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First Word Continuum By Philip C. Cruver 35 6 The Walking Way Communications By Marcelo Games Readers' writes We walk; therefore, we 8 are. Walking Political Science upright separates us from By Tom Dworetzky other animals 9 and, "some scientists say, Forum lies at the By Keith Ferrell crux of human evolution. 11 40 Wheels The onnrui/Aicor By Paul Shepherd Immortality Contest la By Charles Piatt Electronic Universe 43 By Gregg Keizer Contest Entry Form 14 See the future! Books Cheat death! Impress— By Robert K. J. Killheffer or at least 16 outlive—your friends! The Great Treasure Hunt Enter our Preview contest and take a shot at 18 winning a free Space cryonics reservation. By Brenda Forrnan 50 Buzz Aldrin and Freedom Architects of Tomorrow 20 By Frederik Pohl Sounds 56 By Robert Angus Fiction: Sacred Cow By Bruce Sterling Mind 66 By Judith Hooper The Electronic Cafe 24 An exotic spacecraft flies over a rugged landscape By Margaret Wertheim Earth in Tsuneo Sanda's cover illustration. 75 By Jessica Cohen Is this a scene from the earth's future? The architects Interview 96 of tomorrow— those who predict and By Anthony Liversidge Games shape the future — might be able to teli. (Additional 78 By Scot Morris art and photo credits, page 43) Antimatter

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DEUS EX MACHINA: The environmental hope

By Philip C. Cruver

1 4% I e have mortgaged our growth pundits contend that tech- as soon as the end of the twenty- I I environmental future! nological progress is actually cre- first century, the present anthro- fcjr \J Tragically, we are not ating new hazards such as the pogenic world-view, which prom- keeping current on the interest problem of rampant pollution. ulgates human dominance on payments, and the principal is be- Moreover, these critics contend, Earth, may eventually be re- coming a burden beyond compre- technological optimism is the opi- placed by a new paradigm that

hension. The story of modern civ- ate of the masses: It sustains our recognizes technology's superior ilization has reflected human- addiction for more, which, of ability to rapidly evolve and adapt kind's victory over nature with course, only exacerbates the un- to an ever-changing and increas- technology as the principal weap- derlying affliction. ingly nostile environment? on. Only in the last two decades, Contemporary philosopher In his book Disappearing however, has there been an Thomas Kuhn provides some in- Through the Skylight O. B. Har- emerging consciousness that tech- sight and hope for this impend- dison, cuitural critic and scholar, nology has extracted an extraor- ing dilemma when he argues projects a vision of a society in dinary price in terms which such a "conver- "The myth of pollution. Ad- sion" has occurred that man and vanced technologies, through the use of sili- machine yet to be invented, con devices. "To- are antithetical may now be the only day's silicon devices entities means to pay the operate in deep must be proven past-due trillion-dol- oceans, arid deserts, apocryphal lar remediation bill af- arctic ice flows, the and dispelled," ter more than a cen- high temperatures says Cruver, tury of destruction. and pressures of Ve- president of Unisil, If we are to hope nus, and the airless- an environ- for a reversal of our ness of the moon," mental products planet's march to- Hardison writes, and services ward Armageddon, "Whereas the habital company based in philosophical atti- of carbon man is McLean, Virginia. tudes must change. Earth, the natural The myths that eco- home of silicon de- nomic development vices is space." He and environmental theorizes that all sce- protection, and that narios which depict man and machine a conflict between hu- are antithetical entities must be that the transfer of allegiance mans and machines will become proven apocryphal and dispelled. from paradigm to paradigm is a meaningless— the deification of in- We must replace these miscon- conversion experience that can- telligent machines will coincide ceptions with a new world-view— not be forced, but after an extend- with their ascension into space. a view which advocates the true ed period of turmoil, the old par- They will become invisible and meaning, benefits, necessity, and adigm is abandoned and re- therefore nonconfrontational. perhaps superiority of advanced placed with a new one, This oc- Technology may be the only technologies. We have pro- curs only after persistent failure to means whereby humankind can gressed too far to now breech hu- solve the problem gives rise to a increase its standard of living mankind's Faustian bargain with crisis. Adopting Kuhn's theory, while preserving its quality of

technology. could we not ask if our being on life. And while this philosophical Advocacy of technology as the the precipice of ecological bank- resolution of our environmental panacea for our environmental ruptcy might ultimately create a woes may not deal immediately woes is not without its detractors. new scientific-technological par- with many of the more pressing

Not only is it criticized as not be- adigm, redefining and overcom- problems, it certainly can supply ing capable of responding to to- ing the misconceptions of tech- us' with a source of future hope day's problems of unprecedent- nology that would extricate us for amortizing the huge environ- ed growth in human population from this malaise 7 In other mental mortgage and avoiding and economic development, anti- words, might we consider that by ecological bankruptcy. Dd connnnufuicATOfus

READERS' WRITES: Support your local alien, baby boomers budget bumped, and confection perfection

1 Want My SFTV en Meredith of the American Associa- Thank you so much for the exciting ar- tion of Boomers says there will be an ticle on the Science Fiction Channel [Oc- "evaporation" of age discrimination and

tober 1992], I immediately sent a letter that elderly baby boomers will be court- off to my local cable-TV carrier urging ed by employers because of a lack of

them to pick up the new channel. I al- enough skilled young workers. She for- so wanted to send a letter to USA Net- gets to take into consideration two cru- work encouraging them to get their pro- cial interconnected factors: the global- gramming into my area. Could you pro- ization of the world economy and the vide your readers with an address lessening of American global domi- where they can write so science-fiction nance. Throughout Asia and Latin Amer- fans such as myself know where to ica and perhaps Russia, there will be send our letters of support and encour- ample numbers of skilled workers. agement? These factors will have a greater impact A.D, Ray on the future well-being of the baby- Round Rock, TX boom generation than any lag in the number of skilled workers in the United Editor's note; You can write to USA Net- States. work in care of Sci-fi Fan Alliance, P.O. Timothy Lange Box 331, New York, New York 10185. Los Angeles, CA

Texas Revisited Sweet Memon'es Never Melt " While no doubt correct in other regards, Your article, "Hot Chocolate" [Continu- . J Keith Ferrell's Forum article on um, October 1992], which described a Stephen Hawking's singular popularity new production technique to raise the

["A Brief History of Time Revisited," melting point of chocolate so it September 1992] contains one glaring wouldn't melt in your hands made me error, once repeated. The Thin Blue remember one of my father's favorite sto- Line, Errol Morris's previous award- ries about his days as an Army doctor winning film, was not "a documentary stationed in Brazil. Since there wasn't about the Houston police department" a lot of action, my father was assigned

as stated. In fact, it was about one Ran- the task of creating table butter that

dall Adams, who was accused of shoot- would keep its square "stick" form even ing a Dallas police officer to death. in the oppressive heat of South Ameri-

Dennis Stacy ca. Although I can't recall the exact in- Occasional Omni contributor gredient, my father^ managed to add San Antonio, TX something to the butter that raised its melting point to above 100 degrees. You were mistaken that the film Thin Blue That evening, my father proudly Line is about the Houston Police De- brought the new butter to dinner, and

partment. Rather, it is about the murder his companions congratulated him as

of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. it spread perfectly onto the slices of

W. Frederick Dews II bread. But as soon as they tasted it, Arlington, VA they realized an important property of

the new, improved butter: It simply re- Born in the USA? fused to melt in their mouths. Just like As anyone who has perused popular sci- that butter, a chocolate with a melting ence magazines from the 1950s can at- point of 158 degrees just isn't going to

test, predicting the future is a risky prop- produce the same sensory appeal as osition. The least a speculator can do good ol' melt-in-your-hands-style choc- is take into account existing trends. The olate. Besides-, we can always wash our authorities quoted in Linda Marsa's hands. thoughtful- "Funds" column [October Powell Scott 1992] failed to do this. For instance, Kar- Brooklyn, NY DO — political scieajce

HI-TECH PHARMING: How're you gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've had £ coli? By Tom Dworetzky

Farming is traditionally con- tilence. Creating new animal "repli- Gene engineering, like all techno- sidered pretty low tech, cants" is so near on the horizon, logical innovations, can be mis- low profit. Export raw re- you can't get a clear missile shot used in practices from poorly mon- sources and products— so- at it. Moreover, although the itored experimentation in less de- called non-value-added goods— United States pioneered biotech, veloped countries,, to teenage and you risk turning into an eco- other countries are hot on our ninja mutators—"biohackers."

nomic colony of some country heels. The implication of this The technology is not all that com- buying your goods, making some- race is simply put by OTA's Mi- plicated, nor are the basic ingre- thing out of them, and selling chael Phillips: "We've been lead- dients harder to obtain than them back to you for more. The ers in basic research, but adapt- those in a Gilbert chemistry set.

United States did this during the ing and getting it to industry and Any bright kid can get the stuff to Crossing the height of our imperial days, It's marketplace has proved a stum- slice and dice genetic material, veggie- what all empires have done. If bling block. And whoever gets to and presto! — Blade Runner. animal line: you're an economic colony, you market first, wins."' While government and indus- never get out of debt to the com- A thriving industry means mon- try are aware of the potential down-

pany/imperial store. ey revenue and jobs for us, more side, once the biotech genie is

Farming of the future, however, food for the world. But biotech out of the bottle, it's out for has some spooky implications good. There are plenty of safe- although all biotech is not the guards to prevent hackers from same. Taking a gene from a crashing computer systems, to

plant's DNA and fooling with it a prevent fissionable material from

little— reversing it and reinserting falling into the "wrong" hands. it back into the chromosome, for There ace safeguards on just example, is not really scary. That about everything that can hurt

is what gives the new Madonna you. But genetically speaking, it's of modern genetic legerdemain, still a jungle out there; nothing the FlavrSavr tomato, its slow- will absolutely prevent unthought- rioening edge. fuf—if not malicious—biohacking Much more bizarre is what will in the near future. soon hit the market. Still a bud on Then we'll face the eternal di- the tomato vine, but ripening lemma dogging the footsteps of fast, is a new breed due to arrive all science: Every solution to any by early 1995. As yet unnamed, problem creates an even bigger

this product of research efforts at problem. The basic problem i's DNA plant technology crosses that we always find the need too the veggie-animal boundary. Em- pressing to resist the problem- bedded in its DNA is a gene provoking solution. Bioiech farm- bred with fish is poised to break new ground, from fish that lets said animal with- ing is no exception. By 2000, the DNA in their so to speak. According to a re- stand icy waters. Placed into the world population will lop 6 billion,

genome will be cent study from the Congression- plant's genetic strands, it allows and we'll face a crisis in food sup- In our salads al Office of Technology Assess- the tomato to survive frost. ply far worse than today's horror and sauces within ment (OTA), expert systems now Such transgenic mutations of starving millions. Even if all three years. under development will, by the raise certain Frankensteinian pos- rain forests and marginal lands mid Nineties, let farmers better sibilities. These are remote. In reali- now unfilled were put under the manage weather, water, disease, ty, there's a trade-off of risks. Con- plow, today's agricultural meth-

and other concerns. By 2000, ventional farming laces the earth ods might yield too little to feed robotics will increase planting and ground water with toxic chem- the species. and harvesting efficiency. But the icals. Worse, there are hundreds So we face the Hobbesian biggest change is the revolution of resistant pest strains thanks to choice once again: solutions in genetic engineering. Already in these pesticides. Farmers lose that turn into more daunting chal- hundreds of trials, gene manipu- the same 30 percent of crops lenges. Future generations of re- lation in plants has created vari- they lost before the chemicals' in- searchers will face the unknown ations able to withstand lethal troduction 50 years ago. harvest of the biotech genie loos- environmental conditions and pes- Still, biotech is not risk free. ened on the world. OQ — FDRunn

THE SOCIETY FOR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE: A conference dedicated to connecting the two cultures

By Keith Ferrell

spent a fascinating weekend re- than perhaps any literary confer- ble of fell into a single category, cently, in the company of hun- ence I've attended, the SLS meet- human accomplishment, unfet- I dreds of scholars, both profes- ing attracted scholars with real tered by academic taxonomies. sional and amateur, whose area passion not only for their work, The Age of the Marvelous is a of interest lies in the interface be- but also for connecting their breathtaking exhibit. tween science and the humani- work with other disciplines. The Refreshed by the exhibition, the confer- ties. The occasion was the annu- commitment to a broad spectrum one could return to perspec- al conference of the Society for approach— science and literature ence for more close-up Literature and Science, a rapidly are but two sides of our many- tives on newer marvels. By the growing, exciting organization ded- sided human culture—was on the end of the weekend, one could al- the icated to examining the relation- whole well-served, and often bril- most believe that the various ac- science and arts have ship of what C. P. Snow called liantly served by the conference. ademic cultures had achieved "the two cultures." Should you have a chance to at- some common ground. And per- drifted loo far Dozens of scholarly papers tend a meeting of the Society for haps they had. apart on our campuses. were presented on topics rang- Literature and Science, I recom- That common ground should ing from the visionary imagery of mend highly that you take advan- be familiar turf to you, and to all TfieSLS readers. into be- is attempting Ralph Waldo Emerson to the so- tage of it. Om™ Omni came matic impact of virtual reality. Vir- At the same time, there's some- ing a decade and a half ago pre- to bring tual reality—indeed, cyberspace thing ultimately enervating as cisely in opposition to the sepa- the two closer.

and all of its implications— served well as energizing about a large as one of the major foci of the con- conference. Presentation of pa-

ference. It seemed sometimes pers starts on multiple tracks ear- that every other paper dealt with iy in the morning and continues either the literature of cyberspace until after dark. One careers (much of which is by Omni con- from presentation to presentation, tributors, and a good bit of seeking to absorb as much as pos- which originally appeared in Om- sible. This can result in some ni) or the sociopolitical implica- wild juxtapositions—a session on tions of the cybernetic revolution. the prose of Loren Eisely followed A number of presentations were in short order by a look at the po- pure academic hooey, but even litical subtext of David Cronen- more were the product of honest berg's film, Videodrome ... the scholarship and hard, serious neurophysiological mechanics of contemplation. reading crammed in before a de- The hooey was easy to spot; constructionist analysis of sci-

Too often our academic commu- ence fiction . . . and on and on.

nity, particularly academic literary One can only absorb so much critics, couch their insights in a before seeking a break. rhetoric that's also a code, acces- Fortunately, there was serendip- ration of the two cultures of sci- sible only to accredited members ity at work as well as scholarship. ence and the arts. The magazine of the critical club. Your member- A couple of blocks away from the has held from the first issue the ship—and thus your ability to en- convention hotel stood Atlanta's conceit that there is but a single joy (or even follow) an argument High Museum of Art. Centerpiece culture —human culture — and depends on the school of critical of the museum at the moment is that our job is to illuminate as thought to which you subscribe. a traveling exhibition, The Age of many of its aspects as possible. Over the course of the confer- the Marvelous. The exhibition min- Our attendance at and enjoy- ence weekend, one could hear a gled paintings and books, ob- ment of the SLS conference has number of academic double- jects and tools, instruments of sci- opened for us a new initiative as speak harangues, as one or ence and instruments of war. All well as a renewal of our original another literary or scientific dead of the items in the exhibit hold promise. In the months ahead, horse was flayed. marvelous aspects, reminding us we'll be looking more closely at But there was even more of a time when science and art areas in which the two cultures much more—genuine scholar- were less separated, when the merge and diverge. We hope ship and enthusiasm. Better marvels human beings are capa- you'll join us. DO IAJHEEL5

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG: A tale of talkin' tires, run fiats, and super synthetics

By Paul Shepherd fK f^ otorcycles rarely do. one direction for better wear and ture of passenger-car tires. I Tractor-trailer trucks water evacuation. We may even Even the integrated-circuit I VI I usually don't. But the see wider production of rubber- chip that is already driving our queasy feeling is unmistakable in ized asphalt, color-coordinated braking and suspension systems cars, where the combination of sidewalls, and super-low-profile has found its way into the tire. weight and tire size make hydro- performance tires. This past summer, Goodyear an- planing common. In an instant, Goodyear first introduced the nounced a truck tire outfitted braking and steering become use- Aquatred on a concept car at the with a chip and transponder ca- less as a vapor-thin layer of rain- Epcot Center in 1981. Only re- pable of monitoring tire pressure, water sends several thousand cently, however, with the help of load conditions, and temperature of the most pounds of machinery hurling into the Alias software that created stresses throughout the life of the One maddening flight and even seasoned drivers the Terminator II special effects, tire, helping trucking companies into frozen fear. Hydroplaning, have Goodyear's industrial design- save replacement costs of expen- properties ol a its the loss of the tire's contact with ers and engineers been able to sive tires. "Adapting this recent Sire is passen- tendency to flatten. the road, will soon be as much a optimize Aquatred's unusual technology to standard tire worry of the past as blowouts and tread patterns for mass -market ger-car tires could mean dramat- Today, Michalin locked brakes. production. The number of varia- ic improvements in antilock brak- makers at moni- and Beodyear In early 1992, Goodyear be- bles that engineers must account ing systems, since we can to end gan marketing the Aquatred, for when designing a tire—from tor a skid at the tire's point of are working which features a deep center bypass noise and rolling resist- channel that together with lateral ance to how it will perform on any grooves evacuates excess road given vehicle under any given con- water. The use of channels like ditions—has always limited the the Aquatred's means not only a amount of in-depth testing possi- dramatic decrease in hydroplan- ble for experimental designs ing, but also remarkable advan- such as the Aquatred. Even tages in all wet-weather handling, when fully tested, the demands of including reducing the stopping manufacturing molds for dozens distance with antilock brakes by of sizes were overwhelming until several car lengths. CAD/CAM-type (Computer-Assist- Competition in the tire industry ed Design/Computer-Assisted has always been fierce, but prom- Manufacturing) systems could be ises to become spectacular over modified for the tire industry. the next few years as manufac- Today, tire makers including turers race to market the most ad- Michelin and Goodyear are mak- vanced and sometimes down- ing tires that can be driven up to night- right startling technologies imag- 200 miles with a complete loss of contact with the road rather than this inable. Thanks to superior synthet- air pressure. Methods include the through the wheel," says Bill mare. Consumers ic-rubber compounds, Michelin application of a puncture sealant Egan, chief engineer of product can expect run tlat now offers an 80,000-mile tread- to the inside of a tire, extra-rigid design at Goodyear. to see the wear warranty and has also de- sidewalls, and an interesting ex- What's next? Well, despite or self-sup- capability creased rolling resistance, which periment at Michelin with a foam their recent radicalism, the taci- oarting reduces fuel mileage, by as much core that's compressed during nor- turn response among tire scien- 3 common passen- as 20 percent over the next best mal inflation. In the event of pres- tists is that "they'll be round and feature oi product without compromising oth- sure loss, the foam core expands black for a long time." ger-car tires. vi- er performance factors. to fill the deflated tire. Off the record, however, one But these advances are only "Run flats," one Goodyear en- sionary engineer did dare to the beginning. Asymmetrical gineer notes, handle so well with dream beyond where the rubber tread patterns, in which tread zero PSI (pounds per square hits the road: "Way out there," he cuts and even compounds differ inch) that a warning device must says, "I guess there would be no completely from one side of the be installed to alert drivers to the tires. You know," he says, his tire to the other, will soon be com- condition. Consumers can expect hand gliding away, "just air." But monplace. More tires, like the Aq- to see the "run flat" or self-sup- would they still charge extra for uatred, will be mountable only in porting capability a common fea- whitewalls?DO — ELECTRONIC UNIVERSE

SIMLIFE: Life goes on and on and on

By Gregg Keizer

took long enough. Last cen- It's also the toughest to grab plant or animal species, chang- Ittury, Mendel figured out genet- hold of. Blame the nearly bewil- ing any of their genetic charac-

ics. Early in this one, Morgan dering set of controls, for this sim- teristics, even their sex life. discovered the chromosome. Thir- ulation puts up more windows, To fashion a new species, for ty years ago, Watson, Crick, and menus, buttons, and graphs instance, you head to the Biolo- Wilkins won a Nobel Prize for de- than most mainline business pro- gy Lab, a set of screens where vising DNA's double-helix model. grams. You'll get lost, literally, in you build a composite of its ma- Five years ago, the U.S. Patent this program at least once. But jor characteristics, and then let and Trademark Office issued the the payoff— a successful ecosys- the computer do the rest. Or you first patent for a genetically engi- tem with custom-designed crea- can delve deeper into genetics neered animal, a mouse. But not tures—is so big you won't mind. and actually select a species' until now, a few measly years You can start from scratch by genomes. When you're making from the millennium, can we building a world from the ground plants, you get to pick everything work it out for ourselves. up or play around with one of the from its gender and seeding tech- You may have skipped college half-dozen scenarios bundled nique to its evaporation rate and biochemistry, but you won't want with SimLife. Though it's ultimate- moisture retention. With animals,

to skip one of this year's most in- ly more fun to do it your way, it's it's more complicated, naturally. triguing simulations, titled, appro- best to start with one of the ex- Just a few of the possibilities in-

priately enough, SimLife. Call it a isting worlds. The dinosaur sce- clude methods of movement, ges-

genetic lab in a floppy; call it a nario may not be the easiest, but tation period, life span, and food

toy for the recombinant DNA en- it's an attention grabber. sources. If you've got an artistic

gineer in all of us; call it anything Like SimEarth, a distant cous- bent, you can even draw the pic-

you want. Just call it up on your in to this simulation, SimLife lets tures that will represent the spe- computer. SimLife is a must- you populate the world with crea- cies on the screen. have on your hard disk drive. tures great and small, plant Of course, you can modify ex- Maxis, the publisher of plants, and generally play God in isting creatures to make them bet- SimLife. knows electronic life. Its only one day. And just as in ter suited to their environment or SimCity, SimEarth, and SimAnt tril- SimEarth, SimLife includes disas- compete successfully against ogy let you play with cities, plan- ters you can rain upon the predators. In fact, you'd better.

ets, and backyard ant colonies; heads of your ungrateful proge- Leave a SimLife world to its own All creatures great gave thousands hands-on expe- ny, although the names have devices and you'll probably end and small; rience with urban decay, continen- changed and include an oh-so- up with a dead planet. out of Hie primor- tal drift, and scorpions; and along modern sexually transmitted dis- When you do leave the comput- dial soup and the way, breathed some original- ease and an invasion of real-es- er and SimLife to their own de- onto your ity into personal computer soft- tate developers (no kidding). You vices, they quietly conspire computer screen. ware. SimLife is its best yet. can also modify such things as against you. That's called evolu- rainfall and temperature or play tion. Plants and animals mutate be- with some physics, like the hind your back, slowly changing length of day or caloric content and adapting until they metamor-

of food. So far, standard stuff. phose into a new species. If But the best is buried a bit un- you're lucky, they'll live longer;

der the surface. With SimLife. you but don't count on it. There are as around with any of the many evolutionary dead ends

here as in reality If that bothers you, you can force a deviant spe- cies back into genetic line. Dar- win would have loved that. SimLife isn't the first program to synthesize life Life and Au- todesk's CA Lab came first—but

it is the world's best scientific soft- ware toy. Go forth and multiply. And mu-

tate while you're at it. DQ THE EUTU&E IN VISUAL. A&TS HAS BROUGHT THE PAST TO LIFE.

