Just thought I'd be a breath of fresh air and give a capsule review of a book from 1990, "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition" by Ed Regis. On top of having the best title in the last ten years, Regis showcases those areas of science normally seen as crackpottish (but we know what REAL crackpots are, don't we?), such as cryonics, nanotech, private enterprise space flight, L5, terraforming, solar seeding, mind downloading, cloning, etc. It's great to see "kooks" who are just slightly on the fringe instead of way past it. The true common thread runnign through the chapters is the attitude, in Regis' words, of "fin-de-siecle hubristic mania" -- the idea that man will someday have total dominion over the universe through steady advances in science.
Nathan Shumate
Fringe Benefit Analysts, Inc.
"Si hoc signum legere potes, operis in rebus
Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes."