In today's interview Neal Barrett Jr. provides us with his assessment of the future. 'I have seen entirely too much of what's going on; of the good and the bad and the indifferent.' he said. He also said, 'Every emperor and king and president and governor and mayor promises you what they are going to do. And how many of those things are still undone? The Pharaoh of 3000 BC hasn't kept his promises yet; so we're pretty far behind.'

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the September 3, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 41 minutes]

Neal Barrett Jr.'s novel Through Darkest America, was reviewed with the phrase, 'A book of astonishing power.' The Washington Post gave his novel The Hereafter Gang an even more enviable review which ended with the sentence, 'It is one of the great American novels.' 

He did the novelization of the motion picture Dungeons & Dragons, and his novel Pink Vodka Blues was optioned and purchased by Paramount Pictures. He followed that with Dead Dog Blues, Skinny Annie Blues and Bad Eye Blues.

Reviewers have defined Neal Barrett Jr.'s work as 'Stories that defy any category or convention.' He is the author of Perpetuity Blues, Interstate Dreams, and Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus.

He was Guest of Honor and Toastmaster at the 55th World Science Fiction Convention in 1997, and this interview was recorded the day before his 77th birthday while he and this show's host were both at the 2006 World Fantasy Convention in Austin Texas.

Topics include: Wireheading, recreational drugs, chewing coca leaves for micro-doses of cocaine, the abolition of suffering in all sentient life, veganism verses vegetarianism, why he is a founding member of the Order of Cosmic Engineers, the journal Medical Hypotheses, how he learned that he was a transhumanist, and how this lead to his co-founding of the World Transhumanist Association.

David also describes some of his essays such as: The Good Drug Guide, Superhappiness, Utopian Surgery, The Wired Society, The Hedonistic Imperative, and his Critique of Huxley's Brave New World.

His book-length manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative details how he believes the abolition of suffering can be accomplished in the coming decades through 'paradise engineering.' And he predicts that our descendants will enjoy genetically preprogrammed bliss that is orders of magnitude richer than anything accessible today.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the August 27, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 67 minutes]

In addition to co-founding (with Nick Bostrom) the World Transhumanist Association, David Pearce also co-founded the Abolitionist Society and serves as its honorary president. He is currently the director of BLTC Research; he serves on the editorial review board of the scientific journal Medical Hypotheses; and he is a vegan and a transhumanist. (Wikipedia article which has many more links to his work.) 

Topics include: one of NASA's advanced electromagnetic propulsion systems which uses no fuel and no rocket engines whatsoever; NASA's near future projects such as the next lunar lander and the new heavy lifting vehicle Aries V; and how we might eventually find ourselves fulfilling the vision of his non-fiction book: Living off the Land in Space.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the August 20, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 65 minutes]

Les Johnson is a NASA physicist and manager, as well as the author of popular science books and articles. He serves as the Deputy Manager for the Advanced Concepts Office at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Les has been on CNN, Fox News, NPR, The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, and in the New York Times. He made a few brief speaking appearances on camera in the BBC documentary series Space (released as Hyperspace in the USA) which was hosted by Sam Neil. He was the technical consultant for the movie Lost in Space. He is a frequent, and very popular, speaker at SF&F conventions concerning space and science. And he consulted on the books Deepsix by Jack McDevitt and War Surf by M. M. Buckner. (Two authors who have been interviewed on this show.)

Les Johnson's non-fiction books include: Living off the Land in Space (which he co-wrote with Gregory L. Matloff and C Bangs) and his latest Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel (which he co-wrote with  Giovanni Vulpetti and Gregory L. Matloff). Nature (the highly-respected scientific journal now in its 139th year of publication) reviewed this book and placed it on their Recommended Reading List for the Spring.

Highlights of the interview include: The mechanism of human empathy seems to have been identified, and so can be reproduced in AI; even AI that is radically different in its thinking from human beings. Doctor Goertzel explains that this empathy is not based on emotion, and he emphasizes that he does not want to create an AI which is governed by its emotions.

He stresses that the human mind does not qualify as a completely 'General Intelligence' but lies somewhere on the spectrum between AGI on one end and 'Narrow AI' on the other. This is one of several reasons why he does not expect AGI to be achieved by mimicking the workings of the human brain.