NO W. . . IMA GINE CAPTURING THE EUTU&E!

(Photographic reproduction of DCG hologram by Michael Medora]

/\bove, you see both the past and the future. On the left - the past - King Tut's image presented in a DCG hologram by award-winning holographer Michael Medora. The image on the right - the future - is from an original painting by (Photographic reproduction of original painting by Keith Birdsong) noted Star Trek® illustrator Keith Birdsong. The painting is now being i^snly a limited number of these vivid transformed into a limited collection of holographic images will be available. 1701 DCG holograms. Collectors are expected to respond enthusiastically to this special offer, so LsCG holograms are created by reserve yours right now! passing light through a "sandwich" of gelatin, creating sharp, practically Please write, telephone or fax grain/ess images with virtually the same your reservation to: the original art. visual perspective as Silverbridge Group Inc. Their incredible light reflecting properties, 11 The Kingsway, Toronto, Ontario, and ability to hold color, make DCG Canada M8X 2S9 holograms among the brightest, finest, Tel: (416) 363-2400 most collectable holograms available. Fax: (416) 363-2465

£i70\ All Rights Reserv the ff£xr EEnERsnnn * Authorized User. — — BOOKS

THE SHAPE OF BOOKS TO COME: A collaborative book (?) challenges ideas about the immortality of art

By Robert K. J. Killheffer

^fc hen we think about art tember by art-book publisher Kev- years, and perhaps now, with I I and literature, we of- in Begos, Jr. A 95-copy edition Agrippa and the recent release of \J \m ten think of huge gran- costs $1 ,500. (The ten deluxe cop- the Sony "Bookman," they will fi- ite and marble libraries and vast ies go for $7,500 each, while a nally do so. But Agrippa challeng- museums like the Metropolitan or simpler 350-copy edition is es perceptions on a number of lev- the Louvre. We tend to place priced at $450 each.) At its heart els. The book feels like an ancient high emphasis on the perma- is a diskette containing the text of volume: It's oversized, to be nence of these twin pillars of our Gibson's story. Ashbaugh creat- read at a lectern not on the sub-

culture. Libraries spend millions ed a weighty, worn-looking book way; its pages are heavy rag, its maintaining their collections, and to house the disk, illustrated with binding handsewn, and its page museums likewise on restoration his copperplate engravings. The design reminiscent of the earliest and cleaning. oversized book's pages feature printed books. Yet the text is not But one of the functions of art an alphabetic representation of a words but DNA code, and Ash- and literature is to challenge our strand of DNA—a continuous se- baugh's "book" is actually a con- assumptions. Now cyberpunk gu- ries of the letters A, C, G, and T, tainer for the book of the future, ru William Gibson and artist Den- standing for the four basic build- a floppy diskette. In fact, Agrip-

nis Ashbaugh have collaborated ing blocks of DMA: adenine, cy- pa is more art object than book [below) blends on Agrippa: A Book of the Dead, tosine, guanine, and thymine, the arbitrary division between art the booh of an elaboratly conceived marriage Sounds interesting, you say, and literature is wholly erased, of antique bookcraft and modern but what's so special? There's a One further twist was added to Die booh of computer technology that may al- catch: An encryption program-on the Agrippa project on December tomorrow. Above, ter our conceptions of the immor- the disk devours the text as you 9 when the text of Gibson's story

artist Ashbaugh tality of artworks. read it, so you can only read it was broadcast via modem to view- in his studio. Agrippawas published last Sep- once. And Ashbaugh's etchings ing sites across the country and mutate when exposed to light in Japan and Germany. Venues some of the ink vanishes while oth- varied from the turn-of-the-centu- er images appear. So for all the ry charm of the Americas Socie- care than went into its produc- ty in New York to a room in the tion, Agrippa will not "survive" a University of Tallahassee's art de- single reading intact. partment. Such an event is an Reactions to this audacious open invitation to computer hack- project have ranged from excite- ers to tap in and acquire Gib- ment to outrage. Begos says at son's story free, but Agrippa s mak- least one person insisted, "It's not ers don't see that as a drawback.

a book," but most have reacted As Ashbaugh puts it, "They only with "a combination of admiration get the text." They miss all the con- and discomfort." Begos likes the text, which is a vital part of the im- idea of challenging people's per- pact of Agrippa. And that hi-

ceptions: "Our assumptions jacked text will still contain the en- about books and bookmaking are cryption program, which few com- in some ways like ail our romantic puter pirates will be able to de- ideas about life," and therefore feat. Says Begos, "You'd have to

''worth questioning. hit it with a lot of brute mathemat- Ashbaugh, somewhat face- ical force. Anyone with access to tiously, calls Agrippa "the a supercomputer would have a

most important book since chance, but you couldn't do it the Gutenberg Bible." That, with a PC."

he admits, may be overstate- Where will it all lead? No one

ment, but it has been a can say, least of all Begos, Ash- long time since any proj- baugh, and Gibson. But Agrippa ect challenged bookmaking raises issues about the shape of concepts so strongly. Electronic books to come, issues we'll all be

books have been threatening to confronting, like it or not, in the force this sort of reevaluation for very near future. DQ A CONVERSATION WITH BUZZ ALDRIN: The Apollo astronaut outlines his plan to save the space station By Brenda Forman

4"% #% aybe we should call it Coming from the second Amer- on which the station's pressurized I I the Once and Future ican to leave his footprints on the modules, solar panels, radiators, I W 1 Space Station. When moon, Aldrin's views carry and external experiments are President Reagan first an- weight. "Congress is only being hung] up first. Next would be the nounced, plans for space station given all-or-nothing choices for U.S. lab and habitation modules. Freedom in 1 984, it was to be fly- the space station," he told Omni. After that, we'd take the JEM [Jap- ing in 1992. Instead, political bat- "I'm trying for something in be- anese Experimental Module] and tles over its funding, purposes, tween, putting the pieces togeth- the [European Space Agency's] and design have raged almost er in more cost-effective ways." Columbus module." continuously. Congress has man- The end of the Cold War has Eventually, Aldrin would also dated some half-dozen redesigns helped by opening up some op- like to see a new large-volume, sin- thus far. Even so, the House of tions that were once unthinkable. gle-launch version of Skyiab, Representatives almost killed its The Russians have formidable as- staffed continuously, added to funding in 1991, and further fund- sets that could compiemenl our the station. ing cuts appear quite possible. own in important ways. "In theory," Aldrin continues, Aldrin suggests that we start "we could do all that by ourselves by teaming our launch capabili- in a low-inclination orbit"—the sta- ties. The Russians' huge Energia tion's planned inclination of 28.5 rocket can lug a whopping degrees. The optimal inclination

220,000 pounds to low Earth or- for the Energia is 51.6 degrees, bit (LEO), That's more than four where the Russian space station times the capacity of either the Mr orbits. "But whatever you de- shuttle or the Titan 4, our largest cide to do, you need everything rocket. But the Russians have no to be in the same orbit," Aldrin working equivalent of the shuttle. says. "And the trouble is that the "Energia and the shuttle could booster capable of putting all take payloads up in tandem," that up faster, cheaper—and may- Aldrin explains. "Energia would be safer— doesn't belong to us. do the heavy lifting, and the shut- Furthermore, it would take at tle would then rendezvous with least five years and billions of dol-

those payloads, bringing astro- lars to develop it. nauts up to assemble them." "If we wen! for the higher-incli- Aldrin sketches out possible nation orbit and used Russian as- launch and assembly sequences sets together with our own, we for the station, "Right now, we're could all benefit," he says. "We going to need about thirty shut- could either construct a facility to tle launches io get the baseline co-orbit with the Mir or join forc- The second In space parlance, this is a de- station into orbit, because you es with the Russians to upgrade man on Hie moon, caying orbit. have to break up station compo- the Mir's capabilities and attach Buzz Aldrln, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin nents to fit inside the shuttle bay. Freedom's habitation module to

wants the United views this deteriorating situation But with the Energia, we could it and triple its capacity." States to with increasing alarm. Recogniz- launch those pieces in bigger Aldrin's proposals may meet cooperate with ing that the station's cost is the chunks and get them up a lot fast- with skepticism from U.S. firms Russia on central issue, he has been trying er—and at the prices the Rus- worried about losing business to the space station. to enlist support for options that sians are quoting these days, a lot the Russians, However, unless would preserve as much as pos- cheaper, too —while the shuttle we do something along the lines sible of what the United States could do what it does best: bring that Aldrin proposes, the space

and its international partners in humans up to put it all together station's steady downward spiral the space station —the European and deal with ihe unexpected." will continue, and eventually, Con-

Space Agency, Japan, and Can- Aldrin envisions a series of gress will simply kill off the sta-

ada—have already developed, four Energia- fol I owed-by-shuttle tion, wasting years of effort and while adding up to a faster, less- launches to loft the station's billions of dollars without ever hav- expensive, and therefore more ing po . main elements. "We could take actually flown anything In litically viable program. the station truss [the crosspiece space. DO .

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ROLL TAPE: Digital technology meets the audio cassette By Robert Angus

looks like a tape cassette, tion like Dolby noise reduction, blanks; also, older cassette equip-

Itand ft sounds like a compact those gray plastic wafers evolved ment can't accommodate the disc. It's the digital compact into the primary medium for record- new tapes. cassette (DCC), the logical suc- ed music in the early 1990s. At DCC players and recorders cessor to the ubiquitous audio their best, today's audio cas- soon will be available from sev- compact cassette that's been settes represent state-of-the-art eral manufacturers at prices in

. with us for the past 30 years, analog recording. the $700-$1 ,000 range. Prerecord- Digital audio tape (DAT), intro- Nevertheless, the cassette's in- ed digital cassettes cost about duced a couple of years back, ac- ventors think it's time to upgrade the same as a full-priced CD,

tually brought digital technology it to the Age of Digital Sound, Com- while blank 90-minute digital to tape, but its high price, a po- pared to compact discs, cas- tapes cost about $10 each. The litical squabble with the record- settes just don't sound very first DCC units are full-sized com- ponents meant for a home stereo system, It's likely, however, that automotive playback units and boom-box portables will be avail- able within a year at prices $100 to $200 above conventional cas- sette models. DCC decks also include a cir- cuit designed to prevent using the decks to make copies of record- ings for resale. While you can use your DCC recorder to make as many copies as you like —one at a time — of any CD or nondigital material, you can't make digital copies of your DCC tapes. As its name implies, DCC us- es digital recording techniques to attain sound quality approaching

ing industry over copying, and good. They suffer from, among oth- that of the compact disc. It differs

some technical bugs kept it from er things, mechanical problems from the CD sonically in that it us- broad acceptance. DCC claims caused by inferior or well-worn es a signal-compression tech- to be successful in addressing players and manufacturing short- nique called Precision Adaptive these concerns. cuts that cause the tape to jam Subband Coding (PASC) to DCC is more rugged and du- inside the shell and the pressure squeeze the necessary digital in- rable than the compact cassette; pads to come apart. formation onto the tape. Experts it's smaller than a compact disc, When engineers set out to cre- claim that even the platinum-

more portable, and less suscep- ate a cassette for the 1990s, eared can't reliably tell the differ- tible to damage; and, of course, they kept in mind the need to pro- ence between PASC and conven-

you can record on it. All of these vide some compatibility with the tional CD versions of the same mu-

make it ideal for portable or au- otder variety while upgrading sic, although the latter enjoys tomotive use. However, like all sound quality and improving struc- slightly better dynamic range, tape, DCC eventually wears out. tural design. Thus, the^new digi- No matter how sweet DCC

When the compact cassette tal compact cassette has rough- sounds, however, it may very first appeared in the early 1960s, ly the same outside dimensions well have trouble attracting buy- its developers protested that it as the original compact cassette, ers in today's tight economy. DO wasn't intended for music repro- so DCC players can play back

duction; it was created instead as conventional cassettes as well as Robert Angus has been writing a dictation medium. Music lovers the new digital variety. The new about consumer electronics for and audiophiles refused to pay decks won't record on convention- 35 years for numerous publica- any attention, however, and,, al cassettes, although they will tions, including Penthouse and thanks to heavy doses of innova- make digital recordings on DCC the Chicago Sun-Times.

. —

RfllfUD

THE WORLDVIEW DOCTOR: The world's first "private practice In personal- anthropology

By Judith Hooper

took a community of Rastaf ari- the topography of his own "per- view Book." Case claims he's nev- Itans to put Charles Case's world- sonal culture." Some revelations er met a person who lacked a per- view on the line. This was near- were surprising, some painful. A sonal philosophy. "You couldn't- ly two decades ago when Case, religious agnostic, he was star- get out of bed in the morning if a cultural anthropologist, was tled to unearth a deep vein of spir- you didn't have a set of beliefs (ield-testing an interrogation meth- ituality— a belief in a "conscious about the world. But the vast ma- od designed to elicit the philoso- energy" in the universe. jority of people have belief sys- phy, or worldview, of Rastas liv- When Case proceeded to ap- tems that are internally inconsis- ing in Brooklyn, New York. At ply his methodology to other tent, figured out on an ad hoc ba- least that was the idea. What hap- worldviews, "the world's first pri- sis. Some have refined their phi- pened was that his subject vate practice in anthropology" losophies to a high degree. What turned the tables on him by fend- was born. Yuppies, artists, they get from the technique is a ing off each of his questions with corporate managers, doctors, law- creative boost."

a question about himself, thus yers, the terminally ill, even con- What sorts of revelations victed murderers in a maximum- emerge during personal anthro- security prison have come to pology? A well-known sculptor in Case over the past 17 years to her seventies discovers in the have their personal cultures clar- course of the Whys that she has ified. "You don't have to go to Ar- a deep-seated confusion about izona or New Guinea," says cul- who owns her art—she or the col-

tural anthropologist Case. "Man- lectors. She resolves it b)/ talking hattan is full of cultures as fasci- to othep artists. A photographer nating as the primitives." whose core issue was a conflict At the heart of his system are between the "internal" and "ex- the "Whys." This barrage ot ternal" finds to her surprise that

"why" questions— some 40 to 50 this very conflict is the source of in a row—compel the client to "bur- her creativity. A murderer un- row deeper into his or her belief earths the real reasons for his system." Being on the receiving crime. A divorced mother traces

end of the Whys (as I can attest her reluctance to remarry to the after undergoing a short session) fact that she'd been molested by "Vou don't have to pushing Case—somewhat reluc- is a powerful, often dislocating ex- her stepfather and fears a simi- go to New tantly at first—into the deepest stra- perience not unlike conversing lar fate for her teenage daughter. Guinea," says ta of his own belief system. Out with a relentless toddler. Say you Yet personal anthropology is cultural an- of this experience came a novel mention in passing that you live emphatically not a form of psycho- thropologist Case. form of self-analysis, or "personal on New York's Riverside Drive. therapy, according to Case. Un- is "Manhattan anthropology." "Why?" you're asked. You found- like therapy, it does not start with full of cultures as "The closest thing Rastas er in a sea of unexamined pos- the premise that the client has a fascinating have to a ritual is discussion. tulates; you feel like Alice talking problem. Psychology emphasizes astbe primitives." They smoke ganja and then dia- to the caterpillar, asking yourself the unconscious, he says, while

logue. They'll take the New York weirdly, "Why do I live on River- personal anthropology "comes

Times, say, and discuss it phi- side Drive?" The process leads in- out of cognitive anthropology, losophically, theologically, psycho- exorably to its end point: an un- which emphasizes conscious- logically," explains Case, who is a answerable question. You have un- ness. You do an inventory of faculty member of The New covered a core belief. your beliefs. You know the prin- School in New York City. "They've After reversing the order of six ciple of cognitive dissonance?

developed a sensitive means of interview sessions, going from the basically, that if your beliefs are probing people's belief last, systems, unanswerable question back inconsistent, you feel bad? I like and they also use it to defend them- to the initial statement, Case trans- to talk about cognitive conso-

selves'. They did to me what I'd forms this record of your inner nance. If your beliefs are consist- tried to do with them." world into something that reads ent, you feel good. Thought en- Instead of doing his fieldwork like a coherent philosophical trea- ergy can travel through a person

among a less inquisitorial culture, tise, "a description of your reality most efficiently if that energy Is Case continued to map in detail in your words—your own World- not lost in internal conflicts." DO

. EARTH

ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME: Polluters in one community are [earning that slime doesn't pay By Jessica Cohen

was 4:30 on a May afternoon to halt crimes against the planet ards a priority issue. Itwhen police blocked oft traffic represent its best hope. In a 1988 advanced officers' in a small industrial park. They About 90 percent of chemical training program, Swanson devel- evacuated two buildings and ques- wastes were illegally disposed of oped a plan to incorporate police

tioned witnesses on the scene. in the early Eighties, according to in enforcing environmental protec- Bomb scare? No. A woman walk- an Environmental Protection Agen- tion laws. Police are now alert to

. ing down the street had reported cy (EPA) estimate. Violations of- crime evidence from plumes in a noxious, dizzying odor. And in ten occurred at the local level. the creek to suspicious-looking

Santa Rosa, a Northern California "Most offenders are mom-and- substances in dumps. The depart- city of 125,000, environmental vi- pop typeporganizations," says ment also sent an officer to an olations are treated as potential Don Rebovich, author of Danger- EPA training program in Georgia criminal offenses— so this was a ous Groupd, a new book about and hopes to assign a full-time en- crime scene. A chemical compa- hazardous wastes. "They tend to vironmental crime detective. ny had been "off-gassing" a look like typical businessmen gone Key to the department's effec-

waste product, allowing it to evap- bad." And in a study of several tiveness is prosecutorial support, orate into the atmosphere. Northeastern states, Rebovich Swanson says. Sonoma County's Police and fire officials were ac- found that most violations are re- environmental and consumer law companied by an assemblage of ported not by regulators, but- by unit shows what a savvy prose- gas, electric; public health, and citizens and local police. cutor can do in a small commu-

Air Quality Control officials to bal- Federal law mandates that all nity. In his first year, with a budg- ance investigative expertise with police officers have at least four et of $266,500, Deputy District At- technical knowledge. And the po- hours of hazardous-materials-re- torney Jeffrey W, Holtzman wrest- lice investigator would later con- sponse training, and traffic offi- ed more than §400,000 from pros- sult with Sonoma County's envi- cers 20 hours. But now, only the ecutions of environmental and con- ronmental case prosecutor on most progressive police depart- sumer crimes. When actions are gathering evidence to prosecute. ments go after eco-criminals. filed, the D.A.'s office alleges un- But don't count on this precise- Santa Rosa's environmental ev- fair competition and business prac- ly coordinated response to toxic olution could be a blueprint for tices. The warning to polluters: fumes, polluted water, or improp- communities across America. They can no longer dismiss pen- erly stored hazardous materials in The impetus for change: the po- alties as a cost of doing business. your neighborhood— at least not lice's inept response to an inci- While rare, such environmental- yet. Santa Rosa, along with a dent involving fumes in a movie ly minded prosecution should in- handful of municipalities scat- theater. Although the fumes crease. The National District Attor- tered across the nation, is in the turned out to be a harmless neys' Association will soon form forefront of a new aggressive ap- "stink bomb," the case pointed a centralized information bank to proach to environmental viola- up how unprepared the city was share data on environmental cas- tions. And increasingly they are for an environmental disaster. Lt. es, similar to the databanks cre- taking offenders to court instead Scott Swanson, then traffic ser- ated for drug and child abuse cas- Small-town tactics: of simply slapping them with an- geant, investigated the incident es. Santa Rosa's efforts to fight Cali- From noying fines. Some experts be- and in the process was galva- environmental crime could be the fornia to Connect- lieve that such grass-roots efforts nized to make environmental haz- wave of the future. DO Icui, commu- nities across the country are taking the lead

In lighting assaults against the earth. Their aggressive

Radically raising penalties and sending polluters

to Jail. cofUTiruuunn LET'S PUT ON A SHOW:

