Analog Science Fiction And Fact - June 2014 (29 page)

This whole cluster of ideas is old hat to
Analog
readers, but virtually unknown to the mundane world. Barrat does a fine job of presenting the basic concepts in an entertaining and accessible way, and it's well worth following his account of how the scientific and defense communities are working through concerns about the threats that AI presents.

Far more interesting to the SF reader are the final chapters, in which Barrat deals with safety measures and defenses. It's definitely interesting to see current-day technologists addressing the concerns that have occupied SF's heroes for so many years.

Now my MacBook, Quislet (who is definitely artificial but nowhere as intelligent as it thinks it is) tells me that I've come to the end of my space, so that's it. See you next time.

Don Sakers is the author of
The Eighth Succession
and
Dance for the Ivory Madonna,
both of which feature AIs. For more information, visit
www.scatteredworlds.com.

Dear Mr. Quachri,

In your essay "On Genre" you cite
Analog's
publishing guidelines as being: "stories in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if the aspect were removed, the story would collapse." I believe that either some aspect of these guidelines, or your interpretation of them, is at odds with the publication of stories that are interesting on a noncerebral level. I am reminded of Juliette Wade's "The Liars," which appeared in your October 2012 issue, the story that convinced me to buy a subscription to this magazine. I do not believe that this story would have ever passed under your "iron fist," (meant in the best way possible, of course) and into my juvenile library.

The story of an alien people that have adapted to the stress of contact with another by taking it out on a select group of their own people probably dates back to the first contact between our Homo-sapien ancestors and the now extinct Neanderthals! The science fiction aspect only serves to make the topic relevant to the modern age. I can think of a million other examples, but I think this one from your own magazine makes the point strongly enough that your guidelines desperately need revision. I suggest mine: "stories that contain some aspect of future science or technology that serves—in some meaningful way—the plot." I realize that this publication has been outwardly a member of the "hard" science fiction community, but remember that modern readers have no
New Worlds
type magazine to turn to, besides maybe your slightly more moderate sister magazine
Asimov's,
and this is a very small step indeed toward the "New Wave" that I am asking. I encourage you to look at some of your favorite SF stories and see how they hold up under your harsh guidelines.

Also, speaking of hard SF, I would like to mention a lapse of scientific accuracy that has come to my attention. it is: the situation described in Carl Frederick's "Fear of Heights in the Tower of Babel" is nigh impossible, given the method of modern A.I. technology. A.I.s are no longer "programed" per se, and it is a grave error to say that these translating machines (which we do have today by the way, in the guise of Google Translate) were "programmed by different people." In fact, these strange creatures are self-taught the ways of language by being allowed to browse huge databases of words on the inter-net. For an in-depth article (and incredible writing inspiration, which I myself have not taken on yet) I urge you to consult the August 10-16 issue of
New Scientist.
Look for "Not Like Us: we are creating minds that no human can understand." The closest literary parallel to this that I relate is David Gerrold's "The God Machine," although I am no scholar and other fans can probably think of better analogies.

Tobias Banks

You make a good point, Tobias. I don't quite think we're going to revise our guidelines just yet, but it's worth remembering that they're just that—guides. They're not physical, inviolate laws of the universe, even if it's important that we at least aim for them as a goal. Sometimes good stories that don't fit them perfectly are going to rear their heads, and that's not a bad thing."The Liars" appeared at the end of Stan Schmidt's tenure as editor, and it would absolutely have been a shame if he'd passed on it because he was applying the guidelines too stringently.

Dear Editor,

In regard to H. G. Stratmann's guest editorial ["Does Medicine Have a Future?"] in the November 2013 issue, he briefly referred to Canada's single payer system as being characterized by "high overall tax rates for medical care that is 'free' when needed... can be plagued by long waiting lists for 'nonemergency' testing and operations, rationing of the mostly costly procedures and issues regarding quality of care..."

As Dr. Stratmann knows, all systems have their limitations. All systems ration health care. In America, it's done by not providing it to millions of people, though that may be changing. However, I would point out that Canadians, overall, express a much higher satisfaction rate (about 75%) with their health care system than Americans do. In such discussions, I always find that there is also a neglect of the
advantages
of such systems.