He describes how our brains fool us into believing that we understand our actions and decisions when we don't. And why modeling an AI too closely on the human brain might make it too, vulnerable to false notions.

He also says, 'I think virtual worlds are going to be absolutely critical to the development of Artificial General Intelligence.' As well as 'Right now connecting AI's to virtual worlds is probably the best way to get an AI to have a general human-like embodied experience.'

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the August 13, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 74 minutes]

Ben Goertzel has a PhD in mathematics from Temple University, and has held several university positions in mathematics, computer science, and psychology, in the US, New Zealand and Australia. He is the Author of over 70 research papers, journalistic articles and 8 scholarly books dealing with topics in cognitive sciences and futurism. He has spent over 20 years in artificial intelligence research and commercialization. 

The former Chief Technical Officer of Webmind, a thinking machine company with 120 employees, he is today the CEO of Novamente, and is the Principle architect of the Novamente Cognition Engine. He is also the Director of Research, at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

This is the second of our two episodes containing interviews recorded at the SF&F convention LibertyCon on July 12, 2008. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 30, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 80 minutes]

Topics covered by our various guests include trends in: digital art, genetic methods of insect control, electronic publishing (especially as relates to Amazon's new Kindle ebook reader), gaming, the dark truth about fairy legends, space exploration, scientific peer review journals going online, government regulations, and how writers may soon have little need of publishers.

Topics: David Mattingly discusses trends in the digital production of commercial art.  Travis Taylor talks of the launch vehicle that will replace the soon to be retired Space Shuttle.  David B. Coe describes his take on our escalating energy crisis and the bold proposals of T. Boone Pickens.

Recorded at the SF&F convention LibertyCon on July 12, 2008, and hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 23, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 68 minutes]

David Mattingly is an award winning illustrator and painter who has done over five hundred science fiction and fantasy book covers.  The former head of the matte department at Walt Disney Studios, he has worked on the movies The Black Hole, Tron, Dick Tracy, Stephen King's The Stand and most recently I, Robot.

David B. Coe is an award winning author of epic fantasy novels, including those of his series Winds of the Forelands, who holds a doctorate in environmental history.

Travis Taylor is a research scientist and the author of scientifically accurate science fiction.  His novels include Warp Speed, The Quantum Connection, Von Neumann's War, and his latest novel: One Day on Mars.

Our other guests include several of LibertyCon's organizers: Uncle Timmy: the con chairman.  As well as Brandy Spraker and Derek Spraker both of whom wear many organizational hats. 

In the process of sharing their vision of the future they also share many personal anecdotes about themselves and about famous authors they have met, including: Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, L. Sprague de Camp, Mike Resnick, Sarah A. Hoyt, Lois McMaster Bujold, Charles Sheffield and Catherine Asaro.

Harry Turtledove is an award winning science fiction & fantasy author best known for his novels of alternate history. He holds a Ph.D. from UCLA in Byzantine history. (Web, Wiki) 

David B. Coe is an award winning author of epic fantasy novels who holds a Ph.D. in environmental history. (Web, Wiki)

Toni Weisskopf is an award winning editor and the head of Baen Books: the world renowned publishing house of SF&F hardbacks, paperbacks and electronic books. Baen Books was founded by Jim Baen, and is the owner of Jim Baenâs Universe Magazine, where your humble host is a columnist and contributing editor. (Web, Wiki)

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 16, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 69 minutes] This interview was recorded on July 12, 2008 at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention in Chattanooga TN called LibertyCon.

An eye-witness to the trends which are shaping Asia's rapidly changing future, Mark Forman is an American businessman from Brooklyn New York who studied Chinese language and culture at the University of Arizona and, during the last two decades, has traveled a great deal in China as well as within many of its neighboring countries.

In today's interview he describes his personal observations of the changes sweeping the Asian world and especially Greater China. Greater China is a term commonly used in business and economics to indicate not just mainland China, but also the regions that it governs, such as Hong Kong, as well as the regions it does not govern, such as Taiwan. 

