The Future And You
Ideas and opinion about the future based on verifiable facts of today.
 
The Future And You -- July 27, 2011

Michael A. Stackpole (New York Times best selling author) is today's featured guest.

Topics: How an asteroid came to be named after him; why he is an advocate for skeptical thinking and a spokesperson for the skeptical community; how skeptical thinkers can more effectively relate to and debate faith-based thinkers; what happened the day he became an active skeptic; his work in the Advanced Research Department at Coleco; his defence of role playing games during the years they were under attack by educators and the media. 

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 27, 2011 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 41 minutes]. This is part three of a two hour interview recorded using Skype on May 17, 2011.

Michael A. Stackpole is a science fiction and fantasy author best known for his Star Wars and Battletech books. Beginning in 1977, he worked as a designer of role-playing games for various gaming companies. In the 1980s he began designing computer games for Coleco and Interplay Productions, such as Bard's Tale III, Wasteland, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgment Rites. He also created the role-playing game Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, which provided the game mechanics for Wasteland. In 1987 he began writing novels set in the BattleTech universe, and became one of the most popular authors in that genre. He was then selected to write a number of novels in the Star Wars universe. He is also a popular podcaster, essayist, speaker and has an asteroid named after him.

News item: A few weeks ago a young man named Julle created an article in Wikipedia about this show written in Swedish. Blog posts have long discussed the show in half a dozen languages (such as Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French and Chinese) but this is the show's first Wikipedia article in a language other than English.

News Item: Your host's novel Skinbrain is selling nicely on two continents and has received another review at Amazon. "Excellent book! Hard Science fiction at its finest," wrote someone who goes by the code-name Monkey. "I enjoyed this book completely. Details of the alien's throughout the story is impressive. I recommend this to anyone interested in hard science fiction. I also listened to Bones Burnt Black, Stephen's audio-book, twice. Keep up the good work!"

Direct download: TFAY_2011_7_27.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:19am EDT

The Future And You -- July 20, 2011

James Maxey (author and "big science geek") and Jim Craig (planetarium director) are our featured guests.

Topic: The Year in Science. What's new and what's happening. Such as: Life extension using telomeres; TA-65; three parent embryo; antimatter made and trapped in lab; stem cell research; stem cells from breast milk; 3D printers to print human organs for surgical implant; a machine that can test a single sample for 10,000 toxins; the first person ever has been cured of AIDS.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 20, 2011 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 31 minutes]. This is the second half of a discussion panel recorded before a live audience on June 4, 2011 in Charlotte North Carolina at the SF&F convention ConCarolinas. (The first half was presented last week.)

James Maxey is the author of the superhero novel Nobody Gets the Girl as well as the Dragon Age fantasy series which includes the novels Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and Dragonseed. Set a thousand years in the future, after the fall of our modern civilization, in a world dominated by the intelligent dragons we created through genetic engineering. Humans are reduced to slaves, and the remnants of long forgotten nanotechnology make the world a wondrous place of magic.

Jim Craig is the director of the James H. Lynn Planetarium at the Schiele Museum in Gastonia NC. He is a lifelong science fiction fan and has given presentations on the history of science fiction. He is an outspoken activist for science education, critical thinking, skepticism and free thought. In 2006 he was allowed to name a crater on Mars.

Bonus: your host reads a few more paragraphs from his new novel Skinbrain (Cerebrodermus Fantastica) which features the alien character who calls herself Pug. 

Within human civilization, hundreds of individuals resembled Pug. None were real. All were fake, every last one. They were androids intended to give humanity the impression that Pug's civilization was interacting with theirs. It was not. Nor would it ever. These decoys visited human tourist sites, shopped in stores, ate in restaurants, made business contacts, set-up shop, bought and sold real estate, and did all the other things human beings would expect of them. To Pug their activities were meaningless. They were not spies or manipulators, they were just cover. They existed only to provide a signal-to-noise problem for anyone who might otherwise realize that Pug was the only member of her species in this galaxy.

