The Future And You -- June 22, 2011

Nancy Kress (award winning science fiction author) is our featured guest. Topics: how the great ebook stampede going on now within the publishing industry is affecting her and her novels (she is working to get her earlier books up on the Kindle); the anti-vaccination movement; the growing political struggles over fresh water; extending our healthy years; TV cameras in public places and intersections which are leading to a loss of privacy; the future of robots; stem cell research; gene sequencing and synthesis; Small Pox and other plagues; extreme life extension; The Singularity; human augmentation for IQ and for memory recall; the possibility of a new space race because of the Chinese going to the moon; as well as her advice to all young people. Nancy Kress is a science fiction author who tends to write technically realistic stories set in a fairly near future. Her fiction often involves genetic engineering, and, to a lesser degree, artificial intelligence. She has written more than 20 books and several hundred short stories. Her work has won four Nebula awards and two Hugos. She participated in the 2006 annual meeting of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency in San Diego. And she has appeared on TV shows on Fox and the Discovery Channel concerning the future of the human race. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 22, 2011 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 41 minutes]. News item: Ten days ago your host's new novel Skinbrain (Cerebrodermus Fantastica) was released on the Amazon Kindle. Here is a one sentence description of its story: A runaway teenage girl suffers many dangers as she: falls in love with a criminal, becomes part of a murderous gang, makes an enemy of a psychopath, travels to alien worlds, meets aliens of many different types, makes first contact with an unknown alien race, and tries to save one alien from torture and death.