Technoprobing

CYBORG BUGS ARE BACK AGAIN

2009-10-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

DARPA's HI-MEMS (Cyborg Bugs) project is making progress! According to New Scientist, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley,have implanted electronics into a giant African bug and achieved successful remote control of flight.

Scroll down in this blog to see why I feel more like a prophet than ever!

http://technoprobe.blogspot.com/2009/01/cyborg-bugs-revisited.html
http://technoprobe.blogspot.com/2007/10/cyborg-insects-and-my-fifteen-minutes.html

A CLOUD FOR MANUFACTURING

2009-09-28T03:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve just heard from an interesting outfit—CloudFab—that promises to hook up folks who have designs but no manufacturing capability (meaning 3D printers and the like) with manufacturing shops with spare time available on their machines.

There’s a need for such services, at least among small businesses whose people have the design skills to generate CAD/CAM files. Some hobbyists fit that description, but even though I think 3D printers will be in every home in a few years, I don’t think very many people will be generating CAD/CAM files.

They’ll be downloading them and printing them. And one big business opportunity will lie with generating, customizing, tweaking, and selling those files. Ponoko is reportedly doing something along these lines with a nascent partnership--100kgarages--with ShopBot, makers of inexpensive computer-controlled routers. “The idea is that designers (or shoppers) on Ponoko who find a great design now have the option of having the item built locally by any one of (eventually) 100,000 garages equipped with ShopBot tooling.”

So where does that put CloudFab? They say they are “all about increasing access to fabbing technology.“

“We aggregate many shops together to expand the process types available. In the beginning, we're concentrating on all 3D printing processes (FDM, SLA, ZCorp, PolyJet/ProJet, SLS/M,and more), but more process types, like laser cutting/etching, will become available soon.

“Our system gives you quotes from multiple shops on the system - like Kayak.com does for travel deals. All you have to do is upload an STL file, pick which process and material you'd like, and our system sends every applicable seller an RFQ. The sellers then quote you back, and you get to pick the quote that fits you best. After the parts are shipped, the buyer leaves feedback - or they can move into arbitration if the parts aren't up to snuff.

“So far, we've found that we've saved customers about 50% by using the spare capacity that all job shops have plenty of. Often our sellers are willing to give us this surplus nearly at cost. Also, with enough demand, sellers make multiple parts per build which decreases part cost even more by reducing applied finance costs.

“It's not always about price though, most industrial designers we talk to prefer turnaround time and quality over low pricing. If you talk to hobbyists though, they'll put up with a lot for cheap parts. For ultra cheap printing, we're encouraging the MakerBot / RepRap community to sign up as sellers to serve the hobbyist market.”

At this early stage in the development of consumer-grade 3D printing technology, there is a need for this technology. But as 3D printers become more capable and affordable and penetrate the home market, there will be less and less need to send design files elsewhere for printing. If CloudFab wants to stay in business more than a decade, it is going to have to invert its business model. Right now the premise is that designs are all over the place and need to find printers. Once printers are all over the place, the problem will be finding files to print. There will be a niche for a brokerage service that helps people do that. Right now, it looks like Ponoko is setting itself up to be that broker, though once 3D printing is in every home, there will be little need for 100kgarages. The cloud will be a lot bigger than that, and it won’t be “out there” somewhere. It’ll be in the family room.

HOPE FOR THE SUB-5,000 3D PRINTER

2009-09-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

The latest word on Desktop Factory is that the company's buyer is 3D Systems, "the leadership brand in the Additive Manufacturing industry, which means that they have the resources and desire to deliver on the promise of a truly low cost, easy to use 3-D printer."

3D Systems has acquired Desktop Factory's key assets--meaning intellectual property, know-how, tools, and even the core team of remaining Desktop Factory employees.

Abe Reichental, CEO of 3D Systems, says:

Until recently, cost and complexity have confined 3-D Printers to the shops and design departments of major corporations and premier design firms. The growing success and acceptance of V-Flash®, our first sub-$10,000 compact desktop 3-D Printer, reaffirms our commitment to one day make 3-D Printing as common in offices, factories, schools and homes as 2-D printers are today. We believe that the technology already developed by Desktop Factory in combination with our extensive technology portfolio should lead to a new generation of fast, simple and affordable 3-D Printers capable of making durable plastic parts.

We want to keep this exciting conversation going. The ability to design, create and produce models and prototypes — on your desktop, within a few hours — should be available to all. Our global economy runs on innovation, and we intend to provide the necessary 3-D printing tools to help you succeed independent of the size of your company and budget or your design challenges. You can count on our commitment to affordable 3-D printers — starting with V-Flash® today and even more affordable 3-D printers in the future.

In the coming weeks we will announce our formal communication strategy and invite you to participate with us as we seek your input and ongoing support. We are very excited about the potential before us and look forward to delivering an even wider choice of affordable, accessible 3-D printing technologies.

So don't give up hope. Affordable consumer-grade 3D printing is still on track.

DESKTOP FACTORY GONE?

2009-08-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

If you've been following this blog, irregular though it be, you know I've had a good deal to say about 3D printing. I've had a lot to say elsewhere as well, and at the World Science Fiction in Montreal last week, I gave two talks. There were other talks on the topic as well, just to show that there's a lot of interest in the topic.

Unfortunately, the economy isn't helping. A few months ago, Desktop Factory announced that they were running short on venture capital and having trouble finding more. Plans to move out of beta were on hold.

Now they report that they had to bite the bullet and look for a buyer for the company. Fortunately:

"a funny thing happened as we launched our effort to sell Desktop Factory. We found interested parties who do understand the exciting potential for this breakthrough technology. We found companies that value the industry and can visualize the myriad applications for this affordable printer. Most important, we have found organizations that engage with customers and truly want to be a part of this next major wave in additive fabrication.

"And, along the way we have found the best opportunity to place the assets, the intellectual property and many of our people with a leadership brand; a company with the resources and the desire to deliver on the promise of a truly low cost, easy to use 3D printer. We are cautiously optimistic that we can successfully conclude this sale of Desktop Factory within the next 30 days."

Meanwhile they are refunding the deposits already paid by eager buyers.

They're not saying who the buyer is, just that "We look forward to sharing the complete back story with you on the new owner and how they will continue to keep this exciting conversation going."

If you're as optimistic about this technology as I am, keep an eye out for that new owner. If they're a public company, their stock may be worth a look.

THE SF PROPHET STRIKES AGAIN!

2009-04-20T11:04:00.000-07:00

Slashdot has just posted a great story:

"Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York is developing flexible nanotubes inserted under the skin to create a handheld display — inside your hand. They wirelessly receive data and display reminders and text messages, and the concept has also been broadened to suggest endlessly programmable digital tattoos, while Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics is also exploring the concept of the body as 'a platform for electronics and interactive skin technologies'."

Much to my delight, a few years ago I wrote a story that forecast almost exactly this! Is science fiction supposed to try to forecast the future? That question has provoked a lot of debate over the years. I’m inclined to say “yes.” If you’re not, don’t argue. Just enjoy!