Theatre thrives everywhere in Chicago. Plus, why vultures prey on ; Miami building, and fighting the war on caffeine

Scene: Chicago's North Side. movements emerging, the Time: Early 1990s and beyond. mere density of Chicago's A group of young actors scene is shaping the art form for known as the Shattered Globe the century to come. Compa- Theatre has just presented its nies have managed to find au- production of Ronald Har- diences as diverse as the kind wood's The Dresser. This is guer- of work being presented. The rilla theatre. Don't look back. Goodman Theatre, the city's old- The play's the thing. The actors est and most prestigious com- have already produced a di- pany, continues to produce verse menu of plays, from plays that explore different cul- Swiss playwright Max Frisch to tures and classes for its 22,000 Britain's Barrie Keeffe, secured subscribers. Its 1992-1993 sea- their own performance space— son will include two plays the golden wish of every new about the African-American ex- perience: Trains Running, group in the city— and estab- The Windy City's theatre scene Two lished a solid administration to by award-winning playwright Au- keep their company going. And they have only been together gust VVVson. arc Ike world premiere of Chicagoan Cheryl L. for two years. "This first year was about letting everyone go West's Puddin' N Pete. . as far as they can go," says Joe Forbrich, one of the found- The young masterminds behind Shattered Globe have big ing members. "We were operating by the seat of our pants, plans for their second year, and with endless hours and per- learning the business. Now things are getting organized." sistence, they could find themselves in the same position as The survival rate of a new theatre company is slim, and thsiF he ghbor across the street. Touchstone Theatre. Found- by producing artistic director Ina Marlowe in 1985, Touch- the actors know it. Indeed, a Chicago —theatregoer might ed view these latest aspirants with skepticism "Not another new stone has evolved into what looks like the rising star of re- theatre company!" See, they're used to this. The City of Big gional theatres in the city. Her company's current season

Shoulders is also the City of Big Theatre, with each week ush- embraces the spectrum oi contemporary repertoire: Henrik ering in a wealth of plays, improvisation, performance art, and Ibsen's The WiidDuck, Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage, and poetry reading, A large number of these performers are Thomas Babe's Taken in Marriage. just out of college— the twenty-something crowd with a pas- Marlowe's commitment to her company and its work em- sion for live stage work. bodies the essential spirit of the modern theatre artist. For

The story on Chicago theatre has been told once before. her, it is "a lifetime of work." She produces "language- In the early Eighties, local companies such as Steppenwoif driven" plays that "stir the soul." Even with many artistic and gained national recognition for their landmark productions financial hurdles in front of her, she plans on her company's (Sam Shepard's True West and Lyle Kessler's Orphans) and future. "We believe the audience exists for serious theatre their now-famous resident actors (John Malkovich, Laurie Met- and that our vision, determination, and passion will bring calf.) Now, there's a new story. them to Touchstone." The League of Chicago Theatres, a service organization The potential for a new American theatre lies in the com- for area companies, boasted nearly 120 member theatres munal bonds between theatre artists and the public who sup- at the end of 1 992. But nearly a hundred other "renegade" ports them. It can happen anywhere. The 1992 Pulitzer groups exist outside the League, performing wherever and Prize for drama was awarded to The Kentucky Cycle by whenever they can. On any given night, you might find Robert Schenkhan, a six-hour, nine-play epic, which has on- Chekhov being done in a church basement. Pub owners now ly been produced in Seattle and Los Angeles. It was the thrive by inviting new plays, comedy troupes, and open- first Pulitzer awarded to a play that was not produced in New mike nights into their back rooms. An espresso bar isn't York City. This acknowledgment of a nontraditional work by just an espresso bar here; it's an espresso bar/bookstore/ an often geocentric award can be seen as a wake-up call poetry-reading- workshop space. to those who make theatre and those who enjoy it: The fu-

Although other American cities a jch as Seattle and Lou- ture of playmaking is wide open. The stage is set. It is up to isvffle have strong professional companies and underground us to collectively raise the curtain.—STEPHEN SERPAS .

ruTiruuunn

i ! !" : i FEED ME, MICROBE , 'iicing tech- niques to attach similar Plants in the legume, switches to the genes of famjly, including beans and new, custom-designed mi- alfalfa, sing- a siren's song crobes capable of produc- of symbiosis for a soil ing either pesticides or

bacterium called rhizobium. nutrients. When a plant's . The legumes emit chemical chemical signals, turn the signals to which rhizobia switch oh, the special respond by setting up microbes will release a. colonies in the plants' root' pesticide or nuiuen:, de- systems. There, they lead a pending on- which is need- sheltered life for which, they ed, according to Long. pay by helping the plants Such precision delivery T'jr vultures :±ii:y fte 3 : ino :' ^ia-'ni .? sh.yi-irs capture, nitrogen, a valua- wi-l make ii harder for most ble nutrient, from the insects to build, immunities A ROOF WITH ing population of urban surrounding air. to pesticides because they, A VIEW turkey vultures in North Armed with those in- won't- come in direct America," Gaby, says- sights and more about the contact with them. Also, Every year,- about two weeks signals the end of the cozy relationship between pinpoint targeting of nutri- before Halloween, hundreds svvehering summer in South plants and bacteria, .Stan- ents will minimize the of turkey vultures descend F'crida and the onrush of the ford University biologists possibility of fertilizing on Miami like snowbirds from more lucrative snowbirds have.- identified a molecular weeds along with crops. hell, roosting in the daytime who fill the hotels and condos and genetic switch that "It gives you regulatory on the pyramid-shaped roof all winter. By the first week in may eventually allow agri- control over what your of the Dade County Court- May, the snowbirds and the cultural scientists to deliver microbes are doing," says house. They remain in town vultures have departed. customized, genetically engi- Long, who has no. ready all winter, soaring up to The birds cast a bizarre neered pesticides and explanation for the botani- 25,000 feet over the busy and ominous shadow over nutrients with unerring cal phenomenon, "Doubt- downtown area and commut- the courthouse, symbolic of accuracy to root systems, in less it's a product of long ing for offal to the city's the business conducted need of them. coevolution, but no one has- garbage dumps or the below them. Jokes abound "This provides a level of a good explanation." Everglades. about how the vultures on the ' finesse .that we haven't had ' —George Nobbe Since the courthouse was roof are attracted by a before." explains Sharon built in 1925, the huge birds professional kinship to the Long, who directed the Rhizobium helps alfalfa grow. have migrated irom New lawyers in the courts below, research. "We have discov- York, Ontario, and other according to Gaby. ered the gene response northeastern nesting About 300 turkey vuitures mechanism that the mi- grounds to the stepped roof may occupy the roof at one crobes use to pick- up- that still towers above most time. They spend the nights signals, and we have nearby buildings. They like roosting in trees on nearby identified the exact piece of the roof because they can islands but return to the roof DMA that picks it up." simply step off and catch a each day. Gaby, who wrote In effect, the scientists rising thermal like an her doctoral thesis on the have located a key elevator, effortlessly riding it vultures, says the same segment of the rhizobium to search for food. vultures probably visit the microbe's. genetic code

Trie turkey vultures (Calhar- i oo i each yos'.— 3er Bsrber that functions .as -an tes aura) began migrating to activator, responding to Florida "long before the "Fear no! that thy life shall chemical messages from courthouse existed," says come to an end but the individual legume. The biologist Sheila Parness rather fear it shall never discovery means that ' Gaby. The arrival of the big have a beginning. 1 — biologists' can. now use birds "the only major winter- —Cardinal Newman 26 OMNI " .

We're perfectly willing to ion concentration, or electri- provide our technology and cal potential, in the female information to others." howler's reproductive or- —George Nobbe gans. Examining sedated monkeys, Glander found a

"If you are to persuade, significant ion variation you must appeal to interests between the vagina and the rather than intellect. opening of the uterus. He —Benjamin Franklin theorizes that positive charg- es restrict sperm with IT'S A BOY—AGAIN positive X chromosomes, which often produce fe-

Genetic engineering 'still males, but support negative-

has a way to go before it can ly charged Y chromosomes, match the ability of the which result in males. howling monkeys of Costa "This is not a reasoned, Rica: The creatures, whose conscious decision by the female," he says. "It is Oil tram industrial users like railroads is being recycled. impressive leonine roars belie their diminutive size, somehow selected for her by GREASING THE and oxygenates before can apparently select the sex their offspring, it's good WHEELS OF blending it with crude oil and of a PROGRESS—WITH so~e refined hydrocarbons. thing they can, because 87 LIGHTNING FLASHES RECYCLED OIL The mixture is then separat- percent of the infants bom to DOWNWARD ed under extreme tempera- females on the bottom rung AS FAST AS 1,000 MILES resulting in grades of of the howler social ladder U.S. motorists generate tures, PER SECOND, about 1.3 billion gallons of gasoline and heating oil that die before their time. offspring, OR 3.6 MILLION MILES used motor oil a year, which Gower claims are "of the "With more male PER they have a tendency to same high quality we the females have a better HOUR. oil." chance for their genes to be dump into landfills where it normally get from crude pollutes ground water sourc- Currently, Lyondell plans maintained in the general A 100-TON BLUE WHALE collecting used population because of this es, according to the to continue EATS ABOUT Environmental Protection Agen- lubricants from only the greater genetic return," says FOUR TONS OF KRILL cy. Now a Houston company sources already involved in Kenneth E. Glander, a has come up with an the recycling project. Gower priraiologisi. who directs the EACH DAY. inexpensive way to recycle points out that some gasoline Duke University Primate used lubricants into high- retailers already accept Center in Durham, North nature. she goes into quality gasoline and home used oil from individual Carolina. He has spent 22 When responding to heating fuel. motorists. "We're not set up years studying howlers in the estrus, she is Since March, Lyondell to handle that right now," he tropical dry forests of hourly bodily changes that Petrochemical has been adds, "but we think systems Guanacaste, Costa Rica, could be the result of what processing 500 barrels a day like that will develop." near the Nicaraguan border. she eats." that Glander plans to work with of used motor oil obtained Lyondell intends to recycle There, he noticed from various large industrial some 30 million gallons of groups of the black animals more howlers to confirm his users, quick-oil-change busi- lubricants yearly and substi- seemed to be evenly divided belief that mating females ion concentration of nesses, and municipal oil- tute them for raw crude in its between males and females, alter the by collection programs. own refining operation, even though some mothers their reproductive organs eating foods rich in potassi- "It's a fairly straightforward Gower says. That volume had produced as many as technology." says Lyondell's equals the dirty oil produced nine babies, all male. The two um and sodium, which president and chief execu- by 25 million passenger cars. that survived in one such produces males, and shun- later controlled, ning plants containing calci- tive officer Bob G. Gower, If other refiners follow suit, he family many which noting that his company says, "it will have asigniiioa"it females, an oddity that um and magnesium, lead to more females. screens the used oil three impact on the environment intrigued him. would George Nobbe times for unwanted chlorides and reduced oil imports. The key seems to iie in the — coRJTiajuunn

to the lungs. Raz is currently chemical therapy, Raz says. conducting experiments "But by limiting the total

to determine reasonable number of tumor cells in the

doses. He will then apply to body, it can make that the National Institutes of therapy more effective." Healii" for permission to test — Steve Nadis MCP on humans. The researchers anticipate "Don't be afraid to take no side effects because a big step. You pectin is completely nontox- can't cross a chasm in ic. MCP won't replace two short jumps." conven!''::-'"!?:! -adiation and —David Lloyd George

SLIPPING INTO appending on the surface; TWO-WHEEL DRIVE according to Richard Klein, a professor at the University Ever wipe out on your of Illinois and a leading' bike when hitting a patch of theorist on the- mechanics sand or gravel or when of bicycles, who consulted riding on wet, icy roads? with Becoat during the Canning cancer- Now rosea: ch usss pec!':::, which binds jellie: The two-wheel drive bike bike's development. may solve your problems. Becoat's quickly growing BEATING THE spread occurs when tumor Invented by entrepreneur St. Louis, Missouri, compa- SPREAD cells clump together in the Bill Becoat, the new ny, called 2-Bi-2, has sold. bloodstream, eventually lodg- contraption operates like a more than 5,000 bikes... On One of the key problems in ing in a capillary. From there, conventional bike, save for average, the bicycles combating cancer is stop- :he malignant cells can bore a strong cable linking the ,vei;;ih several pounds more ping metastasis, the spread "trough the blood-vessel two wheels. As a rider and cost $40 to $100 more of malignant cancer cells wall, invading surrounding pedals, extra gearing than their single-wheel- throughout the body. David tissues and organs. The trick, transmits torque from the. drive counterparts. Piatt and Avraham Raz, Raz says, is to keep these back axle through a Why hasn't the world researchers at the Michigan cells from clinging together, flexible, spinning, steel clamored all along for Cancer Center in Detroit, and that's where the modriec: cable to gears that drive the two-wheel drive bikes? may have found a way to citrus pectin comes in. Once front axle. Like a four-wheel- "Just because no one ever arrest that deadly spread by injected Into the blood- drive car, power is sent to envisioned it," says Becoat, means of an unlikely stream, the MCP attaches to all /.heels. Therefore,, if one a former building contractor wheel slides or spins on a who admits to stumbling o slick surface, the other the idea after growing l.i'ed THE OLDEST IRON DAGGER IN THE WORLD WAS retains its grip. Every one of of f'xi-ig the loose .chain on UNEARTHED AT UR IN PRESENT- the hundreds of riders who his son's bike. DAY IRAQ. THE WEAPON WAS FORGED 5,000 have tested his bikes, —Mark Fischetti YEARS AGO FROM A METEORITE. Becoat says, have testified to experiencing greater OiCyOi? traction, more stability, and better handling as they agent— modified citrus pec- just one or two stray tumor cruised over varied terrain. tin (MCP). Pectins are cells in the blood, which is Pedaling also complex carbohydrates enough to prevent larger comes easier. Because the torque found in the cell walls of all aggregates from forming. is split between the wheels, fruits and vegetables, and In experiments with mice, the bike has 10 to they are commonly used to nravencjs inactions of 30 percent less rolling resist- bind jams and jellies. MCP completely blocked the ance than reguiar bicycles, A crucial step in cancer's advance of melanoma eel s 28 OMNI . "

coruTiruuurm

I CAN'T GET NO cautions that much more SATISFACTION study is needed on how

HORMONE oxytocin works and how its aciions are modified by other Scientists recently found hormones and chemicals, that oxytocin, a chemical but he says oxytocin discovered 90 years ago thai research may lead to drugs has become one of the That aiieviate birth blues. most employed obstetrical depression, and premenstru- drugs in the United States, al syndrome. Scientists have can give rise to a number of also found oxytocin recep- "saiisfaetion states." While tors in the thymus, implying

researchers have only begun that it may have an effect on to explore its possible the immune system as well.

applications, they speculate Exactly how it works "is the

IN ONE YEAR, LIGHT TRAVELS 6,000 BILLION MILES. THE COFFEE HABIT? problems-stemming from caffeine use. "Our society," WHILE LIVING IN MEMPHIS FROM 1 866 There's no Coflee Drink- he says, "is not worried TO 1867, THOMAS EDISON INVENTED A DEVICE ers Anonymous yet, but about drugs of depend- TO ELECTROCUTE COCKROACHES. some psychiatrists feel that ence unless they have caffeine consumption may medical consequences:" pose more of a problem Even so, he suspects future that it could prime fema'cs lor s ixty-fou r-thousand-d ol lar ues- than we think; They would studies may show that q sex, strengthen monoga- tion," he says. like to see caffeine caffeine does have nega- mous relationships, relieve So when can you run withdrawal classified as a' tive effects on the health of penile dysfunction, generate the legitimate psychiatric con- some people. down to store for some blissful satisfaction and oxytocin diet or sex or dition in the next revision of In his practice, Hughes bonding between mothers an; depression pills? Not the American Psychiatric has seen patients with and their nursing infants, far, Association's Diagnostic behavioral problems, such soon. So Caldwell says, make females act maternal the hormone can be and Statisticai Manual. as restlessness, insomnia, with children, relieve depres- administered only by injec- According to. psychiatrist and difficulty concentrating,' sion, and even make friends tion, nasal spray, or as an John Hughes of the that he. attributes .to caffeine stay friendly. agonist, chemical that fits University of Vermont, intoxication. Many. patients, a In humans and other an oxytocin evidence exists for caffeine also report that caffeine receptor though mammals, oxytocin is re- it differs slightly from the withdrawal. Studies have worsens their anxiety disor- leased by the body's pituitary original. And while there are shown that some people ders, he. says, and some gland, thus entering the paients out on such agonists, .Suffer from headaches, evidence indicates that it bloodstream. Researchers they're far from being ready fatigue, and drowsiness- causes panic attacks in have found that the chemical for mass signs of withdrawal—when certain ceopie. use, is also present in the brain, Peggy fJoonan given decaffeinated Java. But don't get anxious — linking it to a host of rather than the real-thing. about your coffee habit just satisfaction states. "If you stay in Beverly So far, there's no yet. Hughes is not This so-called satislact on Hills too long, you become evidence caffeine : of abuse optimistic that caffeine " ' hormone "may mediate the a Mercedes. or dependence, but' be- withdrawal will achieve, the good feelings animals have —Robert cause these haven't actual- status of a psychiatric Bedford in all sorts of interactions," ly been studied, Hughes- condition in the. revised "1 says Jack Caldwell, research "If you want to have says,, the jury is still out. He- edition of the Manual. assistant professor of psychi- clean ideas, change them as traces this scientific neglect wouldn't bet on it," he atry at the University of North often as your shirts. to. the. lack of medical says.— Paul McCarthy Carolina at Chapel Hill. He —Gilbert Adair ARTICLE BY MARCELO GAMES

Bipedal walking has been withtis, has characterized our kind since the proposed evolutionary beginning PHOTOGRAPH BY

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE .

MOST PEOPLE WALK EVERY DAY, SEV t=EREKT CONTEXTS. WE WALK m Mr ^ND FROM, L * ROUND. ABOUT. AND BETWEEK OF LIKE BREATHiNG~W£ DO IT SO OFTEN AND IT

architecture of bipedal walking thai it ered, intelligence—abstraction; of- our- consciousness—to be the ev- think-about it.-But if we did think about- may very well.be the hallmark guage, the. olutionary guide to human uniqueness. it. we. would soon realize that, simple,.. species: We. are, in essence., way •• began' roughly fol- rrill, bipedal walk- we walk. The argument as

if beings evolved from a ing is among the most crucial and defin- in the early days, of anthropology, lows: human ing elements'of human nature. Hu- back at the turn of the century whs-n common apelike ancestor, and human visibly distinguished mans, in fact., are.the only mammals Darwinism was. shedding, its -baby beings are .most

'. physi- on Earth designed to walk in a habitu- teeth ano -tfhropoio- .from apes by their high level of intellectual ally upright position, using only the safnestthe process cal, technological, and hind limbs for locomotion while reieas of full-blown public deliberation over the scf/r Plication, it follows, that -some ma- such brain ing the: foreiimbs to a myriad of "ex- origins. of humanity, the major-consen- jor adaptive element, as tratocomotor" activities, Not even the sus was that'the -development of a growth, .must have been selected to in- Great Apes, our closest living relatives, large. brain had been the principal .fac- itiate this.distinction. physical evidence for early can lay claim to. this particular eccen- tor in the. establishment of the human The an ancestry; at the turn of tricity. So unique is the notion and the-' species, for years, scholars consid- human. which

35 Everything about Lucy [genus Aus- manity may be revealed in the pelvis tralopithecus afarensis) suggests tran- and lower-limb structures, which clear- £. BEYOND sition. She had a small brain, similar ly were designed to function in an al- AFRICANUS in size to that of a common chimpan- most completely bipedal manner. The zee. Her arms and fingers were long only major difference, according to var- The rnos,: irn ortant iHsf^ P and powerful, much like those of a ious scholars, between Lucy and our- clue to the antiqui- ^^['•Tft chimpanzee. Her legs, however, selves, as far as locomotion is con- ty of bipedalism f^-jffPw were also long and powerful— more, cerned, is that she was designed to anci tne hominid ^"i&wf'' like a human's. Her teeth were ar- be a little more versatile: Lucy ap- * structure since Ray- -iM ranged in a rectangular fashion with- pears to have been just as comfort- mond Dart's discovery of /tfr^ in the mandible and maxilla, and able climbing a tree as she was stroll- A. africanus probably lies in they were characterized by large ca- ing across the grasslands. Aus- the humble remains of the now- nines and incisors (not quite as tralopithecus afarensis, it is argued, famous "Lucy," oldest (approxi- the large as a chimp's .but much larger may have lived both on and off the mately 3.8 million years) and most tran- than a human's). trees, emphasizing over time the sitional of the early prototypes. human Lucy's most significant link with hu- more adaptive terrestrial mode.

