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Omni Magazine TAPPING THE COSMIC FURNACE onnruiJANUARY 1981 EDITOR 8 DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE PRESIDENT & ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: KATHY KEETON EXECUTIVE EDITOR: BEN BOVA ART DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO MANAGING EDITOR: J. ANDERSON DORMAN FICTION EDITOR: ROBERT SHECKLEY EUROPEAN EDITOR: DR. BERNARD DIXON DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING: BEVERLEY WARDALE EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT IRWIN E. BILLMAN ; -."-. !:'!' VI'"- r,:--- i- !.i !! P. I .hi:"!- .i\ll "-T-ANCO ROSSELLINI CONTENTS PAGE FIRST WORD Opinion Robert Anderson 6 OMNIBUS Contributors 8 COMMUNICATIONS Correspondence 10 FORUM Dialogue 14 EARTH Environment Kenneth Brower 20 LIFE Biomedicine Kathleen McAulrffe 22 SPACE Comment Jerry Grey 24 MIND Behavior David Cohen 26 CpNTINUUM Data Bank 29 FUSION ODYSSEY Article Mike Edelhart 38 THE BUSINESS OF FUSION Article R. Bruce McColm 46 FUSION POLITICS Article Daniel S. Greenberg 52 ROBERT BUSSARD Interview K. C. Cole 56 DIVINE ALCHEMIST Pictorial Thomas Weyr 62 ODD MAN OUT Ariicle Philip Hilts 68 BODY BALL Fiction John Keelauver 72 78 APERTURES Pictorial Geoffrey Golson PEOPLE Names and Faces Dick Te resi 84 94 A CAGE FOR DEATH Fiction Ian Watson FILM The Arts Jetf Rovin 99 BOOKS The Arts Marc Kaplan and D R. Bensen 102 STARS Astronomy David K. Lynch 106 PHOTO CREDITS 108 PHOTO CONTEST Competition 112 PERSIAN BRONZE Phenomena Nicholas Hartmann 114 GAMES Diversions Scot Morris 116 LAST WORD Opinion James Randi 118 -- .<}i".-:ie*er:<&) i.'MMI 'na;';:ISSN01-a9-B7--ij. U s V ralLW highly stylized art of The ,i ... .. :| - ." Japanese Kazumasa Nagaiis I II rjoe *& featured on this month's cover. :>pyil!J-it«-:! Vshhgmivrj* Linear, computerlike patterns .* superimposed over realistic i' i.r': _'f.|u,,y ,,,.,, a r landscapes are indicativeof Nagai's unmistakable style, and exemplify Japan's current trend toward surrealism. A OMNI get from here to there And fiction often. raises.false expectations. For example, how can we appreciate the problems . inherent in building the space shuttle after .. :ricted. having mentally ftown in so many fictional expose, radio news spaceships? vesiigative report, each We cannot rationalize the future by iience under Ihere- using history, nor can we fantasize it. There ieor print space. Each will be only one future. And we won't pre- messages in order to dict it, we'll create ft. fan audience whose We create the future by buying it. and Terience are as broad we'll get what we're willing to pay for. ciru'm. As audience sizs We buy the future with our time, pur ge content reliaclsliUie brainpower, and the amount of money we spend on it today If we cut baGk ihe amount of time, intellect, and money that we expend on national defense, the space program, or research and development, we cut back our future. If we want prog- ress in the future, we have te pay for it npw. The less cemmitted we are to creating '.he- future, ;he ess future we create.. FIRST dipnipsimplicih WORD steading, result -By Robert Anderson ctive ing n be divided up i: a compost kPJIedia emotionally reinforce the simple answer while suppressing 01 Simplistic information is tt the insight necessary unable to deal adequately v for a complex ilure-.ar\d profits. canno!de£ "technological society^ afipnship between the iwo. 3 begin to understand this >, we need to consider curre f Mure, and profits. suse two methods to view t jgh historical extrapolation i ily;'we can detect patterns, c Wf j can oraciici wne be m tne year 2000 b n such as energy av£ cal progress, need to imprc Omni magazi forgei about r But that's probably ;vo! rua'-y shows us ho-. Dfl/inJIBU! no question that if fusion "midget" fusion reactors. There's These machines Watson has lectured at universities in works, it will solve the world's could be used up and thrown away like Tanzania and Japan. His first novel, The * energy problems once and tor light bulbs. How does Bussard's midget Embedding, won the French Prix Apollo; all. The real question is, Will it work'' We miracle technology stand up to the big his second. The Jonah Kit, received top understand well enough the physics of a fusion establishment? K. C. Cole provides honors from the British Science Fiction fusion reaction, but time and money must the provocative answers in this month's Association. A novel based assume on the story generous dimensions if fusion is Interview on 56. Cole page is the author 'A Cage for Death" is due in the fall of 1981, ever io demonstrate its potential as an of What Only a Mother Can Tell You About to be entitled Deathhunter. infinite source of safe energy. Mike Having a Baby (Doubleday/Anchor) and Also featured is John Keefauver McCormack agrees. Before he was swept of several guidebooks on scientific ("Body Ball," on page 72). Keefauver has from office by the conservative tide last phenomena. A contributor to, and former had many pieces published in such November 4, Congressman McCormack editor of, Newsday and Saturday Review, periodicals as National Review and Omni. somehow persuaded his colleagues io Cole has also written for the Wew York His work can also be found in several vote for an energy package few of them Times and Glamour. suspense anthologies, including Random even understood Scertists and Private industry's development of House's Hitchcock collections. engineers for years have attempted Io commercial fusion has been but a drop in The visionary genius of fantastic realist harness the power ot the stars, bul only the bucket thus far, yet an increasing Ernst Fuchs is displayed in a gallery of recently have they demonstrated the . number of major firms are plunging in as paintings entitled "Divine Alchemist." possibility of actually building fusion a the program swings from pure physics to Art expert Tom Weyr explores Fuchs's reactor. The former representative from engineering. The end result? A worldwide hypnotic images and subliminal style. Washington State guided a £20 billion fusion economy within 50 years. Former See page 62. program through Congress that guaran- Newsweek writer R. Bruce McColm pro- Princeton's controversial professor tees a fusion reactor within the next 20 years. files the technicians who make it happen Julian Jaynes is profiled by science editor "It's the most important energy in "The Business of Fusion" (page 46). Philip Hilts in "Odd Man Out" (page 68). development since the controlled use of Mike Edelhart's "Fusion Odyssey" (page Hilts, a writer for the Washington Post, has fire," McCormack told science writer Dan 38) depicts a wo'd where limitless energy profiled many big names, including Walter Greenberg in "Fusion Politics" (page 52). has become a way of life. Cities, industry, Cronkiteand David Brinkley. But politics isn't the whole story. The even spacecraft, are powered by fusion Omni was named Best Magazine of 1980. business and the science of fusion form reactors. An associate editor of Omni, and Editor in Chief and Publisher other elements in a composite portending Edelhart has written several books and Boo Guccione was presented a Golden the eventual reality of free energy. ThFs has had articles published in New Times, Scroll Award of Merit for Outstanding month's Omni explores the implica- TV Guide, the Washington Post , Writer's Achievement by the Academy of Science tions of an alternative so profound we'd Digest, and elsewhere. He is also a col- Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films. And our better not letit'pass us by. umnist for TWA's Ambassador magazine. European editor, Bernard Dixon, was "Small is better," says Robert W This month's fiction includes Ian recently honored with the Glaxo Bussard, whose independent company, Watson's "A Cage for Death" (page 94). A Fellowship Award for his column Talking Inesco, wants to build cheap, modular, 1963 graduate of Oxford University, Science, in World Medicine magazine.DQ B OMNI HMBHHHHn HHfflffiJ ETTERS CQnnruiunjicATioai5 Robol Revolution heady problems of overpopulation and A long-time advocate of full unemploy- space colonization. To be fair, of course, ment, I read with great interest James S. Albus does offer the displaced workers Albus's intriguing article "To Pay for the the option of becoming programmers and Future" [October 1980], The potential of factory workers for the very robots that robotics and information-communications displaced them, but such work seems little technologies to free humanity from drudg- improvement over what Albus sees as ery and poverty is wonderful indeed. drudgery in 1980. The problem Mr. Albus addresses is Perhaps most appallingly, Albus fuels crucial to the realization of this potential: our insatiable materialism. He points to Somehow we must change the way we unlimited cheap goods as central to the distribute wealth so that machine- robot revolution. Everything will be so generated profits can be spread around inexpensive, he predicts, that nothing will in an equiiabie manner. I have held jobs be worth repairing, or keeping, or using only because of economic necessity and more than a few times. Disposing of the see nothing noble about working for family car when the ashtrays fill will be money Moreover, consider the waste, commonplace. pollution, and superficiality of lives The robots may becoming. If they are, dedicated to the preservation ol our it's because people are bringing them. present consumer society. If we got Let's fashion technology in the image of down to creating truly durable goods man and woman. Not vice versa. via robotics and translated much of our Rod Ausura hardware into software, we might find that Gaithersburg. Md. much of our present industrial activity exists only to keep people working at dull Still a Burning Issue and dangerous jobs.
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