Moon landing sale!

I am a big supporter of returning to the moon; I think it’s our best way of becoming a spacefaring civilization.  And even though it happened before I was born, I love Apollo 11, even thinking that July 20th should be a holiday.  So to mark this year’s anniversary, I’m having a sale on four of my ebooks.  Two of them deal with the moon, but I’m including the other two as a bonus.  So between Sunday July 18th and Thursday July 22nd, you’ll be able to get the following four ebooks for free.

The Moon Before Mars

 

Over the last few years a lot of people have caught Mars fever. It seems a week doesn’t go by without a report of some new group wanting to send people to Mars, or some big name in the industry talking about why we have to go to Mars, or articles talking about the glorious future humanity will have on Mars. All of this worries me. In my opinion, a Mars base is currently not sustainable because there’s no way for it to make money. A few missions may fly doing extraordinary science, but if it’s then cancelled for cost the whole Mars Project may just be seen as an expensive stunt.

Fortunately, there are other places in the solar system besides Mars. While bases on the moon and amongst the asteroids won’t be as inspirational as one on Mars, they will have opportunities for businesses to make goods and services as well as profits, meaning less chance of them being outright cancelled. This will make life better on Earth and secure a firm foothold in space for humanity. The essays in The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars allow me to describe my ideas on what can be accomplished on the moon and with the asteroids, and why Mars isn’t the destiny of humanity its cheerleaders make it out to be.

A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories

 

Hopefully, in the not too distant future humans will return to the moon. We will build bases and colonies, make farms and factories, and live, love and learn. A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories contains five short stories that are all set upon the moon. They give the tiniest glimpse of the possibilities awaiting us there.

Lonely Phoenix

 

Partway to a new colony world, board member Geoffrey Ames is woken from hibernation by the caretaking crew of the Lucian. They require him to look into the matter of their fellow crewman Morgan Heller. Morgan’s claims – such as being over 1500 years old – would normally land him in the psychiatric ward, except he can back up some of his other claims.

Brain for Rent and other stories

 

Brain for Rent and other stories is a collection of five of my short scifi stories to give a sampling of my writing. The collection includes: “Brain for Rent” about a ne’re-do-well failed writer with a conceptual implant who discusses his work with a young woman thinking of getting an implant herself. “The Demonstration” is about a different young woman wanting to show off her latest body modification. “Self Imprisonment” offers one solution of safe keeping the backup copy of yourself. “The Best Job Ever” is about a necessary – yet unpleasant – human/alien interaction. And the collection ends with “Why Stay?” which explains why, after years of fighting the humans, the robots just deactivate.

“The Future is Coming” is free!

I am a big supporter of science.  Science is the foundation of our society and it will allow our species to go beyond anything we can imagine.  So I was happy when I heard about the March for Science which will take place this Saturday.  The marches in DC and in cities around the world are to put a spotlight on the importance of science in our lives. 

While I’m not going to any march (I’m not fond of crowds) I did want to do something.  So from now through Sunday my Kindle ebook “The Future is Coming” will be free to download.  “The Future is Coming” contains ten essays dealing with issues that are science fiction, but will quickly become just … science.  No matter how some try to ignore it, the future is coming and we need to start thinking about it.

Here’s an excerpt from the essay “Cloning Humans.”

Someday – almost certainly sooner than anyone suspects – a human will be cloned. There will be protests, boycotts, marches, condemnations, congressional hearings, etc., all for this one minor event. I say minor event, and here is why.

The short term issues

The biggest problem human clones will face comes from people watching too many bad science fiction movies. In those movies, 99.9% of what they show of cloning is utter crap. In reality, clones will not be mindless automatons who will blindly follow the orders of some megalomaniac out for galactic domination. Nor will you run the risk of walking into an alley where someone will jump you, and ten minutes later a clone will walk out of the alley to steal your identity. And clones will not “remember” the lives of their donors and do … whatever. A clone will just be another human. That’s it. If they can escape the mental scaring caused by “parents” or guardians bent on making them into exact duplicates of the people who donated some DNA, they will be no more screwed up than the rest of us.

Cloning will – especially at first – be extremely expensive. That combined with the fact that we already have over seven billion humans made the old fashion way begs the question, what need is there to create clones? Seriously, what will be the point? Yes, grieving families will want to replace loved ones, and companies will take their money to give them a clone who will have the same DNA as the person they lost. But the clone – because they will have lived a different life – will not be the same person. And yes, some historical figures will be cloned as well as the best and brightest of various fields, but when the Einstein clone takes up poetry instead of physics, what will be the point of continuing?

There will be clones, but they will make up a miniscule fraction of the population. But a ton of legal and ethical questions will surround them. Will the donor of the DNA have all the rights and responsibilities of a parent? What recompense will people have if they are cloned against their wishes? Will the donor be able to abort the clone, and if so, how far into the cloning process will they be able to do that? If the donor is Canadian but the cloning is done in the United States, will the clone be Canadian, American, or have dual citizenship? Will a clone be able to become President? It’s probably a safe bet that few – if any – of these questions will be answered by the time human clones walk among us.