Direct download: TFAY_2011_7_20.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:00am EDT

The Future And You -- July 13, 2011

James Maxey (author and "big science geek") and Jim Craig (planetarium director) are our featured guests.

Topic: The Year in Science. What's new and what's happening. Such as: Is science slowing down?; water verified on the moon; eyeglass head-up computers; a thousand planets discovered outside our solar system; and a vast cloud of alcohol discovered in space large enough to keep every living human drunk for the next three million years.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 13, 2011 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 38 minutes]. This is the first half of a discussion panel recorded before a live audience on June 4, 2011 in Charlotte North Carolina at the SF&F convention ConCarolinas. (The second half will be presented next week.)

James Maxey is the author of the superhero novel Nobody Gets the Girl as well as the Dragon Age fantasy series which includes the novels Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and Dragonseed. Set a thousand years in the future, after the fall of our modern civilization, in a world dominated by the intelligent dragons we created through genetic engineering. Humans are reduced to slaves, and the remnants of long forgotten nanotechnology make the world a wondrous place of magic.

Jim Craig is the director of the James H. Lynn Planetarium at the Schiele Museum in Gastonia NC. He is a lifelong science fiction fan and has given presentations on the history of science fiction. He is an outspoken activist for science education, critical thinking, skepticism and free thought. In 2006 he was allowed to name a crater on Mars.

Bonus: Your host reads a few paragraphs from his new novel Skinbrain (Cerebrodermus Fantastica) which features the alien character who calls herself Pug. Pug believes our galaxy belongs to her, which would be a meaningless notion if she did not have the power to destroy whole civilizations. And indeed, the habit.

Direct download: TFAY_2011_7_13.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:00am EDT

The Future And You -- July 6, 2011

Gail Z. Martin, Emillie P. Bush, Jim S. Bernheimer and Theresa Bane are our featured guests.

Topic: Writing for the Web is radically different from writing for print. This episode explores the down and dirty facts of those differences. For example: its immediacy (and the dangers of that immediacy); how it is used, miss-used, tweaked and manipulated; how it can be promoted and cross promoted; how what is written stays available for years; examples of people who have mastered its power to the benefit of their careers; as well as how to get started and how to get large numbers of people to read what you have written. 

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 6, 2011 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 38 minutes]. This is the second half of a discussion panel recorded before a live audience on June 4, 2011 in Charlotte North Carolina at the SF&F convention ConCarolinas. (The first half was presented last week.)

News and Commentary: According to a Pew Poll, ownership of ebook reading devices has doubled in the last six months. (from November 2010 to May 2011) Pew reports that twelve percent of all adults in the USA now say they own a Kindle or other eReader. Your host emphasizes that the transition to ebooks is in full swing but will take from two to three years to play out. He discusses how this will hurt publishers, editors, bookstores, literary agents, and that it will add to our current unemployment. Authors and readers however will benefit massively. 

Listener Email: Tim Proffitt wrote: "Hey stephen. Love your show! This week google released its answer to Facebook with Google+." (Tim described his expectations of Google+ verses other social media, as well as the future of the Internet as a whole.)

Announcement: Skinbrain (Cerebrodermus Fantastica), your host's new novel is also selling well in the UK, where it has begun to generate additional sales of Stephen's previous novel Bones Burnt Black

Bonus: A qoute from Skinbrain: "Einstein did not replace Newton. His was a new level of understanding that overlaid the existing model. So too, this model will not replace those of Einstein or Newton. Instead, it will explain the mystery we all pretend does not exist. The mystery of why Newton and Einstein are correct." That quote was spoken by an alien physicist who was being tortured to reveal the secrets of advanced physics which he'd recently learned from a far more advance alien civilization known only as The Cold People. Little known and rarely seen, The Cold People are human-like in shape but may have evolved on a world with rivers and oceans of methane.

Direct download: TFAY_2011_7_6.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:00am EDT