HACKING THE SKIN TRADE

Thomas A. Easton

"Give me that, you little bastard!"
Molly had spent an hour carefully copying a bold black and red geometric pattern from a magazine page taped to her mirror. The dark hair that framed her face made the design even more dramatic. But now Tony-J had the toowand. He was holding it like a sword, en garde with Molly's nose above her plate.
"Hah!" He slashed the toowand in the air, and a stripe of iridescent green toobits appeared across her nose and cheek.
"Give!" Molly lunged at her brother and a milk carton went flying off the table.
"Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha!" But as Tony-J threw himself backward, his hand went up in the air. His father, Tony Scarpatti, grabbed the toowand before it could do any more damage.
"Antonio Junior!" His mother, Dinah, took the toowand from her husband and said. "You clean up the milk."
He knew better than to argue with that tone of voice, but he couldn't help muttering, "Call me Scar."
Then Dinah handed the toowand back to Molly. "Go get that straightened out. And hurry, or you'll miss the bus."
Tony finished his coffee and sighed. "I can go by the high school."
"What about me?" said Tony-J from the floor, still mopping up milk.
His mother laughed. "You miss your bus, you walk."
Not that the middle school was really that far away. And not that she couldn't go by it on her way to work. But the kid had to learn: You screw up, you pay.

Ben Yugato must have been waiting for Tony. As soon as he unlocked his office door, Ben was right there, crowding in behind him with his belly and his mint-soaked breath and his musky cologne, saying, "Got something new here, Tony boy."
"What, boss?" He set the laptop case on the desk, took out his machine, set it where it wouldn't block the view of his family photo cube, plugged it in, hit the button. The office was small, barely big enough to warrant a door, and windowless. One wall bore shelves of reference books, software manuals, and the DVD records of all the ad campaigns he'd worked on. Another bore a few stills and a faded travel poster. Paris, where he and Dinah had wanted to go for their honeymoon. They had gone to Connecticut instead, a long weekend instead of two weeks. They had both had project deadlines.
Ben set a PDA in front of him. But not quite a PDA--a black cylinder the size and shape of a cigar stuck out of one end. Tony turned it over. Standard PDA screen but no keyboard-projection lens. "No keyboard is new? Where'd you get this?"
"One of our clients, PowerToo. It's a prototype. Old components." Ben touched a button, and a panel slid aside to reveal a miniature keyboard. Tony remembered when and grimaced. "Except for this." Ben touched the cigar.
"Pretty clunky for Wi-Fi."
"Different frequency band. Everyone's got toobits now, right? Go down to the drugstore and they spray 'em into your skin. Face, back, arms, legs, wherever. Then they sell you a toowand so you can draw whatever toos you want." The toobits were nanomotes only slightly larger than bacteria, tiny versions of radio-frequency ID chips with quantum dots for color. The wand was a wireless projector that told the chips which dots to activate.
"God, yes." He didn't have to explain. Ben had kids too.
"Most people don't realize the toobits are networked. But that's how they get color shades. And how they keep the edges of the toos clean. Not like old-time tattoos. And this..." He touched a button on the device. A red rose bloomed on the back of his hand.
Tony grinned. "The whole pattern at once."
Another button. The rose vanished. "Undo." Another, and it was back. "Redo."
And wouldn't Molly love that! No chance of missing the bus when Tony-J messed up her makeup.
Now Ben was backing across the office. "Hit it."
Undo. Redo.
"Longer range. See? It's a PowerWand. And I'm thinking of the beach. All that skin, like a thousand billboards."
"Ads?" He was horrified. "They will hang you from a lamppost."
Ben winked and laughed. "Not me. Maybe whoever bites when we sell 'em the ad. And that's your job now."
"What do you mean? I've got ..." Tony gestured at his laptop. He had clients, campaigns...
"Turn everything over to Janice. I want you to come up with something that will use this gadget. Something we can pitch to clients." Ben grinned. Waved. Said, "Take it home and play with it." And vanished, leaving the PowerWand on Tony's desk.
He stared at it for the next hour.
The PowerWand was a nice gadget, a nifty gadget. Molly would love it. The maker wouldn't be able to keep up with the cosmetics demand.
But ads? Popping up on people's skins?
What kind of a sleazy son-of-a-bitch would even think of such a thing?
People would remember telemarketers fondly. They would declare them saints of restraint.
Maybe spammers too.
And if they ever found out who had started it... It wouldn't be Ben who would swing. He was too savvy, he'd just point at Tony, and then...
Jesus!
If only he didn't have a mortgage, two cars, a couple of college educations to save for... Dinah made good money, but not enough. He couldn't just say no. That wasn't how this business worked. He'd be on the street, and someone else would be only too happy to take the credit for this little gig.
Ben knew him too damned well. Figured he couldn't say no. And he was right, damn him. Sneaky, slimy bastard.
He swore. He stared. He thought of sports stars who showed plenty of skin. Boxers, swimmers. Legs on runners, basketball players. Cover 'em with logos like NASCAR cars. That would work. But it wasn't the beach. He swore again. Finally, he got down to work. Copied his work files to Janice. Attended a couple of meetings. Took Janice to lunch with the biggest of his clients, introduced her, said something about a big new project, new media, hottest thing since Super Bowl slots, the client would be the first to have a shot at it. Went back to the office, took a couple of ibuprofen, and thought, "God help me." He knew what he was going to do, what he had to do. He didn't like it, but he already had a few ideas.
The PowerWand went into the case with his laptop.

Molly knew the drill. Every night her Dad had to spend a couple of hours with the laptop, but not in any den. Big fat recliner, TV mouths running off about news, politics, sports, teenage mouths yah-yah-yahing. So she grabbed the case as soon as he walked in the door, took it to the table by the recliner, set up the machine. By the time he got back with his Sam Adams, Tony-J had the PowerWand in his hands.
"What's this?"
"A new toowand."
The kid laughed and waved it toward his sister. She batted him away. "What's new about it?"
Tony held out his hand and smiled when Tony-J obediently handed it to him. "You can program a whole design. From a distance. Though I haven't had it long enough to figure out exactly how."
"Can I try?"
"Me first, kid. It's work."
"And then me? Is that a promise?" The kid looked downright eager, and Tony was sure it wouldn't take him long at all. Might even save time to let him at it. But...
"We'll see. Like I said, it's work. It goes to the office with me, and it might not come back right away."
"Huh," and Tony-J eyed his sister, who said, "No way."
Tony laughed. "Don't worry, Molly. It's got an undo button if he tags you with it."
Later, while the kids were doing homework, playing video games, chatting with friends, bickering as usual, Tony pulled up the PowerWand's specs. 500-foot range. Addressable toos, send them anywhere a target had toobits, hand, arm, back, butt even. Nifty interface--3D manikin on the tiny screen, rotate it, set the crosshairs, click OK. Notes on how wide-open skin-nets were, no encryption, no passwords, no need that anyone had ever thought of. He shook his head. That wouldn't last. But for now, all a user needed was a port scanner to find a local skin-net, and that was built right in. All you had to do was aim. The manikin even showed you where the toobits were.
He played with the controls. Used his laptop to store an image of Dinah on its memory card, tried impressing that on the toobits in his arm. Grainy, but...
"Wow, Dad. Can I try?"
He looked at his son. Held up his arm. "This is the only place I've got toobits, Tony-J. What about you?"
"Ah..." Hesitation, an almost visible squirm. Toobits in places he didn't want his parents knowing. Tony tried hard not to laugh, couldn't help the smile.
"Your back?"
"Yeah." Tony-J's grin seemed relieved.
"Then take off your shirt." A moment later he was nodding. Much better with more skin.
"You can't leave him like that!" Dinah sounded horrified.
Molly just laughed. "Think what the other kids would say. 'Mommy on your back all the time?'"
"We can't have that!" Tony laughed and pushed the undo button, but as the image vanished, Tony-J yelled, "Hey! I want to see!"
Redo. "You know where the mirrors are."
A moment later, from the bathroom: "Wow. This thing makes killer toos. You could have anything!"
Undo again. Tell the kid no, he couldn't borrow the PowerWand. Test the regular wand to make sure it can erase the Dinah on his arm, and tell Molly yes, he'll use it to put a fleur de lis on her cheek. Tell Tony-J yes, he can have a dragon on his arm. The gizmo has both in its clip art folder.
Then back to thinking. Killer toos indeed, as long as he gave each image a patch of skin big enough for decent resolution. Logos could go anywhere. He laughed at the thought of a Studley's Gym ad decorating some beach-going slob's swollen paunch. A condom ad on a pregnant woman with six brats in tow.
Not exactly winners, he thought. Time to hang it up.

