SCHOLARS: BY ARTHUR C BLUEPRINT CLARKE FORABIONIC SOCIETY BERLITZ: THE UFO CONTROVERSY IN FRANCE THE UNIQUE YOU: WHY NO TWO OF US ARE ALIKE A NEW NOVEL FROMEUROPES BEST-KNOWN SF AUTHOR onnrui EDITOR 8. DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE EXECUTIVE EDITOR: BEN BOVA ART DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO MANAGING ED:"OR: J. ANDERSON DORMAN !-';: ION EDITOR ROBERT SHECKLEY RIRQPEAN EDI "OR DR. BERNARD DIXON DIRECTOR O- -OVER: I SING, EEVERI..L-Y WARDALE EXECUTIVE VinE-PRL-SIDE\~. IRWIN E. BILLMAN CONTENTS PAGE FIRST WORD Opinion Ben Bova 6 COMMUNICATIONS Correspondence 10 FORUM Dialogue 12 EARTH Environment Kenneth B rower 14 LIFE Biomedicine Bernard Dixon 18 SPACE Comment JohnGribbin 20 MIND Behavior Renee Fuller 22 MUSIC/FILM The Arts 26 UFO UPDATE Report Charles Berlitz 32 CONTINUUM Data Bank 35, TELEPRESENCE Article Marvin Minsky 44 RETURN FROM THE STARS Fiction Stanislaw Lem 54 THE UNIQUE YOU Article Richard Hutton and Zsolt Harsanyi 62 EARTH SCANS Pictorial Charles Sheffield 68 ELECTRONIC TUTORS Article Arthur C. Clarke 76 HARRISON SGHMITT Interview Daniel S. Greenberg 80 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE Pictorial Robert Sheckley 84 MARCHIANNA Fiction Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. 100 PEOPLE Names and Faces Dick Teresi 112 INNOVATIONS New Products 114 EXPLORATIONS Travel Kurt R. Stehling 116 STARS Astronomy MarkR. Chartrand III 123 DEW OPTICS Phenomena Hans Rletschinger 126 GAMES Diversions Scot Morris 128 LAST WORD Opinion Norman Spinrad 130 PHOTO CREDITS 120 ;WN.1DS;l;IS3N0M9-B7l').IJ.S Art/Fit Mir.ha^i Paw.es provided V with this covet art. Omni month's York An untitled work, the oil pat .',,'.' r-.g exemplifies Parkes's rather distinctive flair tor the abstract Born in the UnTfed- Slates, the ar!:s! pamis: mostly from his home in Fuengirola, in southern Spain. 4 OMNi ' ' . '-- usually during -v\ elector yea' ;hai more than NASA's, DOE'svand -NSF.'s seme politician declaims, "Let's ialk entire budgets combined. .sense to' the American people." Uncle. Sam wants to spend your money This is- an election year. In addition to- this way: iai king sense, lets -alk dollars. The Department of Health and .Human- In- particular,- let's look at the dollars Services -(formerly HEW.) will spend the proposed by President Car tor tor the equivalent of the whole NASA budget Fiscal Year 1381 federal budget. every ten days.. The budget message thai the President The Department of -Defense will spend sent to Congi the equal of NASA's budget avery two numbers: a record 361 5 3 billion if spending: a $15:8 billion deficit: a 20 While (NASA accounts' for 1 5 percent of ' peti h mousse :r; miliia: y spending, to a the lotai R&D in me FY 1.981 budget and- Services for i i $208 7 billion 'or ihe Health and Human accounts Departmentof H.ealthand Human another 11 percent of -the R&D monies. Services. Staggering numbers, beyond Defense's R&D budgetis a whopping 46 true Human comprehension. percent of the whole. Any wonder that While ihe numbers of dollar amounts university and industrial scientists end up are so huge as to be virtually meaningless working for the Defense Department? to the average taxpayer, perhaps we can Of course, these are the preliminary. ."'. of ihe ratios, of budget figures. President Carter and make some -sense-out . expenditures' for various .Congress are busily trimming away trying. goods and : services. to produce a balanced budget to fight . , : For example, many scientists have gone inflation. But the ratios within the iotai on record as saying that scientific budget' probably won't change- much-. 'If research fared rather well Jnthe new anything,' NASAand Energy-will be cut' B( budget. The National Science Foundation more deeply than Defense and 'Health. received a budget total ot Si. 148'billion. Critics of the space-program have of pointed cut ii'iai NASA soends bisiions of ±The Department . That is a 15.5 percent increase over last' enough, but Health Human Services year and marks ihe first time'NSF's budget dollars every year. True in and : has climbed above the 51 billion level. relurn-forthose-tax expe.hdiiureswe.'get-. will the spend But ihe consumer price' index jumped the solar system. And compared lowhat on defense and'human-' equivalent of the whole 13.3 percenfin 1979. So NSF is barely we spend : service?. NASA's buogei is picayune, NASA' budget every keeping pace with the inflation 'ale. The Departmen! of Energy received He ore wanlsthe United States to be" ten days Defense will $8.1 billion, am increase of only 4.7' percent weak. militarily, and certainly" a; good deal money, spend the... NASA over the previous year. DOE is actually .of the Defense Department's fl&D m losing ground-to inflation. To make. matters- is going into space hardware. Probably weeks. j 1 budget every two