The Future Of Being Human And Other Essays

What will humans be like in the future? According to science fiction author Sylvia Engdahl, they will be no different from what they're like now. There will be many innovations in technology and ways of daily life, but people are people, wherever and whenever they happen to live, and that's not going to change. In this book Engdahl departs from the theme of space colonization on which her past essays (available in her book From This Green Earth) have focused, and discusses such topics as artificial intelligence, "paranormal" psi powers, healthcare policy, and the coming loss of personal privacy. Her controversial views on these subjects will inspire thought about what the future is likely to bring.

The Jamaican writer and cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter is best known for her diverse writings that pull together insights from theories in history, literature, science, and black studies, to explore race, the legacy of colonialism, and representations of humanness. Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis is a critical genealogy of Wynter’s work, highlighting her insights on how race, location, and time together inform what it means to be human. The contributors explore Wynter’s stunning reconceptualization of the human in relation to concepts of blackness, modernity, urban space, the Caribbean, science studies, migratory politics, and the interconnectedness of creative and theoretical resistances. The collection includes an extensive conversation between Sylvia Wynter and Katherine McKittrick that delineates Wynter’s engagement with writers such as Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. DuBois, and Aimé Césaire, among others; the interview also reveals the ever-extending range and power of Wynter’s intellectual project, and elucidates her attempts to rehistoricize humanness as praxis.

When starship captain Jesse Sanders is detained by a dictatorial medical regime on the colony planet Undine, he is plunged into a life involving ordeals and joys unlike anything he has ever imagined.

Much has been said about the positive effect of the photos of Earth obtained by Apollo 8, which for the first time showed our planet as a globe, a fragile refuge amid barren surroundings, and thereby launched the environmental movement. The negative impact--the subconscious apprehension resulting from realization that space is an actual place containing little that's familiar to us and perhaps much that we'd rather not meet--is not spoken of. But it may be no less significant. Could this be one of the reasons why widespread interest in space died so soon after the first moon landing? For the past fifty years space advocates have been puzzled and frustrated by the slowness of progress in space and the failure of the public to grasp its importance not only to the future of humankind, but to the preservation of Earth's environment. But is it really cause for discouragement? In this book Sylvia Engdahl argues that in the light of history, it's not surprising that acceptance of a new outlook on the universe is slow. All past human advances have been made by visionary minorities without the support of their contemporaries, and our transformation into a spacefaring species will be no exception. This book also includes all of Engdahl's earlier essays about space, such as "Space and Human Survival," which has been popular on the Web for nearly twenty years, plus new ones about the priority of Mars and the question of whether we'll ever meet hostile aliens. In addition, an Epilogue contains the quotations from her Web page "Space Quotes to Ponder" about why a presence in space is vital to humankind. X-Ray is enabled and includes biographical information about all the quotation authors as well as the people mentioned in the essays.

As captain of his own starship Estel, Terry Steward, born Terry Radnor, is committed to spreading acceptance of psi powers and other advanced mind capabilities throughout the colonies of humankind. Barred from contact with his beloved planet Maclairn, he now journeys from world to world, heralding the hopeful future about which he alone knows the full truth. But the opponents of mind-powers are gaining strength, and on Earth the persecution of people who develop such abilities is increasing. Soon targeted by bounty hunters, Terry risks everything that matters to him in a desperate attempt to defeat Maclairn's enemies, not guessing that if he lives long enough, he is destined for an even greater role in human history than he has played as a defender of its cause.

Interest in exoplanets--the worlds of other stars--is not new. From the late 17th century until the end of the 19th, almost all educated people believed that the stars are suns surrounded by inhabited planets--a belief that was expressed not in science fiction, but in serious speculation, both scientific and religious, as well as in poetry. Only during the first half of the 20th century was it thought that life-bearing exoplanets are rare. This is not a science book--rather, it belongs to the category known as History of Ideas. First published by Atheneum in 1974, it tells the story of the rise, fall, and eventual renewal of widespread conviction that we are not alone in the universe. In this 2012 updated edition the chapters dealing with modern speculation have been revised to reflect the progress science has made during the past 40 years, including the actual detection of planets orbiting other stars. However, it is not intended to be more than a brief introduction to today's views; its focus is on little-known facts about those of the past. Why should we care what our forebears believed? Now, the question of ET life is a matter for investigation by science. Yet it's significant that most educated people of past centuries were convinced that other inhabited worlds exist, without any scientific evidence whatsoever. This historical fact reveals that human beings have an instinctive sense of kinship with the wider universe and a desire to see the realms that lie beyond this one small planet--and perhaps, eventually, to go there. Our ancestors conceived of such voyages only in a spiritual sense, as occurring after death. But we who have taken our first small steps into space are aware that our descendants may set foot on the worlds of other suns. Just as in the 17th century people were initially upset by the new knowledge that the stars are suns scattered in space rather than lights fixed to a nearby sphere, the growing awareness that Earth is not safely isolated from whatever lies beyond makes many of our contemporaries uneasy. Thus today's predominant feelings about spaceships are ambivalent. Nevertheless, if an impulse toward belief that we are not alone in the universe is indeed an innate characteristic of human beings, as the past spread of belief in inhabited exoplanets suggests, we can be sure that those who follow us will not turn back from becoming spacefarers.

Melinda Ashley has a plan for her life, and a trip to Mars isn't part of it. When she receives a spaceliner ticket as a high school graduation gift from her dad, she is dismayed, but reluctantly agrees to go with him--in part because she's infuriated by her fiance's high-handed declaration that she can't. Her outlook begins to change when she meets Alex Preston, a second-generation Martian colonist who is going home after college on Earth. Alex believes settling Mars is important. He's looking forward to the role he expects to play in the colony's future. Melinda finds this hard to understand, yet she is more and more drawn to him and, while on Mars, to his family. Torn between what she has always wanted and upsetting new feelings, she wonders if she can ever again be content. It takes tragedy and a terrifying experience on the Martian moon Phobos to make her aware of what really matters to her.

An omnibus edition containing the complete trilogy This Star Shall Abide (known in the UK as Heritage of the Star), Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, and The Doors of the Universe. Noren can see that his world is not as it should be--it is wrong that only the Scholars, and their representatives the Technicians, can use metal tools and Machines. It's wrong that only those few have access to the impenetrable City, which he has always longed to enter. Above all, it is wrong for the Scholars to have sole power over the distribution of knowledge. Unable to believe in the Prophecy that promises these restrictions will someday end, he declares it to be a fraud and defies the High Lew under which they are enforced. His family and the girl to whom he is betrothed reject him. Yet he cannot turn back from the path that leads him to the mysterious fate awaiting heretics. But the more he learns of the grim truth about his people's deprivations, the less possible it seems that their world can be changed. And once he discovers what really happened in their past, he becomes convinced that it is up to him to restore their rightful heritage. To do so, however, will mean giving up all else that matters to him, for it will demand more drastic steps than anyone has imagined.