"Hey, Scar!"
"Ubori! Khan!"
Three buddies, one for all, all for one, all in trouble together.
"Whatcha got there?"
"Dad brought it home last night. A super toowand!"
"Super, huh. What's it do?"
"Whole pics. See?" He'd found the rose image while he was still on the bus. He held up the palm of his hand.
"A flower? C'mon."
"You like my dragon better?"
"Yeah!"
"That must have taken hours!"
"Nah." Tony-J snapped his fingers. "Like that. It even works long-distance." A moment later both Khan and Ubori wore roses on their foreheads. Then he had to show them the undo feature.
"Can you buy these things?"
"Not yet."
"Then lemme have it."
Scar yanked it out of Khan's reach. "If I don't take it back tonight..."
The others nodded, reluctantly. They understood.
"But we can play with it today?"
"Unless Dad shows up with the cops."
Ubori laughed. "We can put spiders on people. Roaches. Snakes. Dripping blood."
Khan giggled. "And I know who..."
"We ownЗ them!"

This morning Tony had time to get into the office and open his laptop case before Ben Yugato showed up. But he was still staring blankly at the empty space beside his laptop when his boss's hand landed on his shoulder.
"What's the matter?"
"It isn't there." No point in trying to hide the truth.
"What? The PowerWand?"
Tony nodded. "I know I put it in here last night." He pointed. "After I got it figured out."
"You got kids, right?"
Tony nodded again.
"Then we know where it is. One of 'em snuck it, and he'll bring it home tonight."
Tony-J, of course. No wonder he had seemed in such a rush to get to school. "He'd better."
"Tomorrow, then. I've got kids too, you know." Ben laughed, looked surprisingly satisfied. "Amazing, isn't it, how you can count on 'em to mess you up?"
Yeah. Had Ben taken the PowerWand home himself? Not likely, and Tony's laugh wasn't as jovial. He felt uneasy, suspicious, though he could not quite say why. The missing PowerWand was his own damned fault. He should have a den, or a lock on his case, or he should have left the thing in the office, no matter that the boss had told him to take it home for the night and play with it.
"It's not a problem, Tony. It'll work out. Now, have you come up with anything yet?"
"Nothing I like much. Though I do have one that would keep us out of trouble. No invasion of privacy."
"What's that?"
"Do a NASCAR number on athletes. Logos on their skin."
Ben shook his head. "They'd want to be paid. Think beach, Tony. Lots of skin. Free skin."
"Just let the too folks sell it, Ben. My daughter drooled all over it. It could do animated toos if you wore it like a pager. A watch in your skin."
"Too obvious, and they're on that already. Think beach, Tony. We want ads. We want eyeballs."
Tony shook his head. "They will shut us down so fast. Legislation, security in the toobits."
"But we'll get attention, won't we? Lots of it."
And that was the name of the game. Why skin shows and Super Bowls carried the most expensive advertising. They had the eyeballs.
"Maybe we should just advertise the gadget itself. ''Are we bugging you? Get your PowerToo PowerWand now and turn us off!'"
Ben gave him a dirty look. He wasn't being a good team player. "Maybe. It could work. But first the ads. Come up with something. Don't be negative."
As soon as Tony was alone, he sighed. Or else, eh?
Looking for inspiration, he pulled up a list of the agency's clients. Cars, perfumes, clothes, real estate agencies... Jolly Laszlo's Seafood Haven. He imagined swimmers suddenly sporting toos of various fish as they emerged from the water. Squid, lobster, snapper, trout, striper, bluefish, tuna, shark, shrimp, sole... A beat, two, three, just long enough for everyone to say "What the hell...?" Then the skin goes bare, and "It's just as fresh at Laszlo's" pops up on backs and bellies.
Could it do that? The PowerWand had a 500-foot range. Would water interfere? Could it do simultaneous images on multiple hides? Not his department. He had a nifty here, now all he had to do was write it up, generate a quick animation, and send it to Ben.
He was almost done when the phone rang.

Ben's office was twice the size of Tony's. The carpet was a thick Isfahan. The walls were covered with ads--magazine pages, stills, even loops on flat panel displays--and the awards they'd won. The broad, polished maple desk was dominated by a 20-inch monitor displaying a page of text.
"Ben? We got trouble."
"What?"
"I just had a call from a reporter. My son's expelled, he's being charged with assault, and the school confiscated the PowerWand."
"What the hell did he do? And how did it get out?"
"He picked on the reporter's kid. She's phobic about spiders, and..."
"Oh, God." But Ben Yugato was grinning like a cat who had just scored a canary.
Tony didn't notice. He was looking at the carpet. "Damned stupid kid."
"Don't worry about the gizmo." Ben pointed at a small table by the window. Two more flanked a vase of lilies.
"You aren't going to get a chance to use it for ads." And neither he nor Tony would be attacked for invading privacy. Just Tony Junior, stupid kid, idiot kid.
"That's okay. See this?"
The monitor, the text. Tony moved close enough to read it: A press release. Denying blame. "We were testing the Powerwand and brainstorming publicity approaches. Unfortunately, a security lapse let [name] 'borrow' the prototype. We regret the consequences. Obviously measures will have to be taken to prevent misuse of the product...."
Tony abruptly swung to face his boss. "You expected this."
Ben nodded. "As soon as you told me it was gone."
"You set me up. You set him up!"
Ben just looked at him, as if to say that of course he had. Of course the ads had been just a pretext. The point was publicity, eyeballs, no matter how.
"I'll talk to PowerToo. If this works out--and it should--they'll cover the lawyer. And your kid's a minor. He'll get a slap on the wrist. That's all."
"But..." But Tony could only shake his head as helpless tears filled his eyes. He wanted to shout and scream. Do something violent.
"You want the account? It'll be an easy sell, and plenty of billings. But you may have to play lobbyist too."
He could do that. He really could.
Or he could just plain quit. Right now.
Couldn't he?
###

NEW BOOKS

2009-04-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Way back in 1997 I published Silicon Karma, about life for downloaded people, with White Wolf Books. It garnered some nice reviews (including a lovely one from cartoonist Gahan Wilson--he loved it), sold a few copies, and went out of print in due course, whereupon I bought a hundred copies of the remaining stock. The rights reverted.

In 1995 an earlier version appeared in electronic form from Serendipity Systems. I recently got those rights back as well, and I've just converted the original manuscript file, packaged with a background essay and a short story, into modern ebook formats--Mobipocket prc, Sony lrf, and epub, using Calibre--and uploaded as well to Amazon's Kindle store, where you can buy Silicon Karma just by clicking from your Net-empowered Kindle.

This is my first attempt, so if you buy a copy, let me know if and how well it works for you. If there are problems, I'll try to fix them and then send you a Kindle-compatible file (Mobipocket should work).

If all is well, I'll do another book or two. Serendipity also published a collection of essays, short stories, and poems called Frontiers of Wonder, and that's a candidate. So is Maine Quartet, a four-story chapbook coming this summer from SRM Publisher, which mostly publishes material by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee, quite popular for their Liaden Universe series (SRM also brings out material by other writers such as Lawrence M. Schoen). Steve says the electronic rights for this chapbook remain mine and he's cool with me Kindle-izing (is that a word?) it.

CYBORG BUGS REVISITED

2009-01-30T04:56:00.000-08:00

Remember the HI-MEMS project I almost got involved with a year and a half ago? It's back, with a wirelessly controlled beetle. According to Technology Review, University of California at Berkeley researchers Michael Maharbiz and his colleagues have "developed a tiny rig that receives control signals from a nearby computer. Electrical signals delivered via the electrodes command the insect to take off, turn left or right, or hover in midflight. The research, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), could one day be used for surveillance purposes or for search-and-rescue missions."

I can't claim any credit but as a science fiction writer I'm allowed to be delighted when one of my concepts comes true twenty years later. If you've read Sparrowhawk, you know what I mean. (For a new copy, click here.)

WEIRD SCIENCE

2009-01-13T19:10:00.001-08:00

I've just finished reading Gregory L. Reece, Weird Science and Bizarre Beliefs: Mysterious Creatures, Lost Worlds and Amazing Inventions, I. B. Tauris (distributed by Palgrave Macmillan), $18.95, 238 pp. (ISBN: 978-1-84511-756-6).

Reece has dug up everything he can find on Bigfoot, Nessy, Atlantis and Mu, Hollow Earth, chupacabras, channeling aliens on Venus, the Shaver mystery, free energy, and a great deal more. He has attended conventions where folks who believe in this stuff--or who at least say they do--gather. And he has pulled it together in a unique "celebration" of intellectual diversity, illustrated with stills from sci-fi movies and the like. It all "reminds us that what counts as evidence differs from context to context. Likewise, what is real."

I think he's just being polite. He recognizes that mainstream intellectuals think this stuff is pure bunkum. There are a few "maybes" out there, perhaps, but most of what he parades for our delectation and astonishment is so far beyond what the facts support that even Hollywood can't touch it with a straight face.

You, of course, don't need to keep a straight face while reading the book. In fact, you probably can't for there is humor here, albeit the thoroughly out-of-fashion humor of the carnival freak-show.

Yeah, I'm not as polite as Reece is.

THE DESIGN ECONOMY

2008-12-08T11:08:00.001-08:00

My article on the coming Design Economy is now out in the January-February issue of The Futurist. They sent me a pdf and said I could put it on my website, so I did. Click here for the website and here for the pdf.

A COMING BLOW FOR STATE BUDGETS

2008-11-27T09:51:00.000-08:00

The December 2008 issue of State Legislatures magazine quotes some of my projections about possible future impacts of 3D printing on state budgets. Here is the long version of those projections, taken from my work in progress, The 3D Printing Revolution: Social and Economic Impacts.

State budgets are still reeling from the impact of the personal computer, the Internet, and e-commerce and the federal moratorium on taxing Internet sales and services. Attempts to make sales taxes more uniform from state to state and to revise legislation to make those taxes more collectable may help. But there’s a new computer-related impact on sales taxes that will be more difficult to cope with.

The average state meets about a third of its revenue needs from sales taxes. In 2007, Sami Dakhlia of the University of Southern Mississippi and Robert P. Strauss of Carnegie-Mellon University (“Should Sales Taxes Be Imposed on E-Commerce?” August 12, 2007, available from the Social Science Research Network, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1006880) found that about a fifth of sales tax revenues are potentially threatened by untaxed e-commerce sales. In November 2007, Florida said $2 billion of its $3.4 billion budget shortfall is due to uncollected e-commerce sales taxes. In 2008, with the national economy pinched by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry and ensuing foreclosure crisis, and by rising oil prices, many states found themselves struggling with budget shortfalls. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, even before the current financial meltdown, half the U.S. states were facing budget shortfalls for fiscal year 2009. Amounts varied from $59 million (Vermont) to $16 billion (California), with the total topping $40 billion. Consequences are expected to include increases in other taxes, including income taxes, and cuts in services such as public health, education, and even highway maintenance.

How bad is the problem, really? It’s hard to say, but e-commerce has grown tremendously in the last few years. In the worst case, according to Dakhlia and Strauss, sales tax revenues will drop by 20 percent. Since sales taxes provide a third of state budgets, those budgets will take a seven percent hit even as demands for government expenditures increase. Consequences for services and infrastructure maintenance, already visible, will grow worse until other taxes are imposed.

The bad news does not stop with e-commerce. A new technology is now moving from industry to the home with the potential to reduce sales tax revenue much more. With e-commerce, the transactions exist to be taxed. With this new technology—3D printing--they do not.

3D printing is also known as rapid-prototyping or fabbing. It can be used to make replacement parts for appliances, a new head (or leg) for a broken doll, a specially shaped piece for a hobby project, decorative switch plates, coat hooks, children’s sandals, or a thousand other items. Once consumers have 3D printers, they will have a China on their desktop, and they won’t be spending nearly as much money at the local hardware store or Wal-Mart.

One of the new machines is the Desktop Factory, priced at just under $5,000 (compared to $20,000 for the cheapest of the machines available just two years ago). It works by building objects one layer at a time (like a deli meat slicer in reverse) out of plastic powder fused by intense light. The machine easily fits on a desktop and weighs less than 90 lbs. It can make things up to 5 inches on a side with layers a hundredth of an inch thick, slightly thicker than those laid down by the industrial machines.

The technology, according to its proponents, is about where the personal computer was in the mid-1970s. The personal computer took about two decades to create the Internet and e-commerce revolution. It seems a reasonable extrapolation that the 3D printer will have a similar impact, perhaps in less time. Indeed, the people behind the Desktop Factory say their goal "is to one day make 3D printing as common in offices, factories, schools and homes as laser printers are today. Just as desktop publishing exploded as prices dropped and laser printers became ubiquitous, so too will new uses for 3D printing emerge as devices become inexpensive and widely available."

If that goal is achieved, consumers will be happy. But government runs on taxes. If a manufacturer goes out of business because its erstwhile customers are printing instead of buying, it no longer pays corporate income taxes, and its employees no longer pay personal income taxes. If the company goes bankrupt, even property taxes may be lost. Meanwhile, those same erstwhile customers are no longer buying gasoline to drive to the store.

We do not yet have a clear idea of what proportion of total sales might be displaced by home 3D printing, nor of how those displaced sales will split between e-commerce and “bricks-and-mortar” commerce. But it is surely safe to say that there will be such a split and that therefore home 3D printing will increase the loss of sales tax revenues above what is already being experienced. The blow to state and national budgets could easily surpass ten percent, and with the added impact of lost corporate and personal income taxes, property taxes, and gas taxes the blow could be much greater. Exactly how bad the blow will be is impossible to tell at this point, but it seems realistic to say that it will be worse than the impact of e-commerce alone.

If state revenue is reduced by any significant amount, there will be effects in many areas--education, human services, health care, highway maintenance, law enforcement, and more. States may be reluctant to raise taxes, but their needs will not go away. If the shortfalls do not prove to be temporary, taxes will have to go up.

The question is which taxes. Since the single largest state revenue source is personal income taxes, that may seem the obvious choice, though it would not be a popular one. New taxes on 3D printers and the raw materials they require are another option, but under development is an open-source printer (the RepRap project) that will be capable of printing itself and will use multiple materials that could be prepared at home. The tax potential may be limited. A more likely solution may be licensing possession and use of 3D printers, with licensing fees taking the place of actual taxes.

Further down the road, we do have to worry about expansions of the individual citizen’s ability to make whatever he or she needs at home. In fact, we are likely to see that ability increasing year by year, with purchases of goods other than groceries, appliances, houses, and vehicles declining year by year. The result could be a shrinking national and even global economy. Since we are accustomed to a growing economy, generating predictable returns on investment, producing more goods for consumers who every year buy more and more and pay more and more sales taxes, and providing ever more jobs, this will be a serious matter.

The future is difficult to predict with any certainty. But the technology of 3D printing is developing rapidly, and its impacts may be large. It’s too early to panic, but it is not too early to start the conversation about what this technology may mean for state government.

WHO'S TO BLAME?

2008-11-26T17:56:00.000-08:00

With collapse of the nation's financial system on everyone's minds, we'd all like to know who to blame. The nominees include the Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration, deregulation, and quants.

What are quants? They are also known as financial engineers or quantitative analysts, and they've been around for quite awhile. But in the 1990s, headhunters started looking for quants at major research labs, where physicists and mathematicians were feeling the pinch of canceled programs such as the Superconducting Supercollider (cancelled in 1993). There were, frankly, too many physicists and mathematicians chasing too few jobs in their fields. Many were open to other ways of making a living.

According to Alaina G. Levine, "Science Careers: Finance's Quant(um) Mechanics," Science, November 21, 2008, we need more math whizzes in the finance sector, not fewer. But some don't agree, as Steve Hsu, Professor of physics at the University of Oregon, noted over a year ago. If they're right, the real fault for our current crisis must lie with whatever put so many quants on Wall Street, and that would seem to be the lack of federal support for physics research.

It happened on President Clinton's watch, but it was Congress that cut the purse-strings in 1993. The International Space Station was demanding funds, and the feeling was that the nation just could not afford the Supercollider.

Maybe what we really can't afford is letting the quants out of the physics labs. Don't cut the funding!

REVIEW--JETPACK DREAMS

2008-11-16T17:54:00.000-08:00

Mac Montandan, Jetpack Dreams: One Man’s Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention that Never Was, Da Capo Press, $25, 261 pp. (IBSN: 978-0-306-81528-7).

The jetpack—a rocket strapped to a person’s back so they could swoop around the sky—first appeared in the August 1928 Amazing Stories, in the very first installment of the Buck Rogers franchise (Philip Francis Nolan’s “Armageddon 2419 A.D.”). Until the 1950s, its realm was solely science fiction, but in the 50s, thanks to several inspired engineers, it became real. Unfortunately, it never was able to put someone in the air for more than 21 seconds. That was enough for brief but crowd-pleasing demonstration flights at the World Fair, the Olympics, and elsewhere. But Buck Rogers? No way!

Not that no one else tried. Mac Montandan does an excellent job in Jetpack Dreams of showing how those demo flights grabbed the imaginations of a fair number of obsessive tinkerers. Some actually managed to build working jetpacks. Some crashed and burned. Some got tangled in scandal and even murder. And they’re still tinkering.

The Where’s My Jetpack? question has become a clicheed way of asking what happened to the future we were promised in the 50s. It's even the title of a different book on the subject: Daniel H. Wilson's Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived. We didn’t get the jetpacks, nor the flying cars (though DARPA wants them now), nuclear-powered cars, electricity too cheap to meter, large manned space stations, and many other well-hyped futuristic visions. But as Montandan shows, the jetpack in particular was never truly practical. It takes fuel to move weight into the air, and one person can only carry in a backpack enough fuel for a few seconds of flight. Lacking antigravity, swooping around the sky like Superman just ain’t in the cards.

Or is it? Remember that weight is the problem, and in space—in orbit—there is no weight. Jetpacks would work fine there, and in fact, NASA had astronauts doing extravehicular activity using a pressurized gas jetpack (the Manned Maneuvering Unit) on three missions in 1984. More recently NASA has relied on a smaller, simpler backpack propulsion system called the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER). Unfortunately, Montandan never mentions these devices at all, nor of course the possibility that the time for jetpack swooping just hasn’t arrived yet, and won’t till we can live in orbit.

THE LEAVES HAVE FALLEN, AND YOU CAN SEE...

2008-10-30T15:05:00.000-07:00

My morning ride to work covers 36 miles of country roads in 40-45 minutes with just three stop signs and two lights. I see farm fields, woods, ospreys, eagles, deer, and the occasional moose. It's a lovely trip through spring and summer, and in the fall, for awhile, the changing leaves add a glorious splash of color. But when the leaves depart the trees, you can see things that were hidden all the rest of the year. For instance, driving through Knox the other day, I noticed a flash of blue and white off to my left, down a gravel drive. I stopped and peered through the bare branches to see a house of quite intriguing shape:

The core appears to be a geodesic dome, but windows and doors have been added to achieve a very futuristic look. What do you think?

That's not the only thing that has been entertaining me on my drive. The town of Freedom has been warring for the last couple of years over whether to permit a trio of windmills to be installed. The windmills won, and they started turning this week.

They look elegant to me, but then I'm very much an environmentalist. Anything that reduces fossil fuel use is good. Opponents claim they're noisy, but considering how many people live next to noisy highways in this country, they can suck it up. I'd like to see a lot more windmills, both offshore and on every high point of land where there's enough wind for them to work. And they don't have to replace oil. This fall we're seeing the prices of heating oil and gasoline dropping rapidly because high prices, coupled with the financial melt-down, have reduced demand. Windmills, if they just reduce oil use, also reduce demand for oil. And reducing demand helps keep oil and gas prices low. That is, if you want affordable heating oil and gasoline, push wind every chance you get.

Of course, with enough wind power and other alternative sources of electricity, plug-in hybrids become the way to go. Or even all-electric cars.

CREATING BUZZ FOR 3D PRINTING

2008-09-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

I keep talking about the work I'm doing on the 3D printing book. It continues, and I'm getting a few magazine and Web publications out of it. Just this afternoon, "In Crimes to Come" went live at TechRevu. I tapped my LinkedIn network by asking what people thought 3D printers would make possible for future crimes, and several of the respondents are mentioned here.

There's also "The 3D Trainwreck" in the November Analog and “The design economy: A brave new world for businesses and consumers," coming up in the January-February 2009 Futurist. You can also look for "A recession in the economy of trust," in G. R. Ricci, ed., "Values and Technology," Religion & Public Life, vol. 37 (Transaction Publishers, 2009). I'm waiting to hear on a couple more items.

Energy and Society

2008-09-01T15:23:00.001-07:00

A little while ago, I announced here that McGraw-Hill had just agreed to do my text anthology Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Energy and Society. The entry is now live on their website (though all the pieces aren't there yet), allowing teachers to request complimentary copies and anyone to look at the table of contents (soon!) or even to order a copy.

I have high hopes for this one. The topic couldn't be hotter!

GUSTAV AND MARKETING

2008-08-31T05:30:00.000-07:00

One of the textbooks I do is Classic Edition Sources: Environmental Studies (McGraw-Hill, 2009). It bears a 2009 copyright date even though it came out in February of 2008. It's an anthology of environmental science essays "of enduring relevance to the field." But the essays can also be very timely.

As a case in point, one item I put in the book, thinking of Hurricane Katrina and its disastrous impact on New Orleans, was Orrin H. Pilkey and Robert S. Young, "Will Hurricane Katrina Impact Shoreline Management?" Journal of Coastal Research, November 2005, which says that it may be time for the federal government to withdraw support for post-storm rebuilding in particularly vulnerable areas such as the Gulf Coast.

If you ask folks in New Orleans, that is a rather controversial notion. But if Katrinas keep happening, rebuilding can bust the federal budget. And right now, as I write this, CNN is calling Hurricane Gustav "the storm of the century... as bad as it gets... the mother of all storms." Its impact could be worse than Katrina's. We'll know later this week.

So classes start this next week, and any teacher using the book has a marvelous opportunity to get students engaged with current events by having them read and discuss the Pilkey essay.

Should my publisher be promoting the book by touting its timeliness? Considering what Gustav may be about to do, that could seem pretty insensitive. Fortunately, teachers have already selected their texts for the fall term, so such promotion would be beside the point. But the issue of maintaining or ending federal support for rebuilding remains live. The timeliness is there, and I am hoping that teachers who have not chosen to use the book will take another look at it for next term.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Hannah is rolling along behind Gustav, with Ike and Josephine forming up behind. For current activity, visit the National Hurricane Center.

THIS ANTI-SCIENCE WORLD

2008-08-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

Last week, while I was in Denver for the World Science Fiction Convention, Victor Deeb, a retired chemist in Marlboro, MA, had his home research lab confiscated by the cops. He apparently had not broken any laws or civic ordinances, but Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboro’s code enforcement officer, said, “I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation."

She also said that since his home is a residential home in a residential neighborhood, he has violated zoning laws. But she only thinks he's crossed a line.

C'mon! Either he broke the law, in which case the cops are right to raid and confiscate, or he didn't, in which case they're way out of line.

Robert Bruce Thompson, the author of Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments, blogged this at Make:

"Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: 'Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down.'

"In effect, the Massachusetts authorities have invaded Deeb's lab, apparently without a warrant, and stolen his property. Deeb, presumably under at least the implied threat of further action, has not objected to the warrantless search and the confiscation of his property. Or perhaps he's just biding his time. It appears that Deeb has grounds for a nice juicy lawsuit here."

Thompson also comes right out and calls this governmental tyranny. We might add that it's not really a surprise. Once upon a time, kids normally played with chemistry sets. They even made black powder, nitroglycerin, and ammonium iodide, and they blew things up! But today you can't buy that sort of chemistry set (and you can't get the chemicals at the drugstore the way we used to), apparently because those who control such things fear the little darlings will hurt themselves--or someone else. Why, they might blow up their school! (I know I once nearly burned down the family house! My parents, in their wisdom, gave me a fire extinguisher in case it happened again.)

Another reason is society's general ignorance and fear of science. Evolution is the devil's work, genetic engineering is unnatural, and vaccines make you sick. Right. And folks don't want to hear different, do they? Fear of science is a real problem.

If you've been reading this blog, you know I'm interested in 3D printing. One 3D printer, the RepRap printer, is intended to develop into a self-reproducing or von Neuman machine. If it ever reaches that point, we will face a future in which our machines no longer need us to make more of them. Add in AI and robotics, and some folks will surely see the human species facing a serious threat.

So what happens when a cop who reads this blog finds a 3D printer in a house? Will it be confiscated? Or maybe the cop doesn't have to read this blog. The machine is not a commercial product. It doesn't look familiar--building one is not "a customary home occupation." It's research, and research--says Ms. Wilderman--is illegal at home. You have to have an official lab, in a properly zoned part of town.

And there goes the classic myth of the backyard inventor. Not allowed any more. Of course, it also takes care of the mad scientist. He or she is not allowed either!

If you want to see more comments, go to Slashdot.

WANT MORE REVIEWS?

2008-08-03T11:47:00.000-07:00

You haven't said, so I sent the latest pair off to SFRevu.

The August issue has my comments on L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Mage-Guard of Hamor. September will have Peter F. Hamilton's Misspent Youth.

LIFE ON MARS?

2008-08-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

Well, no.

But the latest word is that the scientists behind the Phoenix lander, which has just established that there is in fact water on Mars, have also found something else.

They're holding the details close, but there's a report the President has been briefed about something even bigger than the water find. It isn't life, they say, but once they've finished analyzing what they have, the announcement will be huge.

Way back in the 1970s, when the Viking lander was finding weird chemistry in the soil, I wrote for Astronomy mag that it looked like biology to me ("The quest for life on Mars," Astronomy, 3, 6-21, July 1976; "Life on Mars: Ambiguous results," Astronomy, 5, 26-33, January 1977). That turned out to be a minority opinion, with the consensus opting for chemistry instead, but a few revisionists have been at work.

So what is this huge new development? A fossil? A bit of organic material? A sandwich wrapper? A rusty bolt whose thread is neither metric nor English? We have to be patient, but I for one am eager to know.

And I'm willing to bet that it will be a topic of conversation at the Denver Worldcon next week.

BOOK REVIEW: TURTLEDOVE, THE VALLEY-WESTSIDE WAR

2008-07-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

Harry Turtledove, The Valley-Westside War, Tor, $24.95, 285 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1487-1). Publication Date: July 2008.

Harry Turtledove's Crosstime-Traffic novels are based on an old science-fiction notion, exploited endlessly by Keith Laumer, among others. The basic idea is that alternate or parallel worlds branch from ours when critical decisions or events can go more than one way. Thus the American colonies did/did not win the Revolution, the North did/did not win the Civil War, Hitler did/did not make a successful career as a painter, and so on. By itself that's the secret of alternate-history fiction. Add in a way to travel between the alternate worlds, and you have the stuff of science fiction.

In the Crosstime-Traffic novels, our world is the home line, the only one with the secret of how to travel between alternates. That secret has allowed us to solve many problems, for it allows access to multiple Earths full of oil and other necessary resources. It also gives historians a way to bring the power of the scientific method to bear on their field. They can't do experiments, but they can study the alternates to learn what happens when one small thing is changed. Sometimes they study a very different alternate and struggle to learn what small thing was changed.

In The Valley-Westside War, that's why Liz Mendoza is in Los Angeles, college on hold for a bit while she helps her historian parents figure out why in this Earth a nuclear war nearly destroyed everything in 1967. 130 years later, the place is still a wreck, with technology just about up to making matchlock guns and the telegraph. Fortunately the UCLA library still stands, and that's where Liz spends her time, scanning old Newsweeks and such in search of clues.