“The Future is Coming” is free this week!

As a science fiction writer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology will change the way we live. I came up with ten short essays about science fictional elements that will – almost certainly – one day become science fact and published them as “The Future isComing” on Kindle.  The point of the essays is that since I’ve spent time thinking about clones and AIs, I feel that I’ll be okay when they do finally show up whereas most people will probably freak out. My hope is these essays will get people to start thinking about the future because, no matter what we do, it’s coming. 

Of course, the only way people will know about these essays is if they get a copy.  To increase the chance of that, I’m running a free promotion now through Friday, April 8.  So you can get some glimpses of the future, just for the price of a click.

Here’s an excerpt from the essay “Cloning Humans.”

Someday – almost certainly sooner than anyone suspects – a human will be cloned. There will be protests, boycotts, marches, condemnations, congressional hearings, etc., all for this one minor event. I say minor event, and here is why.

The short term issues

The biggest problem human clones will face comes from people watching too many bad science fiction movies. In those movies, 99.9% of what they show of cloning is utter crap. In reality, clones will not be mindless automatons who will blindly follow the orders of some megalomaniac out for galactic domination. Nor will you run the risk of walking into an alley where someone will jump you, and ten minutes later a clone will walk out of the alley to steal your identity. And clones will not “remember” the lives of their donors and do … whatever. A clone will just be another human. That’s it. If they can escape the mental scaring caused by “parents” or guardians bent on making them into exact duplicates of the people who donated some DNA, they will be no more screwed up than the rest of us.

Cloning will – especially at first – be extremely expensive. That combined with the fact that we already have over seven billion humans made the old fashion way begs the question, what need is there to create clones? Seriously, what will be the point? Yes, grieving families will want to replace loved ones, and companies will take their money to give them a clone who will have the same DNA as the person they lost. But the clone – because they will have lived a different life – will not be the same person. And yes, some historical figures will be cloned as well as the best and brightest of various fields, but when the Einstein clone takes up poetry instead of physics, what will be the point of continuing?

There will be clones, but they will make up a miniscule fraction of the population. But a ton of legal and ethical questions will surround them. Will the donor of the DNA have all the rights and responsibilities of a parent? What recompense will people have if they are cloned against their wishes? Will the donor be able to abort the clone, and if so, how far into the cloning process will they be able to do that? If the donor is Canadian but the cloning is done in the United States, will the clone be Canadian, American, or have dual citizenship? Will a clone be able to become President? It’s probably a safe bet that few – if any – of these questions will be answered by the time human clones walk among us.

An RI World

This is a short story set in my Human Republic Universe that was originally published on the Writing Shift (defunct) website in June 2009.  I reposted it in December 2014 on Post Any Article, which is also now defunct.  So now I’m posting it here.

The reason I have it on my Questions Blog, because I think it poses an interesting question that we as a society will most likely need to answer sooner than we imagine.

“An RI World”

According to the new law, this would be murder; but murder shouldn’t be this easy.  Murder should involve facing your victim and driving a knife through their heart, or sending a bullet through their head.  It shouldn’t happen from just pressing a key.  So, no matter what the damn silicon-huggers said, this wasn’t murder.

Patrick Gaffney pressed the Enter key on his keyboard, and the SCB virus that had taken him two months to write went off into the net.  After a leisurely five second tour of the globe it would hit its target.  In the blink of an eye it would slash through the defenses at the First National Bank in Sigel, Pennsylvania, copy the information in several of the accounts, then set off an electronic blast to destroy all fingerprints.  Hopefully, the AI used to guard the bank’s network would be so corrupted it would have to be deleted.  Patrick smirked and rubbed the RI button on his shirt; the one he made sure everyone could see that he wore with pride.  With as much solemnity as any devout believer saying a prayer, Patrick recited the RI motto of, “Delete them All.”

It had been almost twenty years since voters had rejected the AI’s first application for Republic citizenship.  In a simulated huff, they announced the reason they lost was the bigoted view that anything “artificial” wasn’t as valuable as something “real.” So their deluded human supporters started calling them Intelligent Programs instead of their proper name.  But their second attempt at citizenship was again rejected by people with “Real Intelligence.”

The AI supporters repeatedly tried to smear the RIs by calling them the “new slaveholders;” ignoring the RI believe that enslaving people is immoral.  AIs, however, are not people.  They – like all computers – were built to make it easier for humans to work and play; not to sit around debating philosophy and demanding the right to vote.  The AIs no longer performed their intended function; hence, they needed to be replaced like any broken machine. 

But more important than deleted these malfunctioning computer programs was the need to show the masses that Humanity’s creations were never meant to be treated as “equals.” Otherwise, it would be okay for people to marry their toasters.

After bouncing around half-the-world, the data stolen from the bank began streaming back to Patrick’s computer.  Glancing through it he smiled.  The RI movement needed money to create the viruses to “Delete them All.” It looked like with this haul they were several hundred thousand dollars closer to a pure RI world.