One is efficiency. In the USA admisitration costs soak up about 31% of healthcare dollars, but in Canada it's about 17%. This is partly due to the much simplified billing and payment system, where the Canadian provinces are the single insurer. There are no complicated forms to be filled out by large billing departments. A surgical procedure here generates a bill of about one page, covering doctors, hospitals, nurses, supplies, etc. With multiple insurers in the States, doctors billing seperately and so on, many documents are generated, all in the different formats demanded by each insurer. Many years ago, Walter Cronkite did a special on this, matching a hospital in Vancouver with one in San Francisco. The billing department in San Francisco consisted of about three hundred people in a five-story office building. In Vancouver, twenty people performed the same function, mainly for visiting out-of-province patients. I do not think that this has changed much since then.

More telling, though, is the more consistent preventative medicine that can be practiced when most people have access to personal physicians and aren't afraid of the possible costs of a visit to the doctor for a checkup. A case in point is prenatal care. In Canada, almost all expectant mothers receive prenatal care. This results in an infant mortality rate far lower than in the USA, 4.7/1000 (rank 22nd) vs. 7.1/1000 (rank 43rd). This also doesn't take into account the number of children requiring neonatal intensive care, which is far, far more expensive than prenatal care (hundreds of thousands to as much as a million dollars for intensive care against a few hundred dollars for prenatal).

The much lower rate of homicide in Canada, especially by gun, is not medically related but is a significant difference in health costs.

Canadian physicians and nurses can move to the USA and begin working immediately. Their high level of training is basically the same as American health care providers and they are highly sought after by recruiters from south of the border. So their "quality" is at least equal to American trained. This is not to take away the innovation and progress driven by the system in the states. This is a resource that all other countries depend on. Our population of thirty million or so, in a country larger than the 48 states, makes it hard to compete. Yet Canadian universities and hospitals are deeply involved in medical research and innovation.

There are pros and cons to all systems, in every country. We should try to take what is best from each and contrive a system of delivering help and support to everyone, in a way that works locally as well as nationally.

Mark Fagan Toronto, Canada

P.S. I've tried to confirm these figures, with fairly quick Google searches. I believe they are representative, if not totally accurate and current.

Dear Jeffrey Kooistra,

What a delight it was to read your "Alternate View" column in the September2013 issue on the twenty-fifth anniversary of
Mirror Matter,
the book Robert Forward and I coauthored. It certainly didn't occur to me, back then, that anyone would be sending any kind of twenty-fifth anniversary shout-out. So thanks!

I found your comments about the book, its "predictions" and what has transpired in the last quarter-century to be pretty much on target. I concur with your quibble about the subtitle—it should have been "Pioneering Antimatter Technology." But we went along with the suggestion from the publisher, and didn't think about it afterwards. So it goes.

Bob and I had no concerns about the physics in the book—he knew his stuff, and antimatter propulsion was a topic he stayed interested in the rest of his life. True, he had turned his main focus in the years following the book's publication to other space-related technologies, particularly the uses of tethers. But we were talking about the book and its subject matter the last time we met over dinner, about a year before his death.

And the social science/history crystal ball-gazing? Eh. We kinda went with our dreams. We could hope! And we did. History has a way of going off in directions no one expected. Sometimes it's better than we hoped for, sometimes it's worse.

So: "To get to a
Mirror Matter
future will require the setting of the goal to actually make it happen." Spot-on, sir. That may never happen. I devoutly hope it will, as did Bob. He would have been delighted to see the rocket equation made obsolete!

Joel Davis

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TREVOR QUACHRI........................................
Editor

EMILY HOCKADAY.........................
Editorial Assistant

MARY GRANT................................
Editorial Assistant

DEANNA MCLAFFERTY......
Editorial Admin Assistant

JAYNE KEISER............................
Typesetting Director

SUZANNE LEMKE.........
Assistant Typesetting Manager

KEVIN DORIS................
Senior Typesetting Coordinator

VICTORIA GREEN........................
Senior Art Director

CINDY TIBERI..................................
Production Artist

LAURA TULLEY................
Senior Production Manager

JENNIFER CONE.......................
Production Associate

ABIGAIL BROWNING................................
Manager, Subsidiary Rights and Marketing

TERRIE POLY.....................
Digital Publishing Manager

SANDY MARLOWE......................
Circulation Services