intentions and in the best interest of our species.

Anyone who gets a name for “sincerity” is likely an idiot. Intelligent people are all to aware of the complexity of the world and our beliefs, which usually comes across to the vast majority of people as insincere.

By: Mark Plus

Mark Plus — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:43:51 +0000

Science fiction writers grow up in the same cultures everyone else does, and they use what they know. John Ringo and his sometime collaborator Travis S. Taylor, for example, write science fiction with Southern redneck characters modeled after themselves. SF writers love to fantasize about weird futuristic situations, and in some cases like Robert Heinlein’s they might have bohemian personal lives, but in general they operate according to conventional world views and would refuse to do for real many of the things they show in their stories.

So I wouldn’t expect too much from these people other than entertainment. Though several years ago I formulated the Two Dozen Science Fiction Novel Rule: After reading a couple dozen SF novels from different authors, you’ve pretty much read them all. Any additional SF novels you read will just remind you of previous ones, and you’ll get diminishing returns from the exercise.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 18:48:57 +0000

Jim Hogan was another SF writer who was mildly hostile to radical life extension and cryonics. He died 2 years ago in July of ’10. Like Heinlein, Hogan wrote stories that had openness and pioneering as a theme (Voyage from Yesteryear being the most notable). I rather liked his stories and I definitely liked him personally (I drank with him a few times at “cons” in the late 80′s).

However, I noticed he “turned inward” starting in the mid 90′s, with the openness and pioneering becoming much less prominent in his stories from that point on. I was rather disappointed. I suspect much of this was due to personal medical issues that he may have experienced starting that time.

One of the things that is notable of ALL of his stories, even the earlier ones, is the complete absence of any kind of bio-engineering (biotechnology). I suspect he simply was not personally comfortable with this kind of technology, preferring the “big machines” and physics-based technology that everyone dreamed of in the mid 20th century. In personal conversation, he was dismissive of nanotechnology as well.