Unfortunately, the kingdom of the San Fernando Valley attacks and conquers LA's Westside. Worse yet, a Valley soldier about Liz's age spots her and takes an unwelcome interest. Worser yet, Dan's a pretty sharp fellow, and he soon realizes Liz isn't quite ordinary. And when a secret agent for the old Westside regime appeals for shelter, everything quickly goes crossways.

And that's the story. The Mendozas manage to wriggle out of trouble of course. But though Liz thinks Dan is an unwashed barbarian, she also recognizes his intelligence. She didn't want him following her around, and in the end she's quite happy that she will never see him again.

Or will she? Every time an author lets a character say such a thing, you just know he's planning a sequel. Fans will be happy, for the series is popular. And even though the basic idea is pretty musty, Turtledove handles it well.

BOOK REVIEW: KAGE BAKER, THE HOUSE OF THE STAG

2008-07-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

Kage Baker, The House of the Stag, Tor, $24.95, 350 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1745-2). Publication date: September 2008.

Kage Baker is rightly renowned for her tales of The Company (aka Dr. Zeus), which used immortal cyborg troops to rescue the treasures of the past before their destruction by fire, flood, eruption, and war (etc.) for the delectation and enrichment of the future. The troops were plotting several different rebellions against their masters, who had shown a distressing tendency to put unwanted servants in cold storage or even subject them to endless, agonizing (and ultimately fruitless) efforts to destroy them, and the year 2355, when all the Company's records of the future fall silent, was fast approaching. There was plenty of material there for a saga, and she used it well, ending with The Sons of Heaven, which I reviewed in Analog in November 2007.

The House of the Stag (a return to the world of The Anvil of the World) says that her earlier success was no fluke. The mode is fantasy, not SF, but the skill on display is as great as ever. The tale begins in the forests where the Yendri live. Green-skinned, peaceful, given to dancing on the green before choosing mates for the bowers, they have no idea what to do when the Riders appear, seizing them as slaves, cutting the trees to make farms, and dwelling in rude piles of stone. Some escape into hiding, and among them are Ran and Teliva and their babes, Ranwyr and the half-demon foundling Gard. But hiding only lasts so long, and even the mysterious Star, who sings songs of healing and power and preaches compassion, cannot protect the Yendri forever. Since the mountains that surround their home are impassable, they are doomed. Or are they? Gard grows up and begins a one-man guerilla war that ends with his banishment from his people.

But his story has only begun. He fails to climb the mountain ice-wall to freedom and winds up enslaved inside the mountain, where in times long gone a group of powerful mages were trapped. He shows strength and talent of several kinds and is eventually trained as a mage himself. His trainers think to use him as a sacrifice to gain their own freedom, but he is more powerful than anyone suspects. Soon he is free and on the way to becoming a dreaded Dark Lord, head of an army of demon brigands, and master of a mountain fortress all his own.

Meanwhile, back among the Yendri, the Star has aged and passed. A Child foretold has appeared to grow to beauty, strengthen the ideals of peace and healing and compassion, and lead the Yendri to a new land, not far from where Gard is brigandizing. To stop Gard's attacks on Yendri villages, the Child goes to him. Soon, much to everyone's vast surprise, they are married and she is bearing him a son. More surprising yet, it soon becomes apparent that he is her captive, not she his.

Alas, politics and the past refuse to leave them in peace. There is work yet to do before they can relax.

BOOK REVIEW: SCALZI, ZOE'S TALE

2008-07-07T05:59:00.000-07:00

John Scalzi, Zoe's Tale, Tor, $24.95, 335 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1698-1). Publication date: August 2008.

When I reviewed John Scalzi's The Last Colony in the October 2007 Analog, I found it a nice conclusion to the Old Man's War series. The original premise was a nice inversion of traditional modes of warfare and a lovely echo of a line I first heard in the sixties, when critics of the Viet Nam war would say that it was so typical, old men sending young men off to fight the old men's war, and wouldn't wars be a lot simpler and shorter and even less likely if we could send the old pharts off to fight their own battles.

Maybe, but it wasn't very likely, then or now. So Scalzi imagined a future when humanity goes to space and discovers we're not the first. There are plenty of folks already out there, they're constantly fighting over colony worlds, and not one of them appreciates a new kid on the block. Hence the Colonial Defense Force, a need for troops, and at least a perceived need to keep the folks back home in the dark about how dicey things really are. So the CDF makes Earth an offer: Once Earthlings pass age 75, they qualify to join the Colonial Defense Force and be given a nice new super-strong young body with which to stave off the hordes of ravening aliens who threaten the colonies. The first novel started with John Perry and his wife Kathy. Alas, Kathy died too soon, but those who volunteered and died before their transformation got their DNA used to produce even superer soldiers for The Ghost Brigades. In due time, John became a hero and met Jane, who looked just like Kathy, presumably because she was Kathy's "ghost." Together they went off in pursuit of a traitor scientist, Charles Boutin, who was trying to help the aliens defeat humanity, in part by tinkering up an electronic gadget that would give the definitely sentient Obin true consciousness. John and Jane wound up adopting Boutin's daughter Zoe, who came with two bodyguards from the eternally grateful Obin.

Last Colony opened to show John and Jane on the colony world of Huckleberry, where he was an ombudsman with a Solomonic gift for conflict resolution. Then the CDF's General Rybicki showed up to announce that they have a new assignment, managing a new colony called Roanoke being set up in defiance of an alien ban on new colonies. In other words, they were being planted right in the middle of a big red bull's-eye, all so the CDF could try to weaken the alien Conclave that forbade new colonies. Not that Rybicki was very forthcoming with this. The CDF was big on the mushroom theory of governance (keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em horse manure), so all John and Jane knew at first was that Roanoke was supposed to be the very first colony settled from the colony worlds instead of Earth, and it was up to them--somehow!--to keep Roanoke from being pounded into dust. Where the earlier novels were pretty pure space opera, this one was all politics, of course, with much of it sounding fairly familiar. Zoe and the Obin turned out to be very helpful, and the CDF wound up with plenty of egg on its face as well as having to face some major changes in the way it did business, rooted largely in what John did to the mushroom farm.

Scalzi now let's us know that readers didn't want the series to end. They wanted more. Specifically, they wanted more about Zoe, as well as about Roanoke's natives. To boot, he felt that he'd glossed over some important events. So he wrote Zoe's Tale, from Zoe's teenaged female point of view (a tough trick for a guy!). The overall flow of events is familiar, but though the book starts at the same time as Last Colony, with Rybicki's arrival, Zoe just isn't privy to what is going on. Her life is that of a kid, an intelligent kid, and a kid who just happens to be something like a goddess to the Obin, but still just a kid. She's busy growing up, becoming and learning who she is, as opposed to what she is. In due time, she solves the mystery that has obsessed the Obin for ages (why did the Consu give them intelligence but not consciousness?) and gains help from the Consu for herself and Roanoke, all largely because of who she is.

And that's the moral of the tale: Who you are is much more important than what you are. It doesn't sound very profound when said so flatly, but think of how many people get killed because someone sees the what (ethnic identity, religion, gang membership, political affiliation, etc.) as more important than the who. Needless to say, galactic civilization--the CDF and all the aliens out there--have a lot to learn from Zoe, for the conflicts that embroil them have much more to do with what than who.