worse, DQE's research and development DOD is already spending more o.n space ' budgel of $5.1 billion is onjy'3.8.percent than NASA can. above last year's. That's still a lot of money, But a strong and vital' civilian space but how are we going to develop the-new effort is crucial to our national economy technologies we need to end our energy and international stature-. Space solve our energy woes if we don't finance the necessary technology can help to research on new ideas? problems and' can. bring about new NASA is also losing ground to inflation. capabilities in communications, Its FY 1981 budget is pegged at £5,7 environmental monitoring, manufacturing, billion, an increase-of only 8.86 percent and other industries. over last year. By far the largest single The .next time, you hear someone expenditure in NASA's budget is for the' complain of "all those billions wasted- on . space shuttle, still perilously behind lis space," remind that person that hundreds original schedule, which is receiving- more of times more money is spent on other ' than $2.68 billion all together. Meanwhile areas of 'thefederal budget - for far less other parts of the NASA budgel are return-. shriveling. The space agency has been And the next time Senator William forced to drop plans for'the Galileo Proxmire, of Wisconsin, tries-id knock the -. spacecraft program, intended for NASA, budget as a "waste of 'the . - , long-term studies of the planet J.upiter and taxpayers'' money." ask nim how he voted- its moons, and tocanc.el development Of on the milk-subsidy bill; a federal the solar- electric propulsion system, which budgetary item dear to the heart of was the key to a fiyby of Halley's Comet Wisconsin's dairy industry. Thefederal and Comet Tem'peJ..2 in 1985. milk subsidy cost the American taxpayer The biggest "gainer" in the new budget" $246,673,000 in FY 1979. The figures for is the Department of Defense-. Not only FY 1980 are not yet available, butthey will does-its overall.budget increase by a hefty undoubtedly be:higher. 20 percent, but its research and Let 'stalk sense-about our tax dollars, development budget of $16,565 biliion is particularly inan election ye.-jr QQ DRJirUII an abandoned darkroom on the executive editor Frank Kendig. Harsanyi is fiction. Cofounderof the Polish Astro- Incampus oi Harvard University young a member of the faculty at Cornell Medical nautical Society and member of the Polish Marvin Minsky took apart a crayfish. He College and is the project director on Cybernetic Association, Lem has written connected its nerves to an electrical genetics research for the U.S. Congres- many books, among them; Solaris, The source and, remarkably, manipulated its sional Office of Technical Assessment. He Cyberaid, and Star Diaries. claws to pick up a pencil and put it in a jar. has coauthored an article on applied Another contributor of fiction Dr. Minsky was unaware at the time that genetics with Hutton for the New York ("Marchanna," page 100) \s Kevin this simple experiment foreshadowed the Times Magazine. O'Donnetl, Jr. Born in 1950, this Cleveland sophisticated robot arms he would later This issue's UFO Update features a native has lived in Seoul, Hong Kong, invent to perform the same sort of tasks. fascinating interview with French Taipei, and New Haven, Connecticut, Today, from his workbench at MIT, the astroscientist Maurice Chatelain. A where he now resides. O'Donnell made his cyberscientist continues to issue visionary staunch believer in UFOs, Chatelain was first short-story sale to Analog in 1973 studies in robolics and artificial intelli- chief scientist for Apollo Communica- and has since appeared in nearly all the gence. His current project involves the tions Data Processing during the Apollo major science-fiction magazines. development of a remote-controlled work program and has worked on the Mercury Our apologies to O'Donnell and John force, which through a series of sensors, and Gemini missions. He holds a master's Keefauver. In our April Omnibus we musclelike electric motors, and feedback degree in physics from the University of inadvertently placed Dale Leifeste's devices will feel and work much like our Paris and has studied space physics at picture of Mr O'Donnell above Mr. own hands. Minsky calls his system the University of Southern California under Keefauver's name. telepresence, and with it, man will Wernhervon Braun. The famed linguist We are proud to present a story by accomplish everything from sate nuclear- Charies Berlitz provides the interview for Arthur C. Clarke (Electronic Tutors, page power generation to the construction Omni. An archaeologist and underwater 76). Mr. Clarke's latest novel, Fountains of and operation of low-cost space stations. explorer, Berlitz is also author of many Paradise, was a Literary Guild alternate, "Telepresence" begins on page 44.