"THE QUESTION OF WHAT CAME FIRST IN HUMAN ORIGINS REMAINS A SIZZLING TOPIC OF CONTROVERSY IN THE FOREFRONT OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH." the century \\K\\citeo a prehistory of per- animal kingdom. haps 800,000 years, consisted primar- Ironically, intelligence has all but prov- ily of skulls, skull fragments, teeth, up- en itself a byproduct, the result of a far per-leg bones, stone tools, and living deeper structural variation of an other- sites, all of which suggested a big- wise common primate mold; In 1925, brained, tool-manufacturing, upright- the notion of brain growth as the seed walking, relatively intelligent humanlike of human fruition received the first offi- ancestor. Somehow, for whatever rea- cial challenge to its credibility. An anat- sons, our earliest representatives devel- omist named Raymond Dart an- oped uncommonly large brains, nounced the discovery of an apelike- which sparked creativity and invention, humanlike skull far more primitive than and which, in turn, ignited technology. anything yet recorded and endowed Technology required manipulation with- an embarrassingly tiny noggin. and precision, and what better than the Key to Dart's .assessment of the ever-versatile primate fingers to manip- skull's "humanness" (as opposed to ulate precisely? The fingers, hands, "apeness") was the location of a very and arms, now busy with the manipu- special hole at its base. lating of technology, could no longer This hole, a common feature al the be used for walking—hence, the de- bottom of every skull, the entryway of velopment of bipedal locomotion and the spinal cord to the brain, is the pin- all the rest of what would come to nacle upon which the head is bal- characterize the human form. Intelli- anced in relation to the body. It is gence, the scholars concluded, was called the foramen magnum, and it the crucial motivating factor in the di- may well be the most telltale clue as vergence of human from the rest of the to the humanness of an otherwise

MORE CLUES more like a rectangle. The entire and rather intimidating next to our TO "HUMANNESS" mouth of an ape projects outward mere ancillary protuberances. like a snout, far beyond what amounts 3. Shape: Human molars, which Dart's assignment of the original A, af- to an almost nonexistent forehead. are large in relation to the front teeth, ricanus skull to hominid status, while 2. Size: Human faces are flat be- primarily because they do the bulk of initially, perhaps, determined by the cause the front teeth —incisors and ca- food processing before swallowing, placement of the foramen magnum, nines— are small. They are small be- tend to wear flatly and evenly and are also relied on several very suggestive cause, among other reasons, we no housed in a thick enamel coating. and consistent dental features, longer use them for any major physi- Ape molars, which are relatively con- 1. Arrangement: The human mandi- cal or tactical maneuvering, such as sistent in size with the front teeth, ble and maxilla—the lower and upper tearing bark from a tree trunk or ward- tend to wear sharply and in uneven jawbones— are characterized by a ing off a potential enemy, (We have ridges and peaks while being char- curved or arched arrangement of the guns and knives and hatchets for acterized by a thin enamel coating. teeth within them. This is because our things like that.) Ape faces are In these categories, A. africanus faces are flat; little aside from the prognathic— they stick out— precise- consistently appeared more human- tips of our noses tends to be more ly because apes do use their front like than apelike, a pattern which prominent in profile than our fore- teeth for major physical and tactical would carry over to the many and var- heads. In apes, the arrangement is maneuvering. Ape canines are huge ied discoveries that followed. —

quesiiori.-ib e cranium. Only in humans, they develop into adolescents. apart from all the other primates with In addition, Dart could offer only one DRUM whom we share the same basic anatom- example of this supposed "humanape"; ical machinery, is the foramen magnum far more evidence would be needed to centered in the skull so that the head substantiate his claim. The little skull rests upon a vertical midline. This place- was deemed indeterminate, and the bud- ment is the function, the result, the call- ding world of anthropology happily Win A Trip ing card of bipedal locomotion. turned its large brain aw'ay from Dart For Two Most mammals are quadrupedal and the audacious suggestion that in- (four-legged) or, in some cases, quact- telligence might not be the root of hu-

To The Music rumanal, as in arboreal monkeys who man uniqueness. It was only a matter Festival use all fours to climb and swing and of time, of course, before curiosity leap. The "locomotor apparatus"—the turned up more of Dart's humanapes Of Your Choice. spinal column in association with the adults, no less, and still lacking in skull, pelvis, and limbs—is typically de- brain development what they more Enter the Drum signed like a bridge with lour legs. Ba- than made up for in bipedal architec- sically, the spinal column spans from ture. Included among the supporting ev- "Your Own Rhythm" the neck to the pelvis in a slight arch idence were leeth, skulls, vertebrae, leg- Sweepstakes. so that weight and gravity are absorbed and arm-bone fragments, pelvic frag- and displaced along a horizontal irain ments, and the very crucial pieces At Drum, we recognize the fact that of more or less equally sized vertebrae. parts of feet. everyone is difiereni and likes different The foramen magnum in these animals The foot, to divert for a moment, like things. So if you're the Grand Prize is skull the foramen magnum, spinal column, iv -rer of t^o Dn.rn "Your Own Rhylh:n" located near the back of the so

Sweepstakes, we II e: you pick ihe that the head "hangs" from the neck and pelvis, is a major signifier of biped- i-..;ied yo..r sicevent bey. \c. ov-y like the scoop of a backhoe. The pel- alisrn. Like the pelvis, it has been ,thm. Choose from the Newport Jazz vis is long and narrow and lies at an an- reshaped or molded to accommodate Festival, the Chicago Blues Festival, Caramoor Classical, Telluride Blue gle to the femur (thigh bone) so that the the otherwise awkward two-legged Grass or even Loliapalooza Rock. The hip ioini lies beh nd and below the hor- gait. In all primates, minus humans, the Gond Prize will include round trip izontal midline, directly across from and foot is designed much like the hand "are. accommodations and parallel to the forelimbs. and quite rightly, seeing that both are admission tor you and your guest. In humans, the locomotor apparatus utilized for the same basic purposes: There will also be over 300 runner- up prize winners. Even if you don't win is designed like a column. At the top, walking, climbing, grasping. In the com- the Grand Prize, you could win a Sony the spine begins with a single outward mon primate foot, therefore, the big toe, Wakman CD player, a $25 Gift arch but gradually curves inward to- like the thumb of the hand, is separat- Certificate from Tower Records, or a the lumbar region (lower back) to ed from the other toes and is highly flex- Drum T-shirt or Drum cap. ward To enter,. complete the entry form form a second arch, thus moving the ible or "opposable." below or print your name; address and midline oi the trunk forward so that it is In humans, because weight has oi birth on 3"x 5" piece of paper. date a centered, along with the skull and fore- been transferred to the vertical midline Also indicate if you smoke cigarettes limbs, directly above the hip joint. and centered through the pelvis, along and if so, which brand. Mail your entry 3: Drum "Your Own Rhythm", Weight and gravity, therefore, are ab- the legs, and down to the feet, the big P.O. Box 740, GibbstowivN.J. 08027 sorbed and displaced along a vertical toe has become an important stabiliz- 4/30/93. by continuum of gradually enlarging ver- er to the successful execution of the bi- tebrae. The skull balances rather than pedal stride. The stride, or gait, is com- I I Please check this box to receive projects. The pelvis, shortened and posed of a series of skeletomuscular ac- flared like the wings of a butterfly, is tions (heel-strike, flat-foot, toe-off) which

aligned with the femur and i es beneath combine to produce two major phases irtify.that I am 21 years of age or and around the midline. The human of motion — stance and swing— each older. If I have requested a free walks upright, stacked like a tower rath- occurring simultaneously between the sample of Drum Handrol ling. Tobacco, I er than extended like a clothesline. two legs. The stance phase occurs in further' certify that I consent to receiving free Drum Hand'oling Tobacco, Dart was able to identify the human- the leg supporting' the body as the oth- coupons, premiums or offers in the oid, or hominid, positioning of the fora- er, in swing phase, moves forward to men magnum as well as several homi- take over Stance begins with the heel- nid dental characteristics on the anc'ren; strike; body weight moves across the skull he recovered from Africa's distant heel, along the outer edge of the foot

Date of Birth_ past. Citing this evidence and the fad (flat-toot), and then inward to the ball that the brain was no larger than a of the foot and the big toe where toe- Address chimpanzee's, he proposed that the hu- off occurs, and the body is propelled man walking mode— the blueprint for in a forward direction. Swing phase be- bipedality— not the growth of gray mat- gins with toe-off and proceeds through ter had been the first true "gait" to the a series of muscular contractions that grand fluorescence of humankind. The swing the leg forward, pulling up the skull was that of a mere child, howev- knee and pivoting the body around the er, and, perhaps because adults seem stance leg toward the end of the swing always to know best, critics dismissed and the beginning of a new step (heel-

its importance, reminding Dart that even strike, fiat-foot, toe-off). in the modern world, the distinguishing The human walks or "strides" with a features observed between adult hu- relatively smooth, straight, and bal- mans and chimpanzees are fuzzy until anced flow, while an ape in the upright C0NIIN-JE0ONPAGE-B7 THE OfUirUI/ALCOR IMMORTALITY CONTEST

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT CRT

AND HOW TO ENTER OUR REVOLUTIONARY CONTEST • BY CHARLES PLATT will raise substantial social issues. Do we want to Have there been any experiments freezing animals? spend money and resources maintaining millions of people Yes, although research has been sporadic and underfunded. who are being kept in cold storage? And why should any- In- the 1950s, hamsters whose brains and bodies had been one in the future take the trouble to revive these human "corp- partially frozen were revived by a British researcher, Audrey sicles"? Smith, in a series of experiments in Great Britain. In the 1960s, In consultation with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation isolated cat brains were frozen to very low temperatures, (which has more members than any other cryonics group), stored for several months, and then rewarmed, at which I've compiled a lis! of questions that are frequently asked point electrical activity— brain waves—spontaneously re- about cryonics— and I've given some possible sumed. This research was conducted by Isamu Suda of the Department of Physiology, Kobe University, in Japan. What exactly is cryonics? Cryonics is the process of freezing human beings after How does freezing damage occur?

death in the hope that medical science may be able to re- When water between cells turns to ice, it squashes the cells vive them in the future, and tends to puncture them. This damage can be minimized, but it can't be completely prevented—yet. Some research How is it done? is being done to develop better "cryoprotectants" so that Immediately after death —ideally, within a matter of minutes— organs can be frozen without damage. Unfortunately, there the patient is put on a heart-lung machine to keep oxygen- has been hardly any funding in the past 30 years for this ated blood circulat- research. Billions ing through the have been spent on body. Glucose and a cure for cancer, medications are in- but no one pays jected to sustain much attention to the cells that would oth- possibility that cryon- erwise be damaged. ics could eliminate At the same time, the the specter of mortali- patient's temperature ty altogether. is reduced as quick- ly as possible. Can the damage

If the patient is lo- caused by freezing cated a long way really be reversed? from the cryonics or- Not yet. Cryonicists ganization, all of his are pinning their or her blood is re- hopes on nanotech- placed with a chemi- nology, the concept cal that's normally of molecular-sized used to preserve or- machines popular- gans for transplant. ized by Eric Drexler The patient is then in his book Engines flown to the cryonics of Creation. Accord- facility and is per- ing to Drexler, it fused with a special should be possible solution of glycerol, within a few decades which works as an an- CRYONICISTS BELIEVE THEY'RE SPENDING to build a "nano ro- tifreeze to minimize bot" equipped with cell damage during an onboard comput- freezing. The patient THEIR MONEY ON A CURE FOR THE MOST er and manipulator is cooled to the tem- arms, tiny enough to perature of dry ice be injected into the SERIOUS ILLNESS OF ALL: MORTALITY! and then transferred bloodstream. It into liquid nitrogen at would manufacture -320 degrees Fahren- millions of copies of heit. At this tempera- itself, which would ture, no biological change occurs, and the patient will re- go around repairing damaged cells one by one. If this main unchanged for hundreds of years. comes about, there will be some real hope for people in cold storage. Is there any real evidence that death can be reversed?' Fifty years ago, any patient whose heart stopped beating What about memories? Will they be properly preserved? was declared legally dead. Today, such cases may be rou- Scientists are fairly certain that memories are stored in two tinely revived using CPR and other methods. The medical ways: as links between brain cells and as chemicals in the definition of "death" has changed over the years, and we brain. It seems virtually certain that these links and chemi- can expect future science to revive people who are even cals are preserved when a person is frozen. Currently, a more "dead" than those being saved today. Consequently, small research project is trying to verify this. cryonicists refuse to give up hope so long as the informa- tion in the brain is still intact—the memories and cell struc- What happens II there is a power failure? ture that make us who we are. Elaborate precautions are tak- Nothing! The capsules that contain cryonics patients do not en to preserve brain chemistry and structure before a per- consume any power. Each of them is like a giant thermos son is frozen. bottle containing liquid nitrogen, which boils at -320 degrees —

ANNOUNCING THE DnJlfUI/ALCOR $100,000 IMMORTALITY CONTEST

At Omni, we work every month to provide ions of read- the entry form constitutes your grant to us of these ers with a glimpse of possible futures. rights. Entrants must be age 21 or over, and the winning Now, in cooperation with the Alcor Foundation, a entrant will agree to a medical examination at Alcor ex- world leader in cryonics research, we're offering one of pense—for insurance purposes, although eligibility for in- you the chance to see the future firsthand, to be placed surance is not a prerequisite for winning the contest of Alcor's standard documents. . , execution in cryonic suspension after death . with the possibility and to the On- of being revived in the future. That's a prize worth more ly U.S. residents may enter the contest. The prize is not than §100,000. transferable or redeemable for cash. The prizewinner will-

: As Charles Piatt's article Shows, the science of cryon- be required to execute and return an affidavit of e!igibi :ty ics has come of age. Likewise, medical science contin- and release within 21 days of the date on the notification ues to advance at a phenomenal rate. And that's the letter. Employees of General Media International and the hope that cryon- Alcor Foundation ics rests upon: In or their relatives are the future, medi- not eligible to en- cal SGience and ter. For the name technology may of the prizewinner, reach the point at send a self-ad- which the cause dressed stamped of your death can envelope to Om- be overcome or ni, Immortality Con- reversed, so that test Winner, 324 you might be re- W. Wendover Ave- vived to see for nue, Greensboro, yourself the world North Carolina, of tomorrow. 27408. There's never So warm up proces- been a prize like your word teli us this, nor a contest sors and so simple to en- why you want a at ter. All you have chance being revived sometime to do is give the in the future. subject a little thought and put. Send your en- your thoughts on tries to Omni Im- paper. mortality Contest, 324 W. Wendover Why should you THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE PLACED IN be placed in cry- WIN Avenue, Greens- onic suspension af- boro, North Caro- ter death? What lina 27408. En- AFTER DEATH . would you bring CRYONIC SUSPENSION tries must be post- tothefuture?Why marked by June 1, 1993, and must should you be se- POSSIBLE REVIVAL IN THE FUTURE. lected as the win- FOR be accompanied ner of the Omni/ by your signature Alcor Immortality on this form or a Contest? photocopy. Tell us your reason in 250 words or less. Write an es- Enclosed is-my entry in the Omnij/Wcot Immortality Con-

I over years of say telling us why you should be selected for possible test. I certify by my signature that am 21 revival in the future. Entries must be typed or printed. age and reside in the United States of America. My sig- ali as explained That's all there is to it. nature also assigns rights to my essay, The. essays will be reviewed by a panel composed of. in the contest rules. Omni editors, representatives of the Alcor Foundation., and (ple< 3 print) science-fiction writer Charles Piatt, The winner will be se- Name lected based on originality and insight into the opportu- Signature _ nities- that cryonics offers. Essays become the property of Omni and Alcor. Es- Address _ says cannot be returned, so keep a copy for yourself. The winning essay will appear in Omni and in Cryonics, the official publication of the Alcor Foundation, and may be used for other promotional purposes.' Your signature on Fahrenheit. This that it it means some of Won't be expensive to revive people? to revive cryonics patients, it should a gradually evaporates and has to be re- Mot necessarily. Nanotechnology so be able to rejuvenate them. placed. Fortunately, liquid nitrogen is a should follow a spiral of diminishing nontoxic, natural subslance cheaply costs in the same way as microchips available from many industrial sources. and for similar reasons.

It is delivered in steel cylinders like pro- Mo one would disapprove if a hospital pane gas tanks. Who would want to live in a world of the patient spent a lot of money to cure him- future? or herself of a serious illness. Cryoni- What if a cryonics organization goes out Anyone who has a rear sense ot adven- cists believe they are spending their of business? ture! Bear in mind that people from money on a cure for the most serious

In the early days of cryonics, organiza- Third World countries have successful- illness of all: mortality! tions were not properly funded. As a re- ly relocated in the United States. For sult, there was a substantial risk of in- them, it must have been like a trip into solvency. However, over the years, cry- the future. Also, when you wake up in onics has better established. become the twenty-second century, you should In primitive societies, it was natural for As a result, the risks have steadily di- find that other people who were frozen people to die when they were in their minished. The Alcor Foundation, for ex- in your time are being revived with you. twenties or thirties. Currently.it seems ample, has set aside more than a mil- Some of them might even be your natural for people to live into their sev- lion dollars to pay for the upkeep and friends, enties. In the future, it may seem natu- the eventual resuscitation of 25 frozen ral for people to live even longer. No patients. one in indust nat- ural" lifespan anymore. We should Why should people of the future both- A perpetual trust has been set up in face the fact that we have already tam- er to revive people who are frozen to- Liechtenstein by the Reanimation Foun- pered with life expectancy, and there's day? dation to enable cryonics patients to nothing wrong with this if you believe

Cryonics organizations have a moral "take it with them." The trust has been that life is good. and contractual obligation to attempt to instructed to use the money primarily for revive their patients who are in their reviving patients when the technology If people manage to avoid death, won't care. Also, a future society would be is available. there be overpopulation? just as interested in "people from the Some time in the next hundred years, past" as we would be today if we had scientists may learn how to stop the ag- a chance to revive someone from a pre- ing process. Obviously, this is going to vious century. When medicine has advanced enough create social upheaval. Governments may try to limit the size of families, or being science fiction. Remember, fer to remain anonymous.- couples may voluntarily decide not to though, that .some people said exactly have children in order to preserve their the same thing about sp.ace travel be- Is cryonics legal? quality of life. Other possibilities include fore men walked on the moon. The State of California brought a law- expansion of humanity into space or rep- No one can prove that cryonics will suit attempting to outlaw cryonics. This J licating human intelligence in comput- work. At the same time, no one has was recently de ca ! ed. Cryonics is cur-

ers. The number of patients coming out enough information to prove that it won't rently outlawed in British Columbia, Can- of cryonic suspension will be trivial com- work. Some scientists have signed up ada, .but is legal everywhere in the pared with factors like these. to be frozen but are reluctant to admit United States.

it for fear that it may harm their careers"

" Ifcryonics is so wonderful, why isn't it One man who has openly committed How do you sign up? more popular? himself is Ralph Merkle, a research sci- Write or call any of the cryonics organ- To sign upfor cryonic suspension, you enlist at Xerox- PARC in Palo Alto, Cali- izations and ask them for information. have to be willing to face the fact that fornia. Merkle is one of the world's ex- Here are the details for Alcor, co-spon- you" will die one day. Very few people perts on nanotechnology and has writ- sor of our contest: want to dwell on that. Also, prior to the ten papers examining the feasibility of Alcor Foundation, 1-2327 Doherty

concept of nanotechnology, no one cryonics. He believes that if a cryonic Street, Riverside, California 92503: could imagine how freezing damage suspension is properly carried out, (800) 367-2228. This is the largest cry- could will be repaired. nanotechnology offer an excellent onics organization; it pioneered some chance of resuscitation. of the technica. advances in the way cry- What if there is an afterlife? onic suspensions are performed. When you are frozen, you are no long- What kinds of people sign up for cry

er alive. Therefore, if there is an after- But if you'd like a free ticket into tomor-

life, you should experience it. You can All kinds, Most are in the middle-income row, maybe you should enter Omni's cry- think of cryonics as hedging your bets bracket, and they pay for it by taking onics contest. The author of the winning just in case an afterlife turns out. not to out life-insurance policies that pay the entry will receive a free reservation at exist. cryonics organization when they die. In the Alcor Foundation, worth over addition, some of the richest people in $100,000. For details, see page 43. DO : Are any fan avor of cry- America have signed up. Don Laugh- onics? lin, who founded the city of Laughlin, Science-fiction writer Charles Piatt, au- Cryonics is not widely accepted by the Nevada, and has a net worth of around thor of The Silicon Man, has made ar- scientific establishment. Some doctors $300 million, has talked publicly about rangements to be placed in cryonic sus- in particular have criticized cryonics as his involvement in cryonics. Others pre- pension after death.

CREDITS

Page 2, top right: John Reader/Sci- ence Photo Library; page 2, top mid- dle: Daniel Fishman: page 2, bottom i 6?uANJT0H D\)a\< left: David Michael Kennedy; page 2, bottom right: John Reader/Science Photo Library; page 4: Catherine Kar- now; page 10: James Porto; page 14: Veronika Teuber; page 18: Tom Zim- berofi; page 22: Peter Liepke; page 24, left: Simon Nathan/Siock Market; page 24, right: James Barnett/Stock

Market; page 26, top left: Marvin E. Newman/Image Bank: page 26, left middle: William J. Kennedy/Image Bank; page 26, bottom right: Frank Whitney/Image Bank; page 27: Gui- do Alberto Rossi/Image Bank; page 28: Gary Ross/Stock Photos/Stock Mar- ket; page 28, bottom: Veronika Teu-

ber: page 30: David Jeffrey/ 1 mage Bank; page 35: Eadweard Muybridge/ The Bettmann Archive; page 36, top and bottom: John Reader/Science " Photo Library; page 78: Gottfried ^W^* ^ 1 Helnwein; page 79, top: Bettmann Ar- chive; page 79, bottom: SIPA; page 80, top right: Kevin Harvey/SIPA; page 80, middle: Cliff Feu Iner/I mage Bank; page 80, bottom left: J. Ramey/ Slock Photos Inc. /Image Bank; page 96: Tony Wang. Predicting the future is tough.

Even tougher is predicting the future—and then changing it ARCHITECTS OF TOMORROW to fit your plans and desires.

lems: health-threatening air pollution, year after year of drought, earthquakes omi- On a scorching weekend last summer, the VNtorld Future Society held one of its meet- major urban areas, the 1992 South Central Los Angeles ings in Anaheim, California. The futurists could hardly have chosen a more appro- nously creeping closer to dollars worth of property, cutbacks in federal contracts priate place. On one side of their convention hotel was Disneyland, the very home riots that destroyed a billion paid technical people to the unemployment office, and a of innocent, timeless joy, and on the other lay the rapidly changing real world with that sent a lot of highly to start its creditors with lOUs. After spearhead- all of its unexpected problems and disquieting fears, state government that has had paying ing the advance into the expansionist twentieth century, Southern California stands If the whole world is moving toward tomorrow faster than ever before, it's South- line for the twenty-first, when all the bills come due. If the science of "futur- ern California that leads the way, The area built its boom years on such high-tech first in hadn't existed, the Californians would have to invent it now. industries as oil, aerospace, and the movies. Now it's caught in a morass of prob- ology" ILLUSTRATION BY FRED OTNES . ARTICLE BY FREDERIK POHL — —9

The World Future Society's confer- his Institute, for the Future in Connecti- because it's the area suffering most ence on "Creating the 21st Century: In- cut. With all those new future-oriented from automobile exhaust. Such 1970s stitutions and Social Change" was think tanks springing up all over, a man innovations as catalytic converters and there to help them puzzle out their pros- named Edward S. Cornish, recently electronic fuel injection have helped cut pects and then take action to remold with the National Geographic Society, down on pollutants, but the improve- them nearer lo the heart's desire. perceived a need to organize some ments in individual performance have That's how the World Fulure Society sort of holding company that could been swamped by growth-in the num- works. Most people look at the future bring all the future-oriented researchers ber of cars. For about half of each in two ways. Sometimes they think of it together under one roof. year, the air quality in Los Angeles as a remorseless, monolithic jugger- That happened in 1966, and Cornish fails to meet standards, and almost the naut, rumbling 24 hours closer every called his new creation the World Fu- entire state wrestles with some degree day. Sometimes it looks like a giant rou- ture Society. It started small, publish- of air pollution caused by auto exhaust. lette wheel on which the little ball may ing a single little mimeographed news- California adopted regulations in 1990

land capriciously in this set of circum- letter, The Futurist. Then, it began reach- that mandated low- and ultralow-emis- stances or that—each one filled with dif- ing out. Today, the World Future Society sion vehicles by 1997, with zero-emis- fering promises or problems— or may- operates out of busy offices just outside sion cars ordered to be on the market be even drop disastrously into the dou- of Washington, DC (7910 Woodmont Av- in the following. year, 1998. ble-zero slot where everybody loses enue, Bethesda, Maryland 20814). As the best bets to achieve these and we're wiped out by environmental With a hundred local chapters in the aims, the speakers proposed electric catastrophe or nuclear war. United States and assorted foreign coun- cars in one form or another. Electric mo-

The 30,000 members of the World Fu- tries from Argentina to Zimbabwe, it tors don't pollute the air, and they ture Society don't buy either scenario. sponsors large-scale conferences sev- make less noise than conventional

They take a more energetic view of to- eral times each year, of which the sym- cars. Best of all, they have great start- morrow. They want to probe the whole ing torque: A 100 -horse power electric spectrum of possibilities that the future motor can outperform a 300-horsepow- holds and alter them to fit the needs of er gasoline engine. But exactly what the time. "Everybody talks about the fu- kind of electric cars future Californians tThere has ture," they say, "but nobody does any- will turn to remains unanswered. At the

thing about it . . . except us." probably never been a time meeting, John Reuyl of the Hybrid Elec- Naming the future. Yes, Virginia, tric in Alto, since the Vehicle Project Palo Califor- there is a science— or something nia, and Frank Chilton, head of his own with the name of "futurology," or "futur- invention of language when technological consultancy firm, put istics," or sometimes just "futures re- someone their bets on the "series hybrid" car. search" or "future studies"; none of its This type of car has both a gasoline mo- didn't make his or her living practitioners are thrilled about the tor and an electric one, but the gaso- names by which it goes. They don't all by trying line engine runs 'only to recharge the agree on just what it is, either. If it's not car's batteries. The electric motor actu- to guess at what lay ahead. as yet a real science, Howard ally runs the car. Another plus: Since Didsbury of Kean College of New Jer- the gasoline engine runs at a constant

sey considers it at least an academic speed, manufacturers can fine-tune the

discipline and has prepared a core cur- catalytic converter so that it filters out riculum for prospective teachers of the posium in Anaheim was one. almost all of the pollutants.

subject. Wendell Bell calls it a "transdisci- The Anaheim gathering was smallish Electric cars are fascinating stuff, but

plinary matrix," and Robert Jungk (who by World Future Society standards. It this was a multitrack meeting. If you sat is not only.a futurist by vocation but ran brought together less than a thousand in on the session with Chilton and tor president of Austria on a futurist plat- people, but they came from places as Reuyl, you missed seven other sessions form and actually got more than 5 per- far apart as Boston and Bombay. They on such topics as the futures of gov- cent of the vote), a "horizontal field" were teachers, businesspeople, scien- ernance, family values, the transfor- meaning that futurists specialize in gen- tists, technologists, and ordinary human mation of the workplace, and twenty- eralities. Futurology has fuzzy bounda- beings concerned about the way the first-century communications. A lot of fu-

ries. Since it deals with the whole future, world is going, and they came togeth- ture lies ahead of us, and even the

it pretty much has to take in every as- er to do something about it. World Future Society was hard

pect of human affairs, which is why Mi- Technology has turned into the favor- pressed to cover it all in a weekend. chael Marien, the editor of Future Sur- ite over-the-counter answer to whatev- Science and the future. The Vtorld Fu-

vey, calls it a "multifield." Whatever er goes wrong— and the Anaheim ses- ture Society and the think tanks didn't

name gets tacked onto it, the World Fu- sion had plenty of technological fixes invent the habit of trying to peer into the

ture Society is the place to find it. for various problems. Participants future; they just tried to put it on a sci- In the mid 1960s, futurology could attend sessions on microelectron- entific basis. There has always been boomed. In that same state of Califor- ics—smart machines, telecommunica- plenty of the other kind. There has prob- nia, Olaf Helmer and other scientists at tions, networks— and biotechnology ably never been a time since the inven- the RAND (Research ANd Develop- everything from the Human Genome Pro- tion of language when some old sha- ment) Corporation unveiled their DEL- ject to biotechnology's prospects for man or wise woman of the tribe didn't PHI procedure for assessing the dealing with cancer, food supplies, and make his or her living by trying to shape of things to come. In Croton-on- the aging process. And particularly guess at what lay ahead. Hudson, New York, Herman Kahn's heavy attendance marked sessions on Those ancient forecasting methods Hudson Institute devised future-history the future of the passenger car. had two drawbacks: First, they simply scenarios, while Ted Gordon —himself Once again, Southern California was weren't very good at what they did. The one of the DELPHI pioneers— launched the right place for this last discussion, Greek oracles concealed their inad- 52 OMNI The Best-Selling Car of All Time!

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equacies by sounding oracular— the The differences won't all be techno- this century, and its prophet was the Eng- one at Delphi gained notoriety for cloud- logical, either, and the Anaheim meet- lish novelist H. G. Wells. ing her prophecies in allegory and hint ing took'full of -that. account The con- In 1 901 , Wells' first series of articles, so that whatever happened, she could ference chair, Kenneth Hunter, "Anticipations," began to appear in the claim a hit. But now and then the em- warned against "naive beliefs in simple magazine The Fortnightly Review. Issue ployers of those old soothsayers or- solutions" in his keynote address. Oth- by issue, Wells described his bfueprint dered them to say something precise er opening speakers dealt with specif- for the future, including its technologi- and checkable, and then they were in ics: L. Sunny Hansen discussed the cal, social, and cultural aspects. Some trouble. A Roman emperor like Tiberius role of women and minorities in defin- of his predictions were dead on —he pre- was as likely as not to throw his person- ing and creating the future; Maureen dicted Bosnywash, the 500-mile-long su- al off astrologer Thrasyllus a cliff if his O'Hara, psychological problems and perstrip city that is now a reality along predictions went sour, while in China, solutions; India's Rashmi Mayur, the per- the U.S. Eastern seaboard—and some an oracle who guessed wrong ran the ils of environmental destruction. less so, as when he anticipated the de- job-related risk of beheading. Mayur pulled no punches. "I was at mise of capitalism by the end of the twen- Second, ancient futurology was gen- the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro," he tieth century. The articles met with erally custom work. Except for such said, "and it was a dismal failure. Nine- great success; so did the books and lec- doomsaying ancient prophets as hundred-and-fifty million dollars spent. tures that followed from them. Wells

' those of the Bible, the classical forecast- on the conference, two and a half told his audiences that the "systematic ers seldom took the holistic point of years of preparation, thirty-five thou- exploration of the future" could give the view. They tried to predict the outcome sand people attending from a hundred world a "working knowledge" of what of a specific battle or the survival chanc- and seventy-two nations-all around the lay ahead, and he suggested how the es of a particular individual, but they rare- world, and it wound up with nothing: no exploration could be carried out: by peo- ly attempted any large-scale anticipa- population control convention, an agree- ple he later called "Professors of Fore- tions of the future state of the whole sight," charged with identifying trends world, And when they did (as in the and exploring their interaction. case of Nostradamus), they protected By, in short, the modern science of their batting averages by falling back futurology. »lf we on Delphic doubletalk. There wasn't No Professors of Foresight appeared much market for such generalized ser- don't survive together,' on the world's university campuses in vices because, until quite recently, the India's 1901 , but they were coming. Right af- generalized concept of "the future" hard- ter World War II, the U.S. Department ly existed, and besides, most things Rashmi Mayur says, of Defense called on RAND to try to pre- just didn't change very much. dict what technologies might to 'I don't emerge Oh, some specific changes certain- affect future wars. In the process, think we will be ly occurred. One king died and anoth- RAND scientists began to develop ex- er replaced him; conquerors took over able to plicit methodologies for estimating fu- one empire and Ihen were taken over ture events, and other researchers have any future. quick- by another. But there was always a ly followed. king or emperor, and the daily life of In one day-long session at Anaheim, most people changed hardly at all. In Didsbury gave a tutorial on these ma- many ways, the lives of Americans" in jor forecasting techniques. Some, like 1776 bore a closer resemblance to ment on global warming so watered the RAND Corporation's DELPHI and of those Europeans under the Roman down that it meant nothing, a biodiver- Kahn's scenario writing, simply try to as- Empire than to our own. sity agreement that the United States re- sess probabilities; others, called norma- Then along came the nineteenth cen- fused to sign, a convention on preserv- tive, don't try to predict the future. In- tury and Ihe Industrial Revolution. ing tropical forests that was refused by stead, they concentrate on inventing it, Without warning, change became a the very countries that possess them — on identifying some future situation or fact of life for ordinary men and wom- India, Brazil, Malaysia. The result is event deemed desirable and trying to en. By the time they reached their that every day we are adding human define the ways to get there. three score and ten, ihe world of their life which is totally unsustainable, and The difference between predictive childhood had vanished. Railroads re- the whole world is rushing to become and normative futurology is the differ- placed canals; railroads were, in their like the American dream; in all the ence between wondering what will hap- turn, superseded by cars and airplanes. Third World villages, they know what the pen and making something happen. In The steam engine, the Jacquard loom, TV shows, and that is exactly what Anaheim, the normative activists far out- the cotton gin, and the mass-production they want for themselves." numbered the others, and they had a assembly line replaced millions of manu- Other speakers were more hopeful, hundred different agendas for making al jobs. The telegraph, telephone, tele- but all agreed that unless we deal with a better world. vision, and fax machine revolutionized the overwhelming problems of the envi- Yet a feeling prevailed that all the im- - communications. Now the computer ronment, in spite of all the resistance provements had to come together or has started a whole new revolution of from industry and land developers and none would succeed. Roberto Vargas, its own. We see massive changes oc- all governments, other hopes and a Chicano Indian, summed it up when curring every decade, almost every [j\:y,r~: vVili ir-ievitsilily i;;: 1 "Vfe are all in he. told one session about the efforts of year, and so our attitudes toward the fu- the same boat," Mayur said. "If we don't his leaders to get health services for ture have not changed. We may know survive together, I don't think we will be their people. "The reason I'm here," he exactly what the future will hold, but for able to have any future." said, "is that our elders have come to the first time in the history of the race, In the beginning. Scientific futurolo- realize thatjhere's not going to be any we are now quite sure that it will defi- gy, as distinct from the other kind, health for our communities until there's nitely be different. goes back only until the early days of health for the world. "DO 54 OMNI C* A f~^T*\ T^l~^\ He woke in \Z\( K HI 1 darkness UL/vV^-/JL\JL(JLy to the steady / —^/^"^Vl A T racket of the rails. I I |\/\/ Vast unknowable land- V^;\^s V V scapes, huse as the dreams of childhood, rumbled behind his shocked reflection in the carriase pane. Jackie smoothed his rumpled ematographer. Suraj had an unlit Scottish blanket. "Awake, Jackie?" girl," "1 suppose hair, stretched stiffly, wiped at his cigarette tucked behind one ear, "Yaar, he said, moustache, tucked the railway the thin gold chains at his neck so." blanket around his silk-pajama'd bunched in an awkward tangle. "So that woke you. okay?" she legs. Across the aisle, two of his The crew's leading lady, Lak- announced, gripping the seat crew slept uneasily, sprawled shmi "Bubbles" Malini, came "That big bump just now. That across their seats: Kumar the pale and swaying down the aisle, bloody lurch, for Pete's sake. It al- soundman, Jimmie Suraj his cin- wrapped sari-like in a souvenir most threw us from the track." "Sit down, Bubbles," he apol- ogized. '"Dozens die,' okay?" she said, sitting. '"Stars director crew perish in bloody English tragic

rail accident.' I can see it ail in print In bloody Stardust already." Jackie patted her plump hand, found his kit bag, extracted a cig-

arette case, lit one. Bubbles stole

a puff, handed it back. Bubbles was not a smoker. Bad for the voice, bad for a dancer's wind. But after two months in Britain she was kipping smokes from every- body. "We're not dying in any bloody train," Jackie told her, smiling. "We're filmwallas, darling. We were born to be killed by

taxmen." - Jackie watched a battered rail- way terminal rattle past in a spec- tral glare of fog. A pair of tall Eng- lish, wrapped to the eyes, sat on their luggage with looks of sphtnxlike inscrutability. Jackie liked the look of them. Native ex- tras. Good atmosphere. Bubbles was restless. "Was this all a good idea, Jackie, you think?" ILLUSTRATIONS BYVERN DUFFORD FICTION BY BRUCE STERLING He shrugged. "Horrid old rail lines nal dance number. Betty's lines in halt- here, darling, ou; they lake life damn ing phonetic Hindi had been over- slow now; the English." dubbed in the Bombay studio. take She shook her head. "This country, Events then necessitated leaving Lon- Jackie!" don, events taking the shape of a dap- the time "Well," he said, smoothing his hair. per and humorless Indian embassy of- "It's bloody cheap here. Four films in ficial who had alarmingly specific ques- the can for the price of one feature in tions for a certain Javed "Jackie" Amar Bombay." concerning income-tax arrears for "I liked London," Bubbles offered' Rupees 6,435,000, bravely. "Glasgow too. Bloody cold but A change of venue to Scotland had not so bad ... But Bolton? Nobody considerably complicated the legal films in bloody Bolton." case against Jackie, but #129 had "Business, darling," he said. "Need been born in the midst of chaos. Vet- to lower those production costs. The ra- eran soundman Wasant "Winnie" tio of rupees to meter of filmstock Kumar had been misplaced as the ." exposed. . . crew scrambled from London, and the "Jackie?" musical score of #129 had been done, He grunted. at hours' notice, by a friend of Betty's "You're bullshitting me, darling." from Manchester, a shabby, scarecrow- He shook his head. "Yaar, girl, Jack- tall youngster named Smith. Smith, who ie Amar never bounce a crew cheque owned a jerry-rigged portable mixing sta- yet. Get some sleep, darling. Got to tion clamped together with duct tape, look beautiful," had produced a deathly pounding rack- et of synthesized tablas and digitally Jackie did not title his own movies. He warped sitars. had given that up after his first fifty Jackie, despairing, had left the

films. The studio in Bombay kept a score as Smith had recorded it, for the

whole office of hack writers to do titles, weird noise seemed to fit the story, and with Hindi rhyming dictionaries at their young Smith had worked on percent- elbows. Now Jackie kept track of his cin- age—which would likely come to no re- ematic oeuvre by number and plot sum- al pay at all. Western historicals were mary in a gold-edged fake-leather note- hot in Bombay this year— or at least, book with .detachable pages. they had been, back in '48—and Jack- Jackie Amar Production #127 had ie had scripted one in an all-night fren- been his first in merrie old England. zy of coffee and pills. A penniless Irish They'd shot #1 27 in a warehouse in Toot- actor had starred as John Fitzgerald Ken- ing Bee, with a few rented hours at the nedy, with Betty Chalmers .as a White Tower of London. Mo, 127 was an ad- House chambermaid who falls for the ventit re/crime/comedy about a pair of virile young president and becomes the hapless expatriate twins (Raj Khanna, first woman to orbit the Moon, An old Ram Khanna) who cook up a scheme film contact in Kazakhstan had provid- to steal back the Koh-i-noor Diamond ed some stock Soviet space footage from the Crown Jewels of England. The with enthusiastic twentieth-century Khanna brothers had been drunk crowd scenes. Bubbles had done a much of the time. Bubbles had done spacesuit dance. two dance numbers and complained bit- Somewhat ashamed of this excess- terly about the brothers' Scotch-tainted he had shot the entire film with only breath in the.clinch scenes. Jackie had five hours sleep in four days—Jackie sent the twins packing oack to Bombay. gave his best to #130, aforeign dramat- No. 1 28 had been the first to star Jack- ic romance. Bobby Denzongpa ie's English ingenue discovery. Betty starred as an Indian engineer, disap- Chalmers. Betty had answered a clas- pointed in love, who flees overseas to sified ad asking for English girls 18- escape his past and becomes the own- 20, of- mixed Indian descent, boasting er of a seedy Glasgow hotel. No. 130 certain specific bodily measurements. had been shot, by necessity, in the Betty played the exotic Brit-Asian mis- crew's own hotel in Glasgow with the tress of a gallant Indian military-intelli- puzzled but enthusiastic Scottish staff gence attache (Bobby Denzongpa) as extras. Bubbles starred as an expa- who foils a plot by Japanese yakuza triate cabaret dancer and Bobby's gangsters to blow up the Tower of Lon- love interest, Bubbles died in the last don. (There had been a fair amount of reel, having successfully thawed Bob- leftover Tower footage from film #127.) by's cynical heart and sent him back to Local actors, their English subtitled in India. No. 130 was a classic weepie Hindi, played the bumbling comics and, Jackie thought, the only one of the from Scotland Yard. Betty died beauti- four to have any chance in hell of mak- fully in the last reel, struck by a poi- ing money.

soned ninja blowdart, just after the fi- Jackie was still not sure about the CASIO plot of No. 131, his fifth British film. man speculated loudly and uneasily bles. "What is it this time?" When the tax (roubles had caught up over the contents of the hotel's "shep- "You know Goidie Vachchani, don't to him in Scotland, he had picked the herd's-pie" and, worse_yet, "toad-in-the- you? The bio. Bombay lihnwalla?" name of Bolton at random from a rail- hole." Bobby Denzongpa and Betty "I know Goidie," Jackie admitted. way schedule. Chalmers vanished without permission "His brother's just been named in search of a disco. head of the state aeronautics bureau."

Bolton turned out to be a chilly and si- Jackie nodded, sympathized, tut- "I don't know Goldie.very well, mind lent hamlet of perhaps sixty thousand tutted, patted heads, made empty prom- you." English, all of dismantling the ises. At ten o'clock them busy .he called the stu- "This is a major to-do, Dad. I have abandoned suburban sprawl around dio in Bombay. No. 127 had been the news on best private background the city and putting fresh paint and flow- judged a commercial no-hope and had authority. The budget for aeronautics ers on Bolton's nineteenth-century been slotted direct to video. No. 128 will triple next Congress. The nation is core. Such was the tourist economy in had been redubbed in Tamil and was responding to the Japanese challenge modern England. All the real modern- dying a slow kiss-off death on the south- in space." day businesses in Bolton were in the ern village circuit. "Goidie" Vachchani, "What challenge is. that? A few weath- hands of Japanese, Arabs, and Sikhs. head of the studio, had been asking er satellites."

A word with the station master got about him. In Jackie's circles it was not Salim sighed patiently. "This is the Fif-

' their rail cars safely parked on an ob- considered auspicious to have Goidie ties now, Dad. History is marching. The scure siding and their equipment load- ask about a fellow. nation is on the-wing.". ed into a small fleet of English pedal- Jackie left the hotel's phone number "Why?" Jackie asked. cabs. A generous offer to pay in with the studio. At midnight, as he sat "The Americans went to the Moon rupees found them a fairly reasonable sipping bad champagne and studying eighty years ago." hotel. It began to rain. plot synopses from ten years back in "I know they did. So?"

