Gregory Benford
Gregory Benford
Gregory Benfordis an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is also a contributing editor of Reason magazine...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 January 1941
CountryUnited States of America
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The simplest way to remove carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, is to grow plants - preferably trees, since they tie up more of the gas in cellulose, meaning it will not return to the air within a season or two. Plants build themselves out of air and water, taking only a tiny fraction of their mass from the soil.
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Electromagnetic theory and experiment gave us the telephone, radio, TV, computers, and made the internal combustion engine practical - thus, the car and airplane, leading inevitably to the rocket and outer-space exploration.
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Science fiction writers didn't predict the fade-out of NASA's manned space operations, and they weren't prepared with alternative routes to space when that decline became undeniable.
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The thing that most critics miss about Faulkner is that his famous storytelling voice is, in fact, a standard Southern storytelling voice that is typical of the Gulf Coast - Mississippi, Alabama and so on.
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Terraforming our moon will take many decades and vast abilities. Before we can begin, we'll have to master the resources of our solar system - especially transporting raw masses over interplanetary distances.
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Seeing the space future through science fiction can be difficult. Much science fiction of the early era, the 1950s through the '70s, took an expansionist view.
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At the end of the day, I sit down for about five minutes and review all the problems I'm working on, research problems or writing problems, and I go to sleep. Then when I wake up in the morning, I've trained myself to not open my eyes and to just lie there and recall the problems and see if there's anything there.
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DNA sequencing opens vast ethical issues. We shall be able to know who has defective genes. What will it mean when we can be sure we're not all born equal? Worked out, the implications will scare a lot of people. Insurance companies will not want to cover those with a genetic predisposition to illness, for example. Here lurk myriad lawsuits.
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Dinner at college high table is one of the legendary experiences of England. I could remember keenly each one I had attended; the repartee is sharper than the cutlery.
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Very little useful science got done in the space station. NASA never did the experiments needed to develop the technologies required for a genuine interplanetary expedition: centrifugal gravity to avoid bodily harm and a truly closed biosphere.
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Like the ocean, land plants hold about three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. While oceans take many centuries to exchange this mass with the air, flora take only a few years.
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Will searching for distant messages work? Is there intelligent life out there? The SETI effort is worth continuing, but our common-sense beacons approach seems more likely to answer those questions.
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Virtuality - connection without proximity - is a major attraction in both fandom and the Net. Nobody knows you're a dog through the U.S. mail, either. Fans could be utterly different in their fanzine persona, which may be why both fandom and the Net were invented by individualistic Americans.
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We have a name for people who create universes - they're called gods. There is no greater hubris than to think that we could take the place of godlike implications.