We could learn something too, and if enough young people read this book, it could have a salutary effect on the next generation.

Oh, but I'm a dreamer!

BOOK REVIEW: BUCKNER, WATERMIND

2008-07-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

M. M. Buckner, Watermind, Tor, $24.95, 301 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-2024-7). Publication date: November 2008.

One of the old science fiction and fantasy tropes is the Thing from the Swamp. The Thing can be a primordial monster with a craving to devour shrieking maidens, a space alien just as hungry, or a spontaneous emergence from swamp muck mutated by a radioactive or chemical spill (and of course this one's hungry too). In Watermind, M. M. Buckner adds one more genesis: In the throw-away society that is modern America, millions of tons of electronic gadgetry gets tossed. That's a lot of chips, some of which are pretty tiny (think of RFID chips). In the near future we can expect to see even tinier chips in the mix as nanotech gets rolling. That's a lot of might-be computing power, certainly enough to suppose that as the rivers roll the rubbish downstream into the Mississippi, eddies might collect a critical mass of circuitry into a single spot such as Devil's Swamp, where CJ Reilly, a brilliant young lady who has fled MIT under the whip of her late father's scorn, and her sort-of boyfriend, Max Pottevents, a zydeco musician, are contract laborers cleaning up a chemical spill.

After what I just said about Swamp Things, you just have to be expecting a great big GOTCHA at this point. But no. They stumble on a patch of water that is frozen solid despite the muggy local climate. It does weird things, and CJ--being brilliant--starts hypothesizing madly. Before long a corporate honcho is involved, some of those hypotheses are looking good, and efforts are under way to sample, capture, and destroy the Swamp Thing.

Except it's pretty good at wriggling out of traps. A couple of people die as it defends itself. It destroys wharfs and barges. And before long it's grown much larger, demonstrated an astonishing ability to adapt, and headed down the river toward New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The corporate honcho is growing desperate (he dreads the prospects of lawsuits galore and inevitable bankruptcy), while CJ, with Max's help, is trying to teach the Thing music and communicate with it.

Yup. It's alive and perhaps even sentient. It's not some evil, ravening monster, for it can transmute initial lessons in 4/4 time into a 3/4 waltz. It's a waltzing Swamp Thing! And there we are, trying to destroy it as it wriggles and flees. A few older exercises in the trope have accused humans of being the bad guys, but never quite so blatantly. Justice might require that our destructive efforts somehow backfire on us, but no. Buckner says we're pretty effective when we set out to destroy things. On the other hand, the Thing is very mutable. The ending, depending on whose side you take, is either terrifying or hopeful.

There are some basic technical problems with the book, however. The idea that a sentient neural net could emerge from waterborne electronic garbage is awfully far-fetched, but let that go. More of a problem is Buckner's sense of the biology in which the net is embedded and which it coopts. For one thing, bacteria do not have cell nuclei. In fact, the lack of nuclei is one of their major defining features. And it would have been so easy to edit out any mention of bacterial nuclei--well, I'm reviewing this from an Advance Reading Copy, and some changes will be made before hardbounds hit the stores. Maybe the nuclei will vanish, leaving behind a story which, if unlikely, is still a lot of fun.

BOOK REVIEW: CLARKE & POHL, THE LAST THEOREM

2008-06-21T06:24:00.000-07:00

Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl, The Last Theorem, Del Rey, $27, 303 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-345-47021-8). Publication date: August 2008.

The late Arthur C. Clarke fell in love with Sri Lanka many years ago and for many years made his home there. Among the many novels that endeared him to readers everywhere--not just science fiction readers--was Fountains of Paradise (1979), which centered on the construction of a space elevator. It is thus perhaps no surprise that his last novel should revisit the latter in his beloved home setting.

Together Clarke and the almost equally famed Frederik Pohl have penned The Last Theorem. The central character is Ranjit Subramanian, son of a temple priest, who has gone off to university. He's a clueless 16-year-old, very smart, very self-centered, and already enchanted by the tale of India's number-theory genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan. He doesn't see the point to many courses, is enthralled by astronomy 101, and is obsessed by Fermat's Last Theorem, which insists that there is a compact proof that although two squares can sum to another square (the Pythagorean Theorem), no two cubes can sum to a third cube (indeed, for n > 2, a^n + b^n cannot equal c^n). He muddles along until one summer he stumbles into a mess: People he thought were okay turn out to be involved in piracy, he is trapped into a ship hijacking, and to save his life he cooperates with the pirates, only to be caught up as a suspected pirate when the military attack. A victim of harsh interrogation and extraordinary rendition, he winds up in an isolated cell where he has nothing to do but think about Fermat's famous theorem, and he solves it.

When, thanks to friends in high places, he is rescued and returned to friends and family, his solution makes him famous. But there is a poignancy to his situation. He has fame and true love, but the world is going to hell in its usual way, and the electromagnetic blasts sent into the universe by the first (and subsequent) atomic explosions have attracted the attention of the Grand Galactics, who do not approve of infant races who insist on playing with such toys. In fact, they approve so little that they have dispatched one of their client species, the One Point Fives, to sterilize the Earth. They won't be here for awhile, but they and doom are on the way. Meanwhile, another client species, the Nine-Limbed, is keeping an eye on us.

Also meanwhile, a secret operation on behalf of the UN, in which Ranjit's childhood best friend is deeply involved, is deploying measures that reduce combative nations such as--first--North Korea to powerlessness before rebuilding them on a more peaceful model. Known as Pax per Fidem, short for the Latin for Peace through Transparency, it is soon making the world a much better-behaved place. Perhaps, thinks the reader, the Grand Galactics will have second thoughts?

Also meanwhile, a space elevator is rising from Sri Lanka, the Moon is being outfitted for an Olympics in which Ranjit's daughter Natasha will star, after which she will attempt to compete in a solar sail race but vanish catastrophically only to reappear as a sort of puppet for alien voices. The Subramanian family, constantly on center stage, thanks to Ranjit's initial success with the theorem, must struggle to avoid falling victim to assorted political machinations (Pax per Fidem stops war, not politics).

In another echo of Clarke's career, the end hints of transcendence, but that is not why anyone should read the book. Rather, here is a warm and hopeful tale very much in the Clarke tradition. It's not action-adventure, not space-opera, but it's well worth the attention of everyone who enjoys thoughtful fiction and loving optimism.

NEW BOOK COMING--ENERGY ISSUES

2008-06-18T11:54:00.000-07:00

I already do three textbook anthologies for McGraw-Hill:

Classic Editions Sources: Environmental Studies,
Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Environmental Issues, and
Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Issues in Science, Technology and Society

As of this afternoon, a fourth one is scheduled for December 2008, just in time for Spring 2009 courses:

Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Energy and Society

It will cover peak oil, fuel efficiency, clean coal, global warming, nuclear power, wastes, and reprocessing, alternative energy, and "free energy."

The reason for the book is simple: Energy issues are of huge importance to society, related problems such as global warming desperately need attention, and this year rapidly rising oil and gas prices are bringing "energy" home to more and more people. Energy & Society courses are out there, but they use a mixed bag of texts and other readings. This book will provide a compact, affordable package of important readings. If you teach such a course, watch for McGraw-Hill's offer of examination copies. (You can also request a copy of the table of contents from me.)