-----Original Message-----
From: Schmidt Mickey Civ 50 TS/CC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, March 15, 2001 12:13 PM
Subject: RE: Gadfry!
>
>Years ago, more than i wish think of there was a sf book two stories in one
>sort of thing. I don't remember the author, I'm sure Bruce and Jayme will.
>The stories were Waldo and Magic Inc. Waldo was a person in space because
of
>health problems. It was one of the first stories I remember where the idea
>of being in space was for people who had a hard time on earth. In
addition
>the fact that humans are beginning to think about and develope skills
>relating to genetic modification I'm sure the topic of genetically altering
>life forms, even humans for survial in space has been considered.
>
>Mickey
I do indeed -- it was none other than Robert Heinlein, two of his most
famous stories from the mid-Forties. (In fact, that one story put "waldo"
permanently into the engineering vocabulary as a nickname for
remote-operated mechanical arms.)
As for genetic engineering to deal with weightlessness, Poul Anderson (yet
again) used it as a key plot element in his just-completed sequence of four
novels: "Harvest of Stars", "The Stars are Also Fire", "Harvest the Fire",
and "The Fleet of Stars". These are not my favorites among his books, but
they do include some clever things. Those include the plot idea that, after
humans proved unable to bring babies successfully to term in the low lunar
gravity, genetic modification produced humans that could -- but the genetic
changes in this new artificial species of "Lunarians" also turned out to
modify their personalities by making them solitary to the point of
borderline sociopathy.
Bruce Moomaw
==
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