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02 Apr 08

CG Jung Page - The Birth of the Bomb: Leo Szilard

  • Shortly before his intuition about an atomic bomb, Leo Szilard had been reading The World Set Free by H. G. Wells--a novel about a German invasion of France and the use of atomic bombs in a global war, a novel written in 1913 but set in the 21st century. Wells called his radioactive element Carolinum: "once its degenerative process had been induced, [Carolinum] continued a furious radiation of energy, and nothing could arrest it." In 1913, Wells was already writing about radioactive decay, half-lives, burning cities, even about deforestation, diminishing supplies of coal and oil, and the rush toward bankruptcy. And he inspired Szilard. Wells wrote--and Szilard read--of the final achievement of a world government and the abolition of atomic weapons--the "world set free." "The catastrophe of atomic bombs shook men...," Wells wrote, "out of their old-established habits of thought." And it was H.G. Wells who gave us the phrase, "a war to end all war."
31 Mar 08

The War of the Worlds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • Wells depicts the Martians firing spacecraft to Earth from a giant space gun, a common representation of space travel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, bearing similarity to the modern spacecraft propulsion concept of mass drivers.
  • Military theorists of that era had many speculations of building a "fighting-machine" or "land dreadnought" (as the Royal Navy called this hypothetical machine on which some experiments were made just before the First World War). Wells's concept of the Martian tripods, fast-moving and equipped with Heat-Rays and black smoke, represents an ultimate end to these speculations, although Wells also presents a less fantastical depiction of the armoured fighting vehicle in his short story "The Land Ironclads". [1] [2]
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Childhood's End - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • The idea of humanity reaching an end point through transformation to a higher form of existence is the main idea behind the concept of the Omega Point and of the technological singularity.

2001: A Space Odyssey (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • Space Exploration

    When 2001: A Space Odyssey was written, mankind had not yet set foot on the moon. The space exploration programs in the United States and the Soviet Union were only in the early stages. Much room was left to imagine the future of the space program. Space Odyssey offers one such vision, offering a glimpse at what space exploration might one day become. Lengthy journeys, such as manned flights to Saturn, and advanced technologies, such as suspended animation, are shaped and shown all through the novel.

Dune (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • He took a plane to Florence, Oregon, where the USDA was sponsoring a lengthy series of experiments in using poverty grasses to stabilize and slow down the damaging sand dunes, which could "swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, highways."[5] Herbert's article on the dunes, "They Stopped the Moving Sands," was never completed (and only published decades later in an incomplete form in The Road to Dune), but it sparked Herbert's interest in the general subject of ecology and related matters.
  • The CHOAM corporation is the major underpinning of the Imperial economy, with shares and directorships determining each House's income and financial leverage.
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Blade Runner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Star Trek - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jules Verne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before air travel and practical submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised.
  • Verne, along with H. G. Wells, is often popularly referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction".[1]
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Fahrenheit 451 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • It is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society, written in the early years of the Cold War.
  • Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship; he states that Fahrenheit 451 is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which ultimately leads to ignorance of total facts.[3]
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The Illustrated Man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    • To be perused more completely later; a few of the stories point to current trends in child care's and foreign relations' respective relationships to technology. - on 2008-03-31
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  • "The Veldt" — Two parents use an artificial "nursery" to keep their children happy. The children use the high-tech simulation nursery to create the predatorial environment of an African veldt. When the parents threaten to take it away, the children lock their parents inside where they are mauled and killed by the "harmless" machine-generated lions of the nursery.
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JSTOR: English Journal: Vol. 79, No. 3, p. 39

    • Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN as the earliest (non-mythological, fantastic, mystic, etc.) example of man creating life via science. - on 2008-03-31
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JSTOR: Ethics: Vol. 84, No. 3, p. 249

    • Plato's perspective on "moral agency"; if a human being could be entirely reduced to formulas of action-reaction (etc.) and contain a moral center, so could a technological reproduction (robot). - on 2008-03-31
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Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: Isaac Asimov (Toronto Star)

  • Dr. Asimov, 65, is a severe critic of Star Wars. "I'm
    against it, not because I'm a science-fiction writer, and
    therefore have special knowledge, but because I like to think I'm
    a sane human being."


    He believes Star Wars is a dangerous waste of money.
    "They're talking about spending $33 billion on research related
    to Star Wars. We're going to withdraw money from needed aspects
    of developing knowledge in order to set up something that
    probably won't work and even if it does work, won't do us any
    good."

  • Part of the problem with Star Wars is that it will take
    years to develop. "If I were the Soviet Union, I would have
    spent all this time trying to work up methods to penetrate the
    shield," said Asimov, who was born in Russia but grew up in New
    York. "I have a strong suspicion it would be cheaper to
    penetrate the shield than to set it up.


    "And if we're in real danger of a nuclear war now, trying to
    set up something for the middle of the 21st century isn't going
    to do us any good. In fact, by filling us full of false
    confidence, we're not going to make a strong enough effort to
    prevent war now."

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