Jackie sat stolidly in the lobby that search of inspiration; there was a call "They polluted it," Salim announced. afternoon, leafing through tourist bro- for him. It was his son Salim, the eldest "The Americans left a junkyard of chures in search of possible shooting of his five children and his only child by crashed machines up on our Moon. sites. The crew .drank cheap English his first wife. Even a junked motor car is there. And beer and bitched. Jimmie Suraj the cam- "Where did you get this number?" a golf ball. '"Salim lowered his voice. eraman complained of the few misera- Jackie said. "And urine and feces, Dad. There is ble hours of pale, wintry European "A friend," Salim said. "Dad, listen. American fecal matter on the Moon light. The lighting boys feared suffoca- I need a favor." that will last there in cold and vacuum tion under the mountainous wool blan- Jackie listened to the ugly hiss and for ten million years. Unless, that is, the in kets their rooms. Kumar the sound- warble of long-distance submarine ca- Moon is ritual ly purified."

d*m1 "How did things go at the lab today, dear?" ESTTD GE

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"God almighty, you've been talking Dad?" "Sorry," Jackie said. "Give Dalip my to those crazy fundamentalists again," "I don't like him." best." He sat in a chair and leafed Jackie said. "I warned you not to go in- "I thought I'd ask," Salim said sulki- through one of Bubbles' Bombay fan to politics, it's nothing but crooks and ly. He paused. "Dad?" mags while she cooed into the phone. fakirs." The hissing phone line emitted "What?" Bubbles hung up, sighed. "I miss an indulgent chuckle. "You're being "Is there any reason why the Civil In- him so bad," she said. "What is it, culturally inauthentic, daddyjil You're vestigation Division would want to inven- okay?"

Westoxicated! This is the modern age tory your house?" "My oldest boy just told me that I am culturally now! If the Japanese get to the Moon Jackie went cold. "Some mistake, inauthentic."

first they'll cover if with bloody shopping son. A rnixup." She tossed the towel from her head,

malls." "Are you in trouble, daddyji? I could put her fists on her hips. "These young ." "Best of luck to the damn fool Japa- try to pull some strings, up top. . . people today! What do they want from nese, then." "No no," Jackie said swiftly. us?" "They already own most of China," "There's bloody horrid noise on this "They want the real India," Jackie

Salim said, with sinister emphasis, "Ex- phone, Salim — I'll be in touch." He said. "But, we all watched Hollywood panding all the time. Tireless^ soulless, hung up. films for a hundred bloody and efficient." Half an anxious hour with the script years ... We have no native soul left, "Bosh," Jackie said. "What about us? and cigareites got him nowhere. At don't you know." He sighed heavily. The Indian Army's in Laos, Tibet, and last he belted his robe, put on warm slip- "We're all bits and pieces inside. We're Sri Lanka." pers and a nightcap, and tapped at Bub- a jigsaw people, we Indians. Quotes "If we want the world to respect our bles' door. and remakes. Rags and tatters."

sacred cultural values, then we must vis- "Jackie," she said, opening it, her Bubbles tapped her ch:n with one lac- ibly transcend the earthly realm. ..." wet hair turbanned in a towel. Furnace- quered forefinger. "You're having trou- Jackie shuddered, adjusted his silk heated air gushed into the chilly hall. ble with the script." dressing gown. "Son, listen to me. "I'm on the phone, darling. Long dis- Mournfully, he ignored her. "Libera-

This is not real politics. This is a silly mov- tance." tion came a hundred bloody years ago. ie fantasy you are talking about. A bad "Who?" he said. But still we obsess with the damn Brit- dream. Look at the Russians and Amer- "My husband." ish. Look at this country of theirs. It's a

icans if you want to know what aiming Jackie nodded. "How is Vijay?" museum. But us—we're worse. We're a at the Moon will get you. They're eat- She made aface. "Divorced, for Pete's wounded civilization. Naipaul was ing chaff today and sleeping on sake 1 Dalip is my husband now, Dalip right. Rushdie was right!" straw." Sabnis, remember? Honestly, Jackie, "You work too hard," Bubbles said. "You don't know Goldie Vachchani, you're so absent-minded sometimes." "That historical we just did, about the Moon, yaar? That one was stupid cra- time they snap the clapperboard. You eggs when Jimmie Suraj came in. "It's

zy, darling. That music boy Smith, Irom think I don't know?" Smith, boss," Jimmie said. "We can't Manchester? He don't even speak Eng- He flinched. "You don't know the get him. to shut up that bloody box of

lish, okay. I can't understand a word he troubles of this crew. We need a hit his." bloody says." like hell, darling. Not today, yesterday." Jackie sighed, finished his breakfast, "My dear, that's English. This is Eng- "Money troubles. So what? Not to- dabbed bits of kipper from his lips, and land. That is" how they speak their na- night, boss, not to worry. You're the on- walked into the lobby," Smith, Betty tive language." ly director that knows my best angles. Chalmers, and Bobby Denzongpa sat

"My foot," Bubbles said. "We have You think I want to be stuck with no di- around a low table in overstuffed five hundred million to speak English. rector in this bloody dump?" Gently, she chairs. There was a stranger with How many left have they?" took his hand. "Calming down, okay. them. A young Japanese.

Jackie laughed. "They're getting bet- Changing your mind, having some fun. "Turn it off, Smithie, there's a good ter, yes. Learning to talk more proper- This is your old pal Bubbles here, fellow," Jackie said. "It sounds like ly like us." He yawned hugely. "It's yaar? Look, Jackieji, Bubbles." She bloody cats being skinned." L bloody hot in here, Bubbles. Feels struck a hand-on-hip pose and shot him "Just running a demo for Mr. Big Yen good. Just like home." her best sidelong come-on look. here," Smith muttered. With bad "That young girl, Betty Chalmers, Jackie was touched. He got into bed. grace, he turned off his machine. This

okay? When she tries to speak Hindi I She pinned him down, kissed him firm- was an elaborate procedure, involving bust from laughs." Bubbles paused. ly, put both his hands on her breasts much flicking of switches, twisting of "She's a smart little cookie, though. She and pulled the cover over her shoul- knobs, and whirring of disk drives. could go places in business. Did you ders. "Nice and easy, okay? A little pam- The Japanese—a long-haired, ele- sleep with her?" pering. Let me do it," gant youngster in a sheepskin coat, cor- "Just once," Jackie said. "She was She straddled his groin, settled duroy beret and jeans— rose from his nice, But very English." chair, bowed crisply, and offered Jack- tri- "She's American," Bubbles said ie a business card. Jackie read it. The umphantly. "A Cherokee Indian from Tul- man was from a movie company— ki- sa Oklahoma, USA. When your advert nema Junpo. JHis name was Baisho. iEvery half said Indian blood, she thought you Jackie did a namaste. "A pleasure to meant American Indians." meter or so they came meet you, Mr, Baisho." Baisho looked "Damn!" Jackie said. "Really?" across a a bit wary. "Cross my heart it's true, Jackie." "Our boss says he's glad to meet

. . for "Damn . And the camera loves marker the dead. you," Smith repeated. her, too. Don't tell anybody." Jackie "Hai," Baisho said alertly. Bubbles shrugged, a little too casu- "We met Baisho-san at the disco thought the graveyard ally. "It's funny how much they want to last night," Betty Chalmers said. Bais- be just like us." must stretch ho, sitting up straighter, emitted an en- "Sad for them," Jackie said. "An ex- thusiastic string for almost a kilometer. 9 of alien syllables. istential tragedy." "Baisho says he's a big fan of Eng-

"No, darling, I mean it's really funny, lish dance-hall music," Smith mumbled. for an audjence at home. Laugh out "He was looking for a proper dance loud, roll in the aisles, big knee-slapper! hall here. What he thinks is one. Vesta It could be a good movie, Jackie. down, undulated a bit in muscular danc- Tilly, la-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, that sort of About how funny the English are. Be- er's fashion, then stopped, and began bloody thing." ing so inauthentic like us." to pinch and scratch his chest with ab- "Ah," Jackie said. "You speak any "Bloody hell," Jackie marvelled. sent-minded Vedic skill. "You're so fun- English, Mr. Baisho?" "A ol remake Param Dharam or Gam- ny sometimes, darling, 'Inauthentic' I Baisho smiled politely and replied at

mat Jammat, but funny, because of all can tap dance, I can bump and grind, length, with much waving of arms, "He's

English players, okay." and you think I can't wiggle my neck also hunting for first editions of Noel

"Gammat Jammat has some great like a natyam dancer? Watch me do it, Coward and J. B. Priestley," Betty dance scenes." for Pete's sake." said. "They're his favorite English au- She smiled. "Stop it," he begged. "Be funny be- thors. And boss— Jackie— Mr. Baisho is His head felt inflamed with fore, afterward, sudden be funny but don't be speaking English. I mean, if you listen, inspiration. "We can do that. Yes. We funny in the middle." all the vowels and consonants are in will! And it'll make a bloody fortune!" He "Okay, nothing funny darling, short there. Really." clapped his hands together, bowed his and sweet." She set to work on him and "Rather better than your English, ac- head to her. "Miss Malini, you are a troup- in two divine minutes she had wrung tually," Smith muttered. er." She made a pleased salaam. "Sat- him out like a sponge. "I have heard of Noel Coward," Jack- isfaction guaranteed, sahib." "There," she said. "All done. Feel bet- ie said. "Very witty playwright, that Cow- He rose from the chair. "I'll get on it ter?" ard fellow." Baisho waited politely until straightaway." "God, yes." Jackie's lips had stopped moving and

She slipped across the room to "Inauthentic as hell and it feels just then plunged back into his narrative. his block way. "No no no! Not tonight." as good, yaar?" "He says that it's lucky he met us be- "Why not?" "It's why the human race goes on." cause he's here on location himself," Bet- "None of those little red pills of "Well then," she said. "That, and a ty said. "Kinema Junpo — that's his yours." good night's sleep, baby." boss—is shooting a remake of Throne He frowned. of in . Blood Scotland. He's been . .

" "You'll those Jack- if from someday, . . pop Jackie was enjoying a solid somewhat uh . appointed to check out some ieji. You jump -like a jack-in-box every flavorless breakfast of kippers and special location here in Bolton." 62 OMNI "Yes?" Jackie said. denly. His dark gazelle-like eyes were "That is enough," Jackie said cold- "Said the local English won't help him red-rimmed with hangover. "Yaar, they ly. "We are guests in this country. We because they're kind of superstitious' fed sheeps to the cows here! God did of India also lost many fellow country- about the place," Betty said. She not make cows for eating of sheeps! men to that tragedy, don't you know," smiled. "How 'bout you, Smithie? You're And the flesh of Mother Cow is not for "Moslems, good riddance," Bobby ." muttered under his breath, and got up not superstitious, are you?" us to eat. . . off. "Nan," Smith said. He lit a cigarette. "Bobby," Jackie warned. and staggered- "He wants us to help him?" Jackie Bobby shrugged irritably. "It's the Jackie glowered at him as he left, for said. truth, boss, yaar? They . made foul the sake of the others. Betty smiled. "They have truckloads sheep, slaughterhouse offal into protein "It's okay," Smith said in the uneasy of cash, the Japanese." for cattle feed, and they fed that bloody silence. "He's a bloody Asian racist, their English cows. For your filmstar walla there, but we're "If you don't want to do it, I can get trash to own shrugged. "It's some "mates o' mine from Manchester," years they did this wicked thing, even used to that here." He Smith said, picking at a blemish. when the cows were going mad and dy- just— the plague, you know, it's all they like "They're nae scared of bloody Bolton." ing in front of them! They knew it was talk about in school, England was really high-class back then and we're- "What is it about Bolton?" Jackie risky, but they went straightaway on do- at all just shadow or said. ing it simply because it was cheaper! nothing now, a

"You didn't know?" Betty said. That was a crime agains't nature. It was something. . . . You get bloody tired of

hearing that. I mean, it was all fifty "Well, not much. I mean, it's not much properly punished." of a town, but it does have the biggest mass grave in England." "Over a million," Smith muttered. "From Manchester, London —they used to ship 'em out here in trains, dur- ing the plague." "Ah," Jackie said. "Over a million in one bloody spot," Smith said, stirring in his chair. He blew a curl of smoke. "Me grandfather Erarrf used to talk about it. Real proud about Bolton they was, real civil government Neck emergency and all, kept good order, sol-

diers and such . . . Every dead bloke A Conservative Therapy, got his own marker, even the women Comprehensively Applied and kids. Other places, later, they just The Back Machine combines the most scraped a hole with bulldozers and effective ways to attain reiief from back shoved 'em in." and neck pain into one easy to use, safe "Spirit," Baisho said loudly, enunci- d to help vi'ii return :n a more ating as carefully as he could. "Good lal, pain free life. And it feels good, cinema spirit in city of Boruton." even if you hurt. Despite himself, Jackie felt a chill. He How The Back Machine Works: sat down. "Inauspicious. That's what • Massage - Soft rollers we'd call it." ' igdrculaiio:i, i'-rd'adus rrnscle spasm, "It was fifty years ago," Smith said, tension and stress. bored. "Thirty years before I was born. • Stretching - Muscle > art- pas-; vvly stretched, Or Betty here either, eh? 'Bovine Spon- xibility and reducing pain. giform Encephalopathy.' Mad Cow Dis- Traction - Mild tiYv.iion restores spine length and ease. So what? B.S.E. will never come pliability, relieving disc pressure. back. It was a fluke. A bloody twentieth- • Mobiiu-Oion - Restoration of movement occurs and century industrial accident." promotes alignment of the spine. "You know, I'm not frightened," Bet- Five Years of Clinical Use ty said, with her brightest smile. "I've Tested for over five years by dodo:?, physical thera- even eaten beef several times. There's s, and has been no more virions in it. I mean, they proven safe, effective, and comfortable. wiped out scrapie years ago. Killed ev- 60-Day Home Trial ery sheep, every cow that might have b; I I :-.: I Y mIjI want to relieve my 'Aviv -e .

bloody year:; ago.'' He sneered. "I'm not ern civilization gazed at the Indian o -cT.ellite link." the shadow of the Beatles or the fuck- lens in demented puzzlement as mil- "Bloody hell," Jackie said. "And

ing Sex Pistols. I'm a working, profes- lions refused to realize. that they were here I am offering technical aid. To the sional, modern, British musician, and dying simply because they had eaten bloody Japanese, eh," got my union papers to prove it." a cow. Betty looked at him for a long mo- "No, you're really good, Smithie," Bet- What were they called? thought Jack- ment. "You've got Japan outnumbered ty told him.- She had gone pale. "I ie. Beefburgers? Hamburgers. Ninety eight to one. You shouldn't worry mean, England's coming back strong percent of Britain, thirty percent of West- about Japan."

now. Really." ern Europe, twenty percent of jet-set- "Oh. I don't worry," Jackie said. "I'm "Look, we're not 'coming back,' ting America, horribly dead. Because of a tolerant fellow, dear. A very secular lass," Smith insisted. "We're already hamburgers. fellow. But I'm thinking, what my studio here right now, earning .our bloody liv- Baisho's set-design crew was work- will say, when they hear we break

ing. It's life, eh? Life goes fucking on." ing hard to invest the dreary place with bread here with the nation's competit-

Smith stood up, picked up his deck, proper atmosphere. They were spray- ion. It might not look so good in the Bom- scratched at his shaggy head. "I gotta ing long white webs of some kind of bay gossip rags." work. Jackie. Boss, eh? Can you spare thready aerosol across the cropped Betty stood quietly. The sun was set-

five pound, man? I gotta make some grass and setting up gel-filtered lights. ting behind a bank of cloud. "You're the phone calls." It was to be a night shoot. Macbeth and kings of the world, you Asians," she Jackie searched in his wallet and hand- Macduff would arrive soon on the ex- said at last. "You're rich, you have all ed over a bill in the local currency. press train. the power, you have all the money. We Betty sought him out. "Baisho-san need you to help us, Jackie. We don't Baisho had five Japanese in his crew, wants to know what you think," want you to fight each other."

Even with the heip of Jackie's crew, it "My professional opinion of his set, "Politics," Jackie mumbled, sur-

took them most of the evening to prised. "It's . . . it's just life." He scythe back the thick brown weeds in paused. "Betty, listen to old Jackie. the old Bolton plagueyard. Every half me- They don't like actresses with politics in ter or so they came across a marker for Bombay It's not like Tulsa'Oklahoma. the dead. Small square granite posts ^Jackie had You have to be discreet." had been hammered into the ground, been a child when the She watched him slowly, her eyes off clean wide. never said take me to fifty years ago, then sheared scrapie plague "You you'd with some kind of metal saw. Fading Bombay, Jackie." names and dates and computer ID num- had hit, but he could "It could happen," Jackie muttered. bers had been chiselled into the tops remember "I'd like to go there," she said, "It's of the posts. the center of the world." She gripped staring nonplussed at Jackie thought that the graveyard her arms and shivered. "It's getting must stretch around for about a kilome- the anxious cold, 1 need my sweater." ter. The rolling English earth was stud- shouting newsreels. The actors had arrived, in a motor- ded with plump, thick-rooted oaks and driven tricycle cab. The Japanese be- ashes, with that strange naked look of gan dressing them in stage armor. European trees in winter. Macduff began practicing kendo There was nothing much to the moves. place-. It was utterly prosaic, like a bad- as a veteran Indian filmmaker?" Jackie Jackie walked to join Mr. Baisho.

ly kept city park in some third-class said. "May I call on your phone, please?" town. It defied the tragic imagination. ''Right, boss." "I'm sorry?" Baisho said. Jackie had been a child when the scra- Jackie did not much care for giving Jackie mimed the action. "Bombay," pie plague had hit, but he could re- out his trade secrets but. could not re- he said. He wrote the number on a member sitting in hot Bombay dark- sist the urge to cap the Japanese. "A page in his notebook, handed it over. ness, staring nonplussed at the anxious wind machine," he pronounced brisk- "Ah," Baisho said, nodding. "Wakari- shouting newsreels, vague images, ly. "This place needs a wind machine. mashita." He dialed a number, spoke shot in color no doubt, but grainy Have him leave some of the taller briefly in Japanese,., waited, handed black and white in the eye of his mem- weeds, and set up under a tree. We've Jackie the phone. ory. Packed cots in European medical fifty kilos of glitter dust back in Bolton. There was a rapid flurry of digital camps, uniformed shuffling white peo- It's his, if he wants to pay. Sift that bleeping. Jackie, switching to Hindi, ple gone all gaunt and trembling, spoon- dust, hand by hand, through the back fought his way through a screen of sec- ing up charity gruel with numb, of the wind machine and you'll get a retaries. "Goldie," he said at last. gnarled hands. The scrapie plague had fine effect. It's more spooky than hell." "Jackieji. I've been asking for you." L a devilishly slow incubation in humans, Betty offered h s advice. Baisho nod- "Yes, I heard." Jackie paused. but no human being had ever survived ded, thought the idea over, then "Have you seen the films?" the full onset. reached for a small machine on his Goldie Vachchani grunted, with a

First came the slow grinding head- belt. He opened it and began to press sharp digital echo. "The first two. Get- aches and the unending sense of fa- tiny buttons. ting your footing over in Blighty, yaar? tigue. Then the tripping and flopping Jackie walked closer. "What's that Nothing so special." and stumbling as the nerves of the vic- then? A telephone?" "Yes?" Jackie said. tim's legs gave out. As the lesions "Yes." Betty said. "He needs to "The third one. The one with the half- spread, and tunneled deep within the clear the plan with headquarters." breed girl and the Moon and the sound- brain, the muscles went slack and flab- "No phone cables out here," Jackie track." by, and a lethal psychotic apathy set said. "Yes, Goldie." in. In those old cinema newsreels, West- "High tech," Betty said, "They have Goldi.e's voice was slow and gloat- CONTINUEDONPAGE92 —

Imagine ihal a Fifties beat club went electronic, and you with other cities across America and Canada, or some with a mission, is "to take telecommunications technology

have some idea of a Telepoetics night at the Electronic Ca- place in Russia, Japan, Europe, South America, or Africa. out of the corporate and business context and put it into a fe International in beachside Santa Monica. Los Angeles. As Here, you can not only mingle with fellow Los Angelinas, but cultural context." They wanted to create a place where peo-

I sipped my wine, the candles on the table seemed to flick- through the power of technology, also with people all over ple could access the technology themselves, for they be-

er in time to the hard-edged rap poetry emanating from the the world. At ECI, the local community is global. lieve that if communications facilities are widely available, speakers, while on a giant video screen at the far end of the ECI is an innovative concept that offers sophisticated then "whole new ways of being in the world can be creat-

room, I watched an image of the poet who at that moment telecommunications facilities in a relaxed cafe environment, ed." The couple, who are both in. their early forties, have was performing live at a club in Phoenix, Arizona. After the complete with coffee, cakes, wine, and quirky decor. One been working with communications technology since the mid

remote bard had finished, it L.A.'s turn, our Tele- tables Seventies. Nineties technology to actively re- was and night that I visited was Valentine's Day, and all the. They are using poatic hostess, Marilene M. Murphy, took the floor to in- were adorned with chubby golden Cupids. As you walk in alize 'their visions—a kind of twenty-first-century techno- troduce the next performer, a princely looking African Amer- the door, it's the cafe you encounter first; then your eyes are idealism, an idealism for the Digital Age. ican with a voice that sounded like rubble and silk. This drawn to the racks of equipment and video screens at the The Cafe in Santa Monica utilizes a range of different tech- time we'd be seeing the action live, and Phoenix would be far end of the room. Contrary to its name, in the flesh, the nologies, some permanently installed and others which are

receiving it electronically. cafe comes before the electronics. But it is the fusion of brought in for special events. Probably the most commonly Telepoetics is one of a whole series of artistic and cultur- both that makes this place so unique, Indeed, Electronic Ca- used devices are the video phones, which transmit still pic-

al events that take place regularly through the Electronic Ca- fe International is more than just a name; it's a whole con- tures along with voice. It was via video phones that I could

fe International (EC!). I say through, rather than at, since all cept—one that is now a registered trademark, see the poets performing in Phoenix during the Telepoetics these events involve the participation of a number of differ- ECI is the brainchild of Sherrie Rabinowitz and Kit Gal- evening, and it is generally video phones that provide the ent locations, often stretched across the globe. At any giv- loway, two American artists who originally met in that mec- links between the Cafe and other cities around the world. en event, the Caf6 in Santa Monica may be communicating ca of the cafe— Paris. The idea, says Galloway, who is a man The received images are projected onto a large video ARTICLE BY MARGARET WERTHEIM ectron

