Omni Magazine (August 1979)

ROBERT A. CARL heinlein: SAGAN: ir-lECTIONS ON : DWARFS, UTTL "GREEN MEN AND SPACE TRAVEL AND TALESpF THE* ANCIENT " ASTRONAUTS T^:^:io PLUS? astronauts: SILICON VALLEY* the slowest JAWS 2000 -UFO: :oheapest and over Iran -the %/dst beautiful little space probe ^waytofly thatcould '. A|isiria58S „j3b[giun-i 109 BP '0.00 DKr onnrui1979 AUGUST EDITOR & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE EXECUTIVE EDITOR: FRANK KENDIG ART DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO EUROPEAN EDITOR: DR. BERNARD DIXON FICTION EDITOR' BEN BOVA DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING: BEVERLEY WARDALE EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT: IRWIN E. BILLMAN ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: KATHY KEETON ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER (INT'L): FRANCO ROSSELLINI PAGE CONTENTS Jerry Grey 6 FIRST WORD Opinion 8 OMNIBUS Contributors 10 COMMUNICATIONS Correspondence 12 FORUM Dialogue 14 EARTH Environment Kenneth Brower 16 SPACE Astronomy Mark R. Chartrand II Bernard Dixon 20 LIFE Biomedicine Stuokey 22 OFFICIAL CIRCLES Politics William K. 24 THE ARTS Media 30 UFO UPDATE Report James Oberg 35 CONTINUUM Data Bank WHITE DWARFS AND 44 GREEN MEN Article Carl Sagan 50 SANDKINGS Fiction George R, R. Martin WIZARDS OF SILICON VALLEY Article Gene Bylinsky and Zhenya Lane 54 THE NOTEBOOKS OF 60 LAZARUS LONG Pictorial Robert A. Heinlein Interview Joseph E. Brown 70 JOHN D. ISAACS 76 QUIETUS Fiction Orson Scott Card 80 SHARKI Article Kenneth Jon Rose 86 THE FOX AND THE HEDGEHOG Fiction John Anthony West 90 ALOFT Pictorial Nick Engler VAGABOND Humor David Searls 98 129 STARS Comment Patrick Moore 130 EXPLORATIONS Travel Michael Cassutt WARNING COLORS Phenomena Peter Parks 140 144 GAMES Diversions Scot Morris 146 1 Opinion Joyce McWilliams m LAST WORD . K 128 PHOTO CREDITS Published 11 1979 by Omni International Ltd. All lights reserved. OMNI 1979 (ISSN 0149-8711). U S Voiume 1 Number Copyright © this Omni Ltd Cover art for month's in Canada by OMNI Publications International =»™*™ "» ™„,nl in IheUnited States and simultaneous,, J*« s a painting by the English 7006. Distributed artist Peter Goodteitow, MDislAflon Ltd. 16-18^ entitled The Illustrated Man. :.- t » "shers An, sum 1 - inwhde i I in- F born in coincidental. Subscriptions^ U.S., C ra ™° Goodfettow, who was and real places or persons living or dead is *FO-JW« »W ; * en,Son etc..toOMNIMagazine,PO.Box908,„ i- r , 1950, studied at the Central LV 420-1894. Second-class postage paid at New ,735. Posimastei. Send form 3579 ,o Farmingdaie addiess. Tel, (516) of Art in London His art School edcon i mailer , al esponsoiitr to return unsolicited Y k N of the editors become the property ,ot the elements Letters to OMNI or Us i reflects thereot .emain the sole property ol Omni International. portions published such purposes whole or in part, and ma, therefore be used tor surrealist and symbolist schools. magazL and are assumed intended tor publication and lepubiication in 4 OMNI 3 however, jumped in with lots Whatever happened to the Grand Tou' of governments, yen, and rubles. The the solar system? Why was Skylab, the of francs, marks, Carter administration finally recognized on.'/ U.S. space station, lost in a fiery six years late. America is now descent to Earth? Why are the Canadians, the signs- catch-up ball in the only profitable, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, playing tax-revenue-producing business in space. and the Russians developing more much-heralded space shuttle. advanced communications satellites than Item The orbital test was originally the Americans, who pioneered whose first tot March 1379. will be iucky to space-communication technology? Why is scheduled off the ground by March 1980. The the space shuttle having so many get philosophy did NASA problems 7 same old shoestring 1971 the Office of Manage- Because the U.S. space program: in again. In Budget said, in effect, "You get operates on a shoestring, that's why ment and five billion dollars. That's it. Not a penny Back in the days of the race to :he moon do the best you can." there were virtually no limits on space more. Go is an ungainly; only partly spending. National prestige was at stake. The result camel (a horse designed by a, But times are different now. The Vietnam reusable lacking the reusable orbital War, double-digit inflation, and burgeoning committee), vehicle ("space tug") so critically social concerns have generated a major transfer needed for many of its projected missions. change in public attitudes. Proposition 13 shuttle -which is great- but haunts the halls of Congress and the White We'll have a least a year late (and mission House. The "suit? Whatever does got it will be at are already stacked up solid done gets done literally on a shoestring. "customers" or three years), it won't be Item: The Grand Tour, a remarkable for the first two nearly as efficient, reliable, cost-effective, opportunity to swing scientific spacecraft it will or flexible as it might have been, and past all the outer planets of the solar more than the system- an opportunity that presents still cost a billion dollars original shoestring estimate. itself only once in centuries— was deemed we've compromised one of "too expensive.