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 9, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 59 minutes]

While the topics covered in this interview range all over Asia, much of the focus is on mainland China and its relationship to other countries. This is because of all the countries in Asia, China has the biggest influence on the rest of the world and yet (since the Bamboo Curtain is only now beginning to fall) for most Westerners it is the least understood. 

Topics discussed include: the transformation of China from an anti-business communist economy to a pro-business free-market economy; the rise of Chinese consumerism; how internet access (including Google and Wikipedia) are eroding Chinese government censorship and forcing a new openness; the possibility of democracy taking root in China, and how a non-western democracy might be defined; the 2008 Olympics in Beijing; and of course much, much more.

Co-author of the Dune prequels, his original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series and the Nebula Award-nominated Assemblers of Infinity. A prolific science fiction author, he has had at least 32 of his novels on the various best seller lists including the famous New York Times Bestseller's list. His books have been translated into at least twenty-four languages, and have sold over 16 million copies worldwide. He has written spin-off novels for Star Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E., and The X-Files. In addition to all this, he has served as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 2, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 56 minutes]

In today's interview Kevin J. Anderson describes his ideas and observations on a variety of topics such as the current global energy crisis, peak oil theory, solar and nuclear power, and his new purchase of a fuel efficient car.

Having returned from a month long promotional tour of Australia and New Zealand, he describes his surprise at how different public opinion about Global Warming is down there compared to in the US. There is an overwhelming acceptance of the concept, and crowds greet Al Gore with the admiration and enthusiasm usually reserved for rock stars.

He is not comfortable that we will soon retire the space shuttle with nothing to replace it. Even now, he points out, we have to ask the Russians to take our astronauts up to the international space station for us. 

He also ponders some serious questions: If the Middle Eastern dictators thumb their noses at China, the Chinese government--which unlike the USA does not set limits on how it treats its own people much less outsiders--may very well invade the oil rich countries and take their oil by force. And if future nanotechnology allows everyone to have everything they want what kind of civilization will we have? Will people still work? Will most crime go away? What in our lives will remain the same? 

She mentions that she has begun composing music on the computer, says a few words about her new novel (The Night Bird) and briefly lets slip that she will be consulting with a game developer (which she could not name) to help them with aspects of the new game they are designing. 

When asked questions which form the core beliefs of The Order of Cosmic Engineers (web) (a new international organization of which your host is a founding member) she displays a remarkable level of agreement. 

As a tutor to gifted children she sees how the world view of children today is radically different than those held by children just twenty or thirty years ago. Their vision of the world has been transformed by the Internet and cell phones into something far more global and far less tied to ones specific locality. 

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 25, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 66 minutes]

Catherine Asaro is the author of 23 novels which have been described as a blend of hard science fiction, romance and space adventure. 11 of her novels belong to her Saga of the Skolian Empire. Her novel The Quantum Rose won the Nebula Award for best novel of 2001 and she is a three-time winner of the Romantic Times Book Club award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

From UCLA she received a Bachelors Degree in Chemistry. From Harvard she received a Masters in Physics and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics.

She has done research at the University of Toronto in Canada, the Max Planck Institut fÃr Astrophysik in Germany, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Her research involved using quantum theory to describe the behavior of atoms and molecules. She was a physics professor until 1990, when she established Molecudyne Research.

A former ballerina, she has performed with ballets and in musicals on both the east and west coast of the United States. In the 1980âs she was a principal dancer and artistic director of the Mainly Jazz Dancers and the Harvard University Ballet. 

She has also published short stories, reviews, essays, and scientific papers in refereed academic journals. Her paper Complex Speeds and Special Relativity, which appeared in the April 1996 issue of The American Journal of Physics, forms the basis for some of the science in her novels.

Amy H. Sturgis earned her Ph.D. in Intellectual History from Vanderbilt University, and she teaches Interdisciplinary Studies at Belmont University. In the field of science fiction/fantasy studies, she has multiple books, book chapters, and articles to her credit on subjects such as J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Gothic literature, and Arthurian legends, among others.

She is a regular speaker at universities and conventions across the U.S. and Canada, and she is often interviewed by national radio programs, television shows, and newspapers as a genre expert. In 2006, she was honored with the Imperishable Flame Award for Achievement in Tolkien/Inklings Scholarship.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 11, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 36 minutes]