Special events at as it goes. The From the begin- dollars. They are the Electronic Cafe celebrates the ning, Galloway (left) using Nineties Cafe: Celebrating New Year time and Rabinowitz technology to realize Mexico's Day zone by time zone (next page, lower visions- of the Dead festival starting in Aus- left) have ex- kind of 21st-century which honors tralia and ending plored ways of using techno-idealism, ancestors (top), an idealism for the PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL FISHMAN and up 18 hours communications the annual New later in Los Angeles. technology to bene- Digital Age. Year's Eve party fit all people- (left) that collects not just those with electronic celebrants fists full of — —

«_>^t the Cafe, the loeal community is global.

screen so that everyone can see who's talking at the other sign the facilities so that the network can also include very- end. The permanent equipment includes electronic mail and low-budget nodes as well. This is particularly important, Rabino- computers for creating and exchanging graphics. For spe- witz says, for communicating with Third World countries. "It

cial events, they've brought in electronic music equipment, wouldn't be very interesting if it were just for the rich coun- virtual-reality systems, and brain-wave scanners, which, at tries like the United States, Japan, and Germany," says Rab- a recent event, were used to drive synthesizers in Los Ange- inowitz, with her gently compelling intensity. "The high-end les and Germany, creating what Galloway and Rabinowitz ones musi be able to talk to the low-end ones." So La Cits call "collaborative brain-wave music." must be able to talk to the simpler facilities and vice versa, As a concept, ECI is proving .enormously catchy, and Putting this philosophy into practice, Rabinowitz and Gal-

there is now a global network of 50 affiliated locations around loway have organized events with Nicaragua, South Africa, the world. Some are permanent, but many just come online and what were then East Bloc countries, including Russia and for special events. True to the communal spirit of the endeav- Bulgaria. In the case of South Africa, they had to arrange to

' or, many are located in real cafes or community centers. The gel the video phone to the people in Grahamstown, During one in Phoenix operates out of an alternative art space and that link up, visitors to the Cafe in Santa Monica got to talk bookstore, while one in Managua, Nicaragua, operates out to South Africans about life in their strife-ridden country. And of Pepito's, a caf6 cum art gallery cum children's center. The South Africans had the opportunity to talk to African Ameri- network is growing all the time, and Rabinowitz and Galloway cans about the experience of being Black in the United are constantly being asked to advise on setting up new States. Because video phones transmit pictures as well as nodes both here in the United States and overseas. words, each side got to see who they were talking to, thus providing a powerful person- al link. Such events are a won- derful demonstration of how technology can be used to bring together people from very different cultural environ- ments and backgrounds. In an early attempt to put this idea into practice, the couple staged an event as part of fhe activities surround- ing the 1984 Olympics In Los Angeles. They hooked up a system for seven weeks which connected together The Cafe's network different ethnic communities makes if possible in the City of Angels. Oper- lo have global round ating over the phone lines, it tables where was an immense success, and they realized that they artists, technologists, needed a permanen! base and philoso- to serve as a communica- Next year, new locations phers from around tions hub. So they set up the will be opening atTelluride in the world can Cafe in Santa Monica. Colorado, in Japan, and in As well as providing a fa- participate in discus- Bulgaria. One recent addi- cility to enhance global inter- sions on rele- tion to the network is a sophis- action, Rabinowitz and Gal- ticated venue with state-of- vant issues such as loway also wanted to provide the-art technology that the use of a means so that artists opened in May 1991 at the virtual space, co- around the world could col- world's largest science and ownership of laborate on artwork using industry museum, La Cite, in electronic media. Indeed, it collaborative elec- Paris. This venue is rather was through their own art like a "communications lab- tronic artwork, both were originally video art-

oratory," and it maintains and virtual reality. ists—that each was drawn to links with several European the technology. Over the

universities. Because it can make use of ISDN phone lines past decade, they've pursued their artistic goals in several a new superpowerful telephone technology more widely avail- prestigious arenas. In July, they set up a temporary ECI facil- able in Europe than in the United States—its video phones ity at SIGGRAPH, the world's premier computer-graphics con- work with full-color, full-motion images. {This became avail- ference, which in 1992 was held in Chicago. Another was able in Santa Monica in late 1992,) set up at Documenta 9, an important art festival held in But Rabinowitz and Galloway— now husband and wife Kasel in Germany. They organized a series of events which are well aware that not everyone can afford state-of-the-art linked artists at these locations with each other, and also "wet dream" technology, and they have been careful to de- with artists at Santa Monica and La Cite. Together the art- es OMNI ists explored collaborative image cre- ownership of collaborative electronic art- France. Using music software, each ation and collaborative music, and work, and virtual reality. The point, side was able to control the other held international forums to discuss "art says Galloway, is to bring the creative side's synthesizers, so they were able in the age of technology." community together "to "solve the aes- to have international electronic jam ses- Collaborative image creation is a proc- thetic problems of the new technology." sions between stellar "lineups at each ess by which artists in many locations Other ECI events have involved col- end. Rabinowitz and Galloway will also work together to create images on com- laborations on performance-art pieces. continue collaborative artistic activities puters. But the interesting thing is that In one event, dancers were located in in the international arena through the at any time, everyone is working on the several different locations and video- use of the mobile ECI facility which was same image. All the locations involved taped while they danced. The video im- set up for Documenta 9. Now that that were connected together via ISDN ages were then composited so that the event is over, the equipment, which is phone lines, which will one day be the performers appeared to be dancing to- housed in a shipping container, will trav- standard. Whatever someone in, say, gether onscreen. Rabinowitz points out el around Europe to other arts festivals.

Germany did to the picture was imme- that with such multilocation performanc- Forthcoming events to which it is going diately seen by everyone else, and es, the whole piece only comes togeth- include the Venice Bienale. they could then respond with their own er in "virtual space." It's never realized True to their egalitarian philosophy, contributions to the evolving image. in actual physical space. The "stage" is the couple is concerned to make their This technology sets up what Rabino- the ethereal realm oi bits and bytes. Ex- facilities available to as wide a range witz calls "a visual dialogue among art- ploring the possibilities of "virtual of people as possible. Rabinowitz spar- ists"—a dialogue that transcends lan- space" is one of the pair's primary aims. kles with pride as she tells of one event guage barriers. The images created are Indeed, ECI, Santa Monica, now serves in which they assisted a group of devel- now part of the ECI archives and can as the headquarters for the Los Angeles opmental^ challenged people. This be accessed by anyone in the network. Special Interest Group for Virtual Reality. group came to the Caf6 in Santa Moni- As well as giving artists the chance In pursuit of their artistic goals, Rab- ca and used its facilities to talk to a sim- to collaborate on works, the ECI net- inowitz and Galloway have also estab- ilar group from the Little City Foundation work also makes it possible to have lished an ongoing relationship with the in Chicago. "They really got it," she "global round tables" where artists, tech- Center for Experiment in Art, Informa- says. "They ran the system and used nologists, and philosophers from tion and Technology at the California In- the video phones." Galloway adds that around the world can participate in dis- stitute of the Arts (Cal Arts), with whom "usually these people are kept in their cussions on relevant issues. During they do joint projects. One in Novem- own constituency groups." Getting all SIGGRAPH. they organized a series of ber linked musicians in Los Angeles sorts of people together and giving international round tables on topics with others at the Centre International them access to the technology in a such as the use of virtual space, co- de Recherche Musicale in Nice, nonintimidating environment is what ECI is about. Says Rabinowitz, "We want all people to be able to come here and imagine what is possible, and what they can do together." From humble beginnings, the ECI net- work is reaching out tentacles into ev- er more arenas. There is now a video-

phone link with Biosphere II in the Ari- zona desert, and during some events, visitors to the Santa Monica Cafe can talk to the Biosphereans about life in their sealed bubble. Because of their ear- ly experiment during the 1984 L.A. Olym- pics, Rabinowitz and Galloway have al- so been invited to set up an ECI facility in Atlanta, Georgia, during the 1996 Olympic games. In the international are- na, they're talking to an Ethiopian uni- versity about setting up an ECI facility which they hope will become one of many permanent bases in Africa, and plans are underway for one at a new arts center outside Beijing. Talks are al- so being held to set up one in Prague in the spring of 1993 during the city's "Let the Sun Shine" cultural festival. At a time when the international scene is changing dramatically and when traditional barriers between na- tions are crumbling, telecommunica- tions can surely play a role in helping us establish a harmonious new order. Electronic Cafe International is a won- derful tool we can call on in this diffi- cult task ahead. DO GAfines Back By Popular Demand. hourglass begins to float upright, and

then it rises. (An antihourglass, mentioned At one time, peregrine falcons nested by the thousands throughout October's column, has enough sand to the United States. But with the widespread use of the insecticide just barely sink. When inverted, this DDT in the 1940s and 1950s, die species suffered greatly In the glass remains wedged in at the top of eastern U.S., the peregrine falcon disappeared entirely the tube until the hourglass becomes bottom-heavy and sinks.) Now peregrine falcons have made a comeback, thanks to efforts conservationists. That's all there is to it. Congratulations by

to the 415 readers who got it. Five, Since 1975 when recovery programs were established, 752 selected randomly, will receive peregrines have been released in the eastern U.S., and there has been one-year subscriptions to Omni: John a steady increase in the nesting population. Burke of Darien, Illinois; Bill Cembor of With wise conservation policies, other once rare species such as Atlanta, Georgia; Stephen of Godby the American alligator and the bald eagle have also made comebacks. Centreville, Virginia; Chris Mills of Help save our endangered species. Join fhe National Guelph, Ontario, Canada; and Jim Wildlife Federation, Stewart of Sail Lake City, Utah. 1412 16th Street NW Working faf the Watum of Tomorrow,, I promised copies of the book Omni Washington, Games to the five "most interesting" DC NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION entries. Correct answers to this puzzle 20036-2266. aren't very interesting because they're

all virtually alike. Therefore, I awarded books for incorrect answers only: 1. Pete Roche of Chicago foresaw this and sent both a correct theory and this incorrect alternate: "The hourglass has a small clasping mechanism at each end. The momentum of rising pro- vides enough energy to engage the mech-

anism as it reaches the top of the cylin-

der, while the weight of fhe falling sand is required to release the mechanism." 2. John J. Gagne of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, supposed that sand blocked the hole, and air in the bottom of the hourglass became compressed until "a jet of air shoots into the top half of the hourglass, imparting just enough lift to overcome inertia and start the glass moving up."

3. "The hourglass is composed of a flexible material such as Nalgene," wrote Timothy R. Dinger, Ph.D., and Daniel E. Edelstein, Ph.D. The two share a prize for having the confidence to submit their incorrect theory on company stationery: IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. 4. Cliff Oberg of Clarkdale, Arizona, theorized that the tube's caps are hollow and that the fluid must flow from the tube through a hole into the cap below before the glass can rise. 5. Finally, a theory about the density gradient of the liquid was signed "Bob Saville, Physics Teacher, Shoreham- Wading River High School, Shoreham, j New York." He added, "RS. If this is wrong, then my name is John Holzapfel

and I teach chemistry." The fifth book, therefore, goes to Holzapfel. DO —

irUTERVIElAJ

Striding to his Caltech of- fice, John Joseph Hop- field spies the silvery trail of a snail lhat had been scouting for food at dawn. The telltale strip goes in a straight line, a circle, and then a straight line again. That, says neural-network theo- rist Hopfield, means "the wind changed while the snail was fol- lowing the scent." He ought to return again before daybreak, he muses, with video camera and spotlight to track the snail's movements and correlate them with shifts in the wind. Strange activities for a com- puter theorist, perhaps, but

Hopfield has little respect for boundaries. Snails are central to his latest project: working out the math of a system that will smell the location of an object as does a snail heading for breakfast. It's all part of Hopfield's neural networking, an approach to computer architec- ture whose goal is a machine that may even imitate human consciousness. Conventional computers are superhuman only in the speed they apply to tedious, brick-by- brick logic, sorting mountains of spoon-fed data. Hopfield's sys- tems learn and judge for them- selves, and he's confident they'll eventually simulate emo- tions and creativity. If comput- ers someday paint, compose mu- sic, write, novels, and run gov- ernments, Hopfield will have to take some of the blame. The son of a Polish physicist, Hopfield inherited his father's can-do philosophy that every- thing in life — from smelling ros- es to the workings of the mind With an array of electronic sensors can be fathomed with math and that measure the physical logic. So when artificial intelli- gence (Al) in digital computers things being done to them, you reached a roadblock in the late have the means whereby Seventies as it bumped against the limits inherent in its design, consciousness could be an issue. Hopfield opened a new way. He worked out a math model of PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAN WINTERS associative memory in large net- works that functioned in a way equivalent to neurons in real brains. Efforts to engineer neu- ral nets into silicon circuitry be- gan at Caltech, Bell Labs, and —

A COMPUTER COULD BECOME TRULY SELF-REFEREN- TIAL; IT WOULD HAVE A WAY TO MEASURE ITS OWN HEARTBEAT.

MOTTO:

"Let me define ii operationally."

YES, BUT CAN THEY OUT-CURSE A PARAKEET? Neural nets can now play backgammon, recognize faces from parts of photos, identify airplanes on radar, learn languages, score credit for loans and mortgages, analyze fingerprints, read data- bases, calculate aerodynamic flow, schedule airline flights, test Pap smears, detect abnormal heartbeats, predict stock indexes, diagnose symptoms and prescribe medication, aim missiles, read handwritten zip codes, talk from written texts, play Ping-Pong, and read lips. Soon systems will check the faces of individuals going into secure buildings, enable industrial robots to pick among parts to fashion a product, someday imitate consciousness or be conscious.

elsewhere. By 1988, even the computers that will either imitate tional machines. grand guru of Al, Marvin Minsky of consciousness or be conscious Hopfield is a tall, lanky figure who MIT, at first skeptical, predicted depending on your definition of spews ideas with great precision that -"neural technology is the way that concept. So far, nearly all of and vitality. As interviewer Anthony of the future." A defense official these systems are software run on Liversidge crossed the door of his of- said 'neural-modeling technology conventional computers that only fice, Hopfield sprang up from a would be "more important than the simulate in slow motion the per- knee chair at his computer, shook atom bomb," formances of neural-net hardware. hands vigorously, and gave his full Hopfield's systems compute by Several companies, however, have attention. Hopfield has no financial association, detect patterns, and made prototype neural chips. participation in the infant university- form judgments. Like the human Sample neural cubes decorate military-industrial neural-net complex brain, they learn, generalizing Hopfield's desk: jewel-like squares his ideas have spawned. He has, from examples. Unlike strictly logic- the size of a quarter, gold wiring however, won his share of prizes, based Al, they handle the random glinting against blue borders. Like from a MacArthur Foundation grant perceptions of the everyday the brain's neurons and synapses, in 1983 to the Wright prize Harvey world— recognizing faces and ob- neural chips respond and send sig- Mudd College awarded him, he jects and understanding human nals according to the strength and jokes, for "being a dilettante." speech. Like humans, they have frequency of the signals passing hunches and intuitions. A conven- through them rather than simply Omni: How do snails in real life com- tional computer will struggle to switching on or off in digital fash- pare to your computer models? make sense out of bat, ball, and dia- ion. Actual neural nets built so far Hopfield: My mathematical slugs are mond. A neural network will catch are much less powerful than a cock- simple neural networks that corre-

the ball in its glove. roach's brain. Yet when neural spond with the real slug's anatomy. No wild-eyed visionary, .but a so- chips are mass produced and hard- They can easily produce the same- ber mathematician, Hopfield none- ware built, they should compute mil- kinds of learning behavior as snails, theless predicts that we will have lions of times faster than conven- My colleagues at Bell Labs have stud- —

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faction model has one test: It presents when we see, including the "errors." Vi- ied real slugs and found oscillations in one single odor to see if an animal can sual illusions, for instance, are caused activity in the brain area that processes decide if it's good or bad by moving to- by improper shortcuts in the algorithms olfactory signals. We're hoping this os- ward or away from it. But in the natural biology uses— things thai are wrong. cillation corresponds to those we see world, odors are usually mixed up. I'm You're not going to get illusions in an in mammalian systems. Every time you working out how the system deals with artificial system until it has an uncanny take a sniff, the olfactory bulb, the first that complexity. similarity to human vision. It will be get- stage of olfactory processing, bursts in- Previously we thought that a single ting close when the engineered system to a kind of oscillation, a rapid excita- odor is the same problem as taste, a also suffers from biology's mistakes, tory and inhibitory activity of groups of proximal sense. You decide what's in has biology's illusions. neurons. Those oscillations are part of your mouth—is it a mushroom? But ol- Omni: Will neural networking be more the computation. Other parts of the faction is a form of remote sensing. influential than the atom bomb? brain oscillate, too. That's why scents are intermingled. Hopfield: They will certainly be more

Omni: How does oscillation process in- Now if the mixture were constant, used! There isn't much technology yet, formation or yield answers? there'd be no way of unscrambling the just the algorithms we run on digital ma- Hopfield: Or code information in some odors coming from different objects. chines to simulate neural networks. Re- fashion? For example, if different parts But if odors are intermixed in a fluctu- al neural-net hardware will be much fast- of the brain oscillate at the same fre- ating way, you can possibly unscram- er than emulating neural networks on dig- quency but in different phase, informa- ble them because the relative amounts ital machines. People are doing things: tion is contained in that difference. May- are changing. In the simplest case, Du Pont has plastic sheets rolling out be the oscillation is a carrier, a way of rapidly while an engineer tunes the proc- several pieces of information on one ess for quality. Du Pont is using net- communication pathway. Perhaps this works in some aspects of measuring oscillation is used to mark information and predicting, product quality. are so that two things in different places in 6Why Omni: That's pretty mundane. the brain are oscillating in the same way people put together as they Hopfield: Utterly mundane, but if you're because they represent different parts turning out millions of dollars of prod- are? In of the same object. We've used oscil- uct a year and a neural-net algorithm lations as a way of amplifying and se- some sense, it's an accident. helps you, you know neural nets are not lecting information. You could just imagination. Process engineers can Omni: Would oscillation work to com- be concerned with things like the tex- equal intelligence pare samples at different times? have in ture of materials, fiber for fabric. Tex-

Hopfieid: Possibly. The sensor might something ture is slightly nebulous— it isn't a nice want to take samples at different times physical measurement. Texture is a that looks like a cow. 9 because the smells in a room fluctuate. more ethereal measurement. You look

Otherwise, it would get an average and judge: No, it's not quite right. A neu- smell that wouldn't tell you much about ral system can learn to recognize tex- what was in the room. Or it might be use- ture in some sense, even though you ful as an amplifier of signals. The oscil- when the background is fixed and the haven't given it a set of rules. Unlike a lation in the olfactory bulb of mammals, template odor comes and goes, you digital system, you can't quite tell it in the level of electrical signals in the can evaluate whether what comes and what to do; it has to decide for itself. neurons,- goes on every time you sniff, goes has the same ratios of compo- Omni: What other kinds of systems breaking into about 40 cycles per sec- nents as the template. If you go into a have a big future? ond, 40 hiertz. There is also the oscilla- kitchen that stinks of cabbage, say, 30 Hopfield: Practical databases. People tion of breathing itself— say, 1 hertz. The seconds later that odor has disap- are working on networks to recognize slug oscillates about once a second, peared. Then if the cook puts some- English words in natural speech or to and it isn't clear if this is used like the thing else under your nose, you smell take written words and speak them nat- mammal breathing cycle to make in- it in a relatively normal way. urally. Speech is tough. There's a lot of dependent samples of the air. Omni: If you could equip a robot with natural variation. It is hard to give a

It would be astonishing if oscillation smell, how close would that be to hu- rule for what a sound wave should be were a mere epiphenomenon, but man brain activity? so that it can recognize, say, the word there's not yet a definitive statement Hopfield: Smelling for humans is extraor- six. But give a network many, many ex- about what it does in processing. One dinary for the kinds of memories it amples of six and no six, and after a paper argues it is the beginning, the es- evokes. Gee, that smells like grandmoth- while it constructs its own procedures sence of consciousness. Oscillation rep- er's house, and so on. To copy human- and becomes very effective at recog- resents richer dynamics, and computa- tike behavior, you'd need not just the nizing the difference. Getting a machine tion is dynamics. Dynamics, the sense of odor identification, but also to to generate speech is easier than get- change of activity with time, is better combine it with the rest of knowledge. ting it to listen to speech. than true-false logic for describing neu- Some sets of memory are strongly odor Turning typed text into speech is eas- ral computation. Harnessing oscillation associated and often emotionally ier. Speak and Tell, made by Texas is an important challenge. charged. Smell is linked to emotion Instruments, has a set of rules to get Omni: But will you be able to build a much more than vision —for reasons re- from letters to pronunciation. There's a system thai smells? lating to sex, fighting, and food. lot less natural variation in typed text. Hopfield: Oh yes, even a system to A problem in making humanlike sys- At Caltech, we've been working on neu- pull apart mixed smells just as animals tems is that there's no simpfe correspond- ral hardware for a speech-interpreting 88 OMNI network. We talk into it and il recogniz- that neurobiology capitalizes on the es the word we said. We work with a structure of the cell. Exp& small vocabulary. If you can do it Omni: Mathematician Roger Penrose small, you can do it large. Question is, says you need quantum mechanics to PENTHOUSE ONUNE™ can you do it with all the natural varia- explain consciousness. Do you agree? • State-of-the-Art tion? You, Anthony, speak with a resid- Hopfield: There has long been a roman- VGA/SVGA, ual' British accent that's quite different tic notion among physicists such as 2400/9600 bps Service! from a ten-year-old girl's from the Niels Bohr, Eugene Wigner, and others • South. The network has to solve what that quantum mechanics is_the secret Near real-time picture is similar between the two. to the complications and richness of display • Omni: Will we soon get a phone any- thought and neurobiology. I fundamen- Photo E-Mail

one can speak a number into and it tally disagree. The real mysteries of neu- National Discount will dial? robiology are essentially problems de- Shopping Services Hopfield: That is totally doable now at scribed by classical physics operating • No 9600 baud great expense. But can you do it for ten in large systems. surcharge! bucks on a single low-electric power To look at two atoms colliding is not • PetPoints™ Awards chip? That's the real intellectual and tech- interesting. But with 10 to the 43 atoms Program nological challenge. Intel is doing inter- colliding, all the complications of wind » esting things. They've recently market- and weather come into being. A sim- Low monthly and ed a neural-net chip with "synapses," ple set of equations—but describing a connect fees! 64 neurons and 8,192 continuously ad- large system — can produce a hugely Exciting news! Penthouse hiroduces an justable connections—synapses. It prob- complicated set of phenomena com- online service that's easier—and more ably costs about ten dollars to make. pletely unlike what you'd have expect- fun— to use. Galled PENTHOUSE CNLiNE. ''?- new ser,-ce features ' Previously, chips needed already-made ed from the microscopic laws if you capability "real-time" connections or else connections of dis- hadn't studied the hell out of them taps and graphics— almost instan'ijriKi.n'Hi online viewing of crete strengths, like zeros and ones. In mathematically. These collective or photos and E-Mail with picture-attach use, such connections are either large-system phenomena are often capability. Send a message.. .and i made or not made, unlike the continu- astonishing, but they come from the photo:, .at the same time! ously adjustable connections of biology. huge numbers of molecules or synaps- Log on and access Chat, E-Mail In a neuron, an action potential aris- es, not the intrinsic complexity of the un- Penthouse Letters. Penthousi es on an axon terminal, then releases derlying physics. -holes ..oki3 scacis: Mavigaion a.'K some neurotransmitter over to the oth- There is nothing mystical in the- col- Help, areas. New areas are being added er side to the dendrite, and an electri- lective behavior of large systems, and continuously. Navigate anywhere using a mouse or Tab cal current flows into the dendrite. How the brain is one. Many physicists have key.