™ The recent Voyage' flyby -Again mankind's most impressive and most « Again we've of Jupiter, spectacularly successful useful advancements in order to save a though it was, could have been the compromised front. forerunner of equally successful visits to few bucks up the most graphic denunciation one of mankind's the outer planets, but the Grand Tpur Perhaps budgetary attitude - most impressive and mission was delayed out of existence, its of this shortsighted Cousins in an "window" foreclosed by the inexorable was offered by Norman useful American Institute of most movement of the planets around the sun. address to the and Astronautics' annual advancements in Item: Skylab plummeted to Earth. There Aeronautics meeting in Washington last February: was much furor about the prospective order to save a danger of that reentry, but few persons with a bang nor few bucks up front recognized the real tragedy of Skylab's "The world will end neither whimper, but with the strident cries of plunge: It signified the loss of the oniy U.S. a cost-benefit ratios. If space station. What was the reason for :it!.e men devoted to ratios governed our failure? In 1969 NASA's recommendation cost-benefit had would have become a for a permanent manned orbiting station history, Socrates surfaced during the post-Apollo mood of baby-sitter, Newton an apple polisher, Bruno court jesters. national parsimony. We launched Skylab Galileo and Giordano out gondola instead— a lash-up literally thrown Columbus would have taken a Jefferson together out of hardware left over from the concession in Venice. Thomas tax collector, John canceled final Apollo missions (albeit with would have become a . written limericks . and almost wondrous skill and success). The Milton would have would have changed his crux of this penny pinching, however, was Albert Einstein and stayed in Germany" that it could have been placed in a higher name orbit, which would have kept it in space for is valuable no, decades, at a cost (in 1972-73) of only a Space technology too — few hundred thousand dollars. too necessary to our national and globa a Item: The United States decided in 1973 well-being to be developed on lessons are there to be that communications-satellite technology shoestring. The _ it right from now onl DO was sufficiently well developed to be iearned. Let's do turned over to industry. Now there's of public nothing basically wrong with that Jerry Grey, the administrator American institute of philosophy. But U.S. industry did not policy for the Astronautics, is the pickup the long-term, high-economic- Aeronautics and of Enterprise, a new book that risk research and development, which Is author shuttle. classically the government's role. Foreign focuses on the space \ DRJlfUIISU! recent probe. suspense that's guaranteed to make your i hey're calling it the new mecca of about the most space Keep the lights on; the terror high technology, and nothing like "Everything else was too far away and too flesh crawl. expensive, except maybe the starts on page 50. it exists anywhere else in the damned stubborn, quick on the trigger, world. Birthplace of electronic games and moon. And who wants to go there? We've Crafty, and "smart" are all outstanding traits of home computers, of some of the world's been there about six times, and it always Robert A. Heinlein's memorable character most advanced supercomputers, of looks like Winnemucca!" Since his first appearance impressive laser technology, and of Because of meager funding, scientists Lazarus Long. Heinlein's 1941 novel Methuselah's machines that can understand human at TPL were forced to scrap their long- in Children, Lazarus Long has become one speech and can talk back, Santa Clara established plans for exploring the fiction's most popular per- Valley has become home to the twentieth lesser-known outer planets and concen- of science sonalities. We've added color to this century's most daring and innovative trate instead on much more "convenient all venerable character, to form a stunning explorers. Known familiarly as Silicon bodies." Despite subtle differences, the — pictorial "The Notebooks of Lazarus Valley, this stretch of land between the findings concur on one point: There Santa Cruz Mountains and San Francisco definitely is life on the third planet! Author Long" (page 60). in Besides providing yet another Bay provides the setting for a techno- David Searls provides the humor appearance by the ever-popular Orson logical revolution of startling proportions. "Vagabond" (page 98). Scott Card ("Quietus," page 76), this "It's where two bright Stanford students, During the past 30 years attempts to offers the versatile John William Hewlett and David Packard, protect ourselves from shark attacks have month's fiction Anthony West ("The Fox and the started their company in a one-car greatly improved.

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