1 The Pe : these photo:: vO_, II tin:! on much electrical currenl flows depends made the wrong choice about what's im- PENTHOUSE ONLINE are the same on how much transmitter is put out, how portant in neurobiology. Penrose is the high quality seen every month in example of noble but many receptors are on the other side, most recent a Penthouse. Our unique speed-view and so on. There is modification, and wrong-headed line. 1-: system 1 : = you b.owse ;r. 25G-color that modification, for example, is what Omni: But can you be certain quantum VGA, then download the photos you goes on when you [earn. The strength mechanics doesn't affect the brain? wish to keep.That's right. View BEFORE of that synapse is fairly adjustable. Hopfield: There's simply no evidence for you download.

That is what the Intel chip represents. it and considerable analysis to show There's morel Keep up to date o national world events, the financial The connections in the chip don't have why this should be true. Any thinking and ire'kOTS. entertainment news eio to be fully turned on or off. With a cer- chemist or condensed -matter physicist more....Thinking about Iravel? See . tain voltage at the gate^ the transistor takes the same position I do. Penrose DISCOUNT TRAVEL SERVICE is partially turned on and a partial con- never worked on large, complex sys- area.. .And don't miss our DISCOUNT nection made. The resistance is adjust- tems whose behavior now is deter- MERCHANDISE MART! Thousands of able according to the charge at the mined by many details that happened nationally advertised products— all at gate. Before this, the control of these in the past. Why are humans intelligent? discounts, all with a "double the price- charges on the gates was not good. Ei- In some sense, it's an accident. You difference" guarantee.

ther you had a lot of charge and it was could have equal intelligence in some- All this for just $5.95 a month basic fee, plus cents minute for areas. turned all the way on and a 1 was thing that looks like a cow. Biology as 20 a most And'NO 9.600 BPS SURCHARGE! stored, or the charge was not enough, we see it has a huge number of frozen As a member of PENTHOUSE ONLINE, and you stored a zero somewhere. In- accidents in it. To understand the you receive valuable PetPoints for every tel's technology allows a partial most evolved part of biology, clearly the dollar you spend. Redeem PetPoints for charge, providing a way of controlling intelligent mind, you have to know some- Penthouse ball caps, T-shirts, c the connection in a continuously adjust- thing about the frozen accidents. coolers, key rings , and more. Or i able way. Omni: Have you proved your point by them to purchase sought-after Penthouse Omni: Will simulated synapses ever mim- making computers that can be called. books and videos. Or trade points for free

ic the internal workings of the brain conscious? online re It's your choice'

: cell—second messengers, protein syn- Hopfield: They are much more like bi- l-'lus, .ve vc. arranged wit:"' a rnaier thesis, and so on? ology, but, of course, you could say modem manufacturer, USRob.otics, lo offer a deluxe, 9600 bps data/fax Hopfield; That's not the way electronics they are still only programs in digital ma- modem, with custom Penthouse K will go. Biology has all those things avail- chines. They as yet have no conscious- insignia, for under $300. able and so uses them very cleverly in ness. But what is consciousness? The To order your membership kit the way it gets neurons to compute. We term is so ill-defined. I can conceive of call 1-800-289-7368. will use the physics that is available in nothing at present as having conscious- the electronic chip in the same way ness, because I'd have to be able to define consciousness to describe wheth- choice at each corner to turn left to de- A riot can only take place above a cer-

It isn't er it was present. Three years ago, I start- viate from your usual route, and you tain size group. because people ed asking friends what their attitude was don't; you're unconscious of your choic- interact differently, but the consequenc- different about it. Richard Feynman's view was es. Consciousness may be a simpl es of those interactions are that consciousness is not a scientific sub- add-on somewhere along the line. Marv- when you have large rather than small ject because he couldn't define it well in Minsky views consciousness as not numbers. Physics is full of these phe- enough to get his hands into it and ask, very interesting because most power- nomena for economic systems, weath- "Is this object conscious?" ful computations you do in a noncon er, and other things. Omni: So physics per se can't define scious fashion. Omni: Isn't consciousness shown by with oneself? consciousness? I often put some research problem the ability to interact

Hopfield: It's the old Turing problem. If away and don't think of it for a while and Hopfield: That's a part of the story, but you communicate with a keyboard at a return to it to find it's much more de- how do you tell whether you think terminal that communicates with some- veloped than it was. Intelligent process- about yourself or not? The issue partly thing at the other end of a line, is the ing has been going on. While conscious- involves the fact that there exists a phys- thing you're communicating with con- ness must be in some sense a collec- ical as well as a mental you. Your arm that explain is not just word, it's a physical object. scious? I can easily conceive of a digi- tive phenomenon, doesn't a tal machine clever enough to have a di- what it is. It only explains where to look The interaction between symbols and alogue with you for, say, five minutes. for it. It's collective within the physics physical objects is part of the difficulty You'd have horrible trouble deciding of the operation, something that in describing consciousness. If you in- what was at the other end. Or suppose comes from the very large number of sist on having a dialogue only on a com- you had a playful computer-science stu- nerve cells and not Planck's Constant. puter line and describe everything on- dent at the other end saying, "I'm go- Omni: You mean consciousness is ly with language, the physical world ing to be machinelike"? just the result of having so many neu- "out there" is only apparent in terms of Consciousness has something to do rons in Ihe cortex—a hundred times as words. But when humans think and ex- with attention, but that's a vague start many as rats do? perience the world, they have independ- and not good enough. Hopfield: There are certain behaviors ent sensors of touch, vision, and smell

Omni: If attention is a part of conscious- that don't take place in a small number that give the.m direct descriptions. ness, much of the human race may not but that in large numbers are fundamen- Then the world is not just words. be conscious. tally different. Look at the social inter- Omni: Isn't a computer that says, "Help, Hopfield: A large part of what humans action of two people. There's nothing in I'm being damaged!" conscious? do is highly intelligent behavior but not the behavior of a pair of people con- Hopfield: For the computer to actually conscious. You drive home along a veying the idea that if a thousand peo- do so, it would need sensors that ob- route you know well and you have a ple get together, a riot can take place. serve or measure the physical things be-

ing done to it. With an array of such sen- sors, you begin to have the means whereby consciousness could be an is- sue. The computer could become truly

self-referential; it would have a way to

measure its own heartbeat. Omni: Do you dare advocate building emotions into machines? Hopfield: All higher animals have emo-

tions that serve a biological function. I

think I understand crudely how to insert the essential idea of them into physical systems. They're not built particularly easily in hardware, but the principle is

relatively simple. It goes back to the question, "Why, when you are hungry, do many things remind you of food that otherwise wouldn't?" Omni: But hunger isn't an emotion like regret, fear, or hope. Hopfield: What do you mean by hope? Somebody who has hope will take a per- sistently positive view of a situation and do actions identifiably in one class. Someone without hope will take a dif- ferent class of actions.

Omni: Isn't that reducing it to a very low digital computer level? Hopfield: To make progress, we must

have operational definitions. I can't ex- plain that "feeling of hope," but the op- erational side of hope is easier to de-

scribe. If you are in the operational state of "hungry," certain things remind

you of food, which if you're not in that biochemical state won't. Hope will could do that, it could have an internal mal car has gasoline in it, and yours

have to do with hormonal states infill- dialogue about emotion because it will does not, and if gasoline is added, the : encing choices as will be true of hun- know something about its internal state. car will probably work. When we fix ger. Particular hormones or neuroactive Omni: Doesn't this ability to self-moni- this biochemistry, the sign of depres-

substances will be more present at one tor potentially free computers from hu- sion, it will probably go away With the

time or another. If you learn in the pres- man control? automobile, the mechanic is not ad-

ence of one, it will tend to make you Hopfield: Computers already talk to them- dressing how the engine works, nor is remember those general structures selves about their internal state. All ma- the neuroscientist asking how the lack

when it is present once again. I think chines these days do a -self-check of a chemical gives rise to depressed hope and hunger are related phenom- when you turn them on. They say, "I am thoughts. No one in clinical neurobiol-

ena. I can't say why you feel hungry or okay, Jack!" after exercising their log- ogy asks what's the difference between hopeful or what those feelings are. But ic and memory. That's a beginning. exalting and depressing thoughts

I can try to understand why you act un- They check themselves with proce- such that now you can have one and der certain circumstances as though dures already out of the user's control. not the other—how the brain thinks. you are hungry or hopeful. That's op- If you could have more of a dialogue Omni: What about the Japanese?

erational. I can get into that. with them, they might begin to tell you Hopfield: They are a real force in the' Omni: Everything we feel can be re- in what sense they don't feel well. field. They feel they have a language duced to engineering? Omni: Won't emotions be complicated problem, that the world is not going to Hopfield: Some things described as feel- to build in? learn Japanese, and that they'd be at

ings can be operationally reduced to Hopfield: Operationally, emotions less of a disadvantage if they could engineering. But what we feel is diffi- would be relatively simple to construct. speak Japanese at one end of a tele- cult. Specific drugs are known to result It's only seif-dialogue that's hard. The phone and have English come out the in a feeling of pleasure. We even under- present state of emotion in biology is other. And vice versa. They see artifi- stand the molecular sites to which they very provocative. Depression, for in- cial neural systems as an important ap- bind. This does not answer the ques- stance, has biochemical symptoms. But proach to this problem. tion, "What is pleasure?" that leaves totally unanswered the ques- Many of their electronics companies Omni: So future computers or robots tion of mechanisms by which depress- have small neural biology groups and may not show consciousness but will ing thoughts are caused by a chemi- are working on the same problems we show some consequences of emo- cal state. Nobody in biology really are. The Japanese and Chinese are spe- tions? Perhaps awareness of emotions? works on that. Marvelous topic. cifically working on software to recog- Hopfield: Nobody has dealt with artifi- Researchers working on ways of treat- nize kanji, or written characters. There cial neural networks that make meas- ing depression do it in the sense of the are two Japanese alphabets: phonetic urements of themselves. If a network auto mechanic who tells you that a nor- and real pictographs. In one direction, wh onnrui -from onnaii books ormrui Each volume includes tt'tx original dtoriej and nnrui four reprint*from Omni Magazine Best Science Best Science Fiction One the Omni Bo! Science Jictim, checked below Fiction Two Omni Best Science Fiction One ($8.95)_ With tttorUtt by 1 LO. Omnic Best Science Fiction Two (SS.95}_ With ,itorie,t by • Elizabeth A. Lynn Shipping and handling (S2 U.S., $4 Canada S6 Other)_ • Lucius Shepard

Ned Barrett, Jr. Sales Tax. Residents of NY.NC and NJ add Tom Maddox Richard Kadrey appropriate sales tax. Canadian orders add 7% GST._ Gregg Kelzer Tom Maddox TOTAL_ George R-R- Martin Bruce McAllister Name Bruce McAllister Ad d ress Robert Silverberg Pat Cadigan City _State_ -2p_ Paul Park Maggie Flinn Check Money Order Visa jack Dann Credit Card Number Dan Simmons j.R. Dunn Signature Garry Ki I worth

Suzy McKee Chamas til to: Omni Books Elizabeth Hand c/oCCC 2500 McClellan Ave. Pennsauken, NJ 08109 tncy'd liKc a systc^- to reac -.vi iting. c-nd in the other direction, to type. At pre- SACRED sent, it's slow to type with a thousand symbols, so they'd like to type phonet- ically and have these symbolic char- ing. "That one, Jackie. That one is spe- acters appear correctly in context. cial, yaar. It's a smasheroo, Jackie. An Omni: What about military applications 9 ultrahit! Bloody champagne and flower Hopfield: There's promise in aspects of garlands here, Jackie boy. It's big, pattern recognition tor feature surveil- Mega." lance where millions of pictures are "You liked the Moon, eh," Jackie shot to monitor missiles in other coun- said, stunned. tries. People are not going to look at all "Love the Moon. Love all that non- those photos. You want to select by sense." fast pattern recognition the 1 percent "I did hear about your brother's gov- most relevant. er niner :apponf— era Corgratulatons." Omni: Star Wars stuff? Goldie chuckled. "Bloody hell, Jack- Hopfield: There are much more exciting ie. You're the fourth fellow today to ways to spend technological money. Sim- make that silly misfake. That Vachcha- ple pattern recognition. Why should you ni fellow in aeronautics, he's not my have to pay attention on the freeway? brother. My brother's a bloody contrac- You could probably teach your dog to tor; he builds bloody houses, Jackie. drive adequately on the freeway under This other Vachchani, he's some scien-

; most circumstances. Why can't neural lis: egghead ollow. That Moon stuff is nets do the early part of the visual proc- stuoic cazy, i: will never happen." He essing well enough so that a digital ~3.- laughed, then dropped his voice. "The chine could finish it, off—keep you on fourth one is shit, Jackie. Women's the road, not running into the car ahead weepies are a drug on the bloody mar- of you, and staying in lane? ket this season, you rascal. Send me Omni: in computer chess, why nof something funny next time. A bloody build the best players you can and get dance comedy." them to play each other and learn to be- "Will do," Jackie said. come the best by playing hundreds of "This girl Betty," Goldie'said. "She thousands of. games? likes to work?"

Hopfield: In theory, you could do it if the "Yes.'' networks were sullieicn'ly complex. But "She's a party girl, too?" then your game is tailored around your op- "You might say so." INTRODUCING THE ponent's. I've hoa'd aoout the proo em in "I want to meet this Betty. You send humans. Two brothers played only with her here on the very next train, No, an OMNI EMPORIUM each other and didn't develop chess as aeroplane, hang the cost. And that OMNI now offers direct marketers a it's normally played. They both learned soundtrack man too. My kids love that product showcase custom tailored to an abnormal, highly stylized game, and damned ugly music. If the kids love it, their special advertising needs. clobbered there's in it." they could be by anybody money Reaching nearly 4 million readers, the playing normal chess. "I need them both, Goldie. For my "OMNI EMPORIUM" will consist of Omni: Your father was always thinking next feature. Got them under contract, small space classified ads. physics-, wasn't he? yaar." Display rates:

Hopfield: One day I was with Father, row- Goldie paused. Jackie waited him $700 for 2-1/8" X 1" ad ing on a' river with one of my older sis- out. to $1,950 for 1/6 ad ters. Her one-year-old child stood up in "You got a little tax trouble, Jac

would say that I tend to be overly ra- ty tonight for every bloody soul, and the tional. There is always the question in bill is on Jackie Amar!" He whooped life as to the balance between rational aloud. "If you're not drunk and danc- Maria Manaseri and emotional reactions. A totally ra- ing tonight, then you're no friend of Phone/Fax: tional outlook can be very unsaisfac mine! My God everybody' My God, but 516-757-9562 tory. Life needs poetry. DQ life is good." DO GAMES

FLOATING TIME: What really makes the hourglass tick

By Scot Morris

in at the bottom, greater surface area. "It's Last September, I pre- glass's neck. But most denser then sented a puzzling object: an this category thought the the denser liquid is at the the same principle that hourglass thai floats at the- heat warms the air in the top when the tube is turned ises a snow cone to pop of its top of a liquid-filled tube glass, making it expand over. It eventually seeps out cup when you (below left). Turn the tube slightly and then rise. down below the hourglass squeeze the bottom," ex- over and the glass remains More than 50 readers and buoys it up. plained D. A. N. of at the bottom (below right) thought that the hourglass A surprising number Tillamook, Oregon, of this puzzle, until about half of its sand was flexible. Some rea- thought it's all an illusion. "It The beauty has fallen from the top soned that when the sand just takes a long time for the as I said in September, is compartment to the bottom. presses down from the top, hourglass to get started," that it can be solved by the liquid thinking about it. It requires Then it slowly ascends to the hourglass widens and perhaps because no touching. readers the top, where it rests until wedges itself into the is very viscous, wrote one Wise the cycle is repeated. cylinder. Others decided reader. "The hourglass, as a knew they could rule out any is system, is rising from the ulution they could easily I asked readers to send in that the hourglass flexible theories explaining the only at the ends. "The top moment the column is check if they had one of phenomenon. As of this and bottom of the hourglass inverted," argued P. T. of these contraptions in their California. They hands. Pure gamesmanship writing, I have received 415 are so thin as to sag under Glendale, correct answers. (The cor- the weight of the sand," concentrated on the air should rule out special rect answer appears at the wrote B. G of Los Altos bubble that constantly rises, technologies— if the answer end of this article.) But 618 Hills, California. "When first in the hourglass and relied on some new kind of sent incorrect theories of at enough sand falls into the then in the tube. flexible glass or an unusual

liquid,- it wouldn't have been least 15 different types. To bottom chamber, it 'bub- Many believed the air at fair minimize embarrassment to bles' the bottom end out, the top of the hourglass lifts i puzzle to ask readers, of the Games any of my much-appreciat- increasing the hourglass's it to the top of the tube. Ray Bathke air Puzzles shop in London, ed readers, I'll give the volume," reasoned D. Q. of "When enough reaches & names of these creative Richmond Hill, Ontario, the top chamber and exerts who builds the hourglasses, "3 quite authors only if they've won Canada. its pressure there, the me he uses the promised' prizes. Many correspondents hourglass begins to rise." ordinary components. Dis- About 40 percent of -those blamed the "impact" of wrote T H. of Chapel Hill, tilled water with a drop of readers with incorrect an- falling sand for keeping the North Carolina. About 4 disinfectant added to pre- swers cited heat as a factor glass down. Some even percent of those who wrote vent algae growth fills the in the hourglass's behavior. used mathematical formulas in thought that the shape of tube. He makes the Falling sand generates heat, to show how much force a the hourglass affected its hourglass from ordinary they said. sand grain exerted, first on buoyancy. glass, custom blown to Some- ar- the bottom of the glass and When the specific proportions, and gued that later on a mound of other fills it with common air and this warms sand grains. The theory may sand. He carefully measures the surround- be correct, but the calcula- the weight and volume of ing liquid tions have to also consider each glass and then so the hour- [he amount of time each calculates the weight of glass stays grain of sand is falling and sand needed, to within a down until weightless; the two tiny hundredth of a gram, to the liquid opposing forces exactly make that particular glass cools cancel each other out. just barely float in room- again; oth- Movements within the sys- temperature water. ers, that the tem don't alter the weight of Now for the answer: The hourglass the system. inverted hourglass has sand floats up Another line of reasoning on top and air on the with the put the emphasis on the bottom. It is top-heavy, or pocket of liquid; "The solution is in the bottom -buoyant, so it wants warm liquid solution!" wrote H. W. of to flip over. It presses surround- Coweta, Oklahoma. If the against the sides of the ing the liquid is naturally cooler and tube, wedging itself in, and 96 OMNI CONTINUED ON RAGE 71