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    The Science Fiction of Christopher Cameron
    The Science Fiction of Christopher Cameron
    The Science Fiction of Christopher Cameron
    Ebook125 pages2 hours

    The Science Fiction of Christopher Cameron

    By Christopher A. Cameron

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    About this ebook

    Dream your wildest dreams of the future, and read how they end here. Each story is a different style and genre with a massive amount of real science to back it up.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArthur W. Ritchie
    Release dateJul 11, 2017
    ISBN9781370200269
    The Science Fiction of Christopher Cameron

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      Book preview

      The Science Fiction of Christopher Cameron - Christopher A. Cameron

      The Science Fiction

      of Christopher A. Cameron

      By Christopher A. Cameron

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2017 Smokey Mirror Press

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      A Drug Too Good!

      A Beast Too Kind?

      A Peek at the Hand of God!

      Comsat 5, Bringer of Peace!

      DYSON -1 [Formerly IRS – 124]

      From A to B to C!

      Jonah the Great!

      Lysenko Revisited!

      Name Your Poison: Purple?

      Pink? White? Or Cucumber?

      Oh We Ain’t Got No Constant Anymore!

      The Competition!

      The Human Animal!

      The Price of Gold!

      The Problem With Blue!

      The Tontine!

      Time!

      Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow!

      You only Die Twice!

      A DRUG TOO GOOD!

      Next week, Professor Powers said gathering up his lecture notes, Robotics, the Unfulfilled Dream. It was a lecture he would never give.

      What a waste, he mumbled as he left the hall heading for his office. What will I talk about? The hoopla of the 50s and 60s? What did that lead to? A couple of dumb arms that could weld chassis or paint cars in the dark?

      His own work in the field had led to machines of stunning sophistication — when run by humans. The trick was the programming that would meld sensor data with computer logic to perform meaningful work. It didn’t exist.

      For 30 years they’ve been telling us Artificial Intelligence is just around the corner, he thought as he entered his outer office. He stopped a moment to scan the two amazingly human forms that had taken him decades to build. It’s always going to be here tomorrow afternoon, he said patting his robots. How long have I got? he mumbled as he walked into his office to sit at his desk, Five years? Maybe 10? Damned! A lifetime of work down the drain.

      His wife was ill; he was tired; and since his robotics course had been downgraded from an engineering requirement to an open elective its contents had been gutted. Especially the next lecture that he usually began: For most people, the robot is a science fiction thing first cooked up for the 1939 Worlds Fair. It had the rough silhouette of a man; its primitive operating system was designed to answer a few spoken questions with short prewired phrases; it could …

      He was tired of lovingly describing his age’s contributions to robotics only to have someone ask: If they’re so hot, what are they doing? which always led to the discussion of Artificial Intelligence, or rather, the lack of it.

      ’Fuzzy logic,’ was usually brought up by a computer major allowing the professor to discuss logic as a mathematical function for a few minutes, but there would always be too many dim-bulbs in the class for him to go far with that. And he had taken to ending his lecture: The problem is simply … there is no known way to make a generic driver … a combination of computer and programming that will let any robot do anything within the limits of its tool-set. Which is to say, the von Neumann of Artificial Intelligence, has yet to appear.

      He wasn’t planning to quit that day — until his phone rang. He was diddling with his robot’s programming when his doctor called with the results of some tests run on Mrs. Powers. When the professor hung up, he took one last glance about his lab and walked out never to return. Then, as the fates would have it, it was he who preceded his wife to the final rest.

      As the professor had severed all personal contact with the academic community during his last years of life, his successor had to introduce himself to Mrs. Powers at the gravesite. And as they chatted, she noticed his unusual charm, his mellifluous voice, his grave dignity, his wit, and it goes without saying, his intelligence was of the first order. He also looked familiar, even resembled her former husband a bit, sort of the way the professor had looked decades before and she wondered if she had met him before. ‘A former graduate student perhaps?’ she thought.

      Powers’ is not an unusual name, she said, but that you should have the same last name and initials of my late husband is unusual. What does the P.O. stand for?

      Oh! he said smiling, it gets better! I’m a Phillip too! Although I’m not sure I ever knew your husband’s middle name, mine is Olin and students call me POP behind my back just as they did your husband. We were so saddened when he ah … retired. A few of us were in his office that day when the telephone rang. He turned to us for a moment as though he might speak, but then he ah … walked through the door without a word and we never saw him again.

      She stared at him a moment before turning to the mourners approaching to offer their condolences, and P.O. Powers’ mind wondered back to that last day the professor had spent in his lab.

      It was a Friday afternoon, he thought, and the phone rang just after he started a new cellular automata program. How many times have we wondered about that day?! The probability of the program’s having just the right constants plugged in: that he decided to run it on the mainframe instead of off a terminal; that the call come in before a long weekend instead of on a weekday. The odds were astronomical! Sort of like winning a lottery twice!

      Many turbulent years passed before these names were heard again. Then, television stations all over the world announced, Coming up on the 11 o’clock news, Phillip Olin Powers dead at the age of 182.

      It’s over, millions thought during commercial breaks, but how did he die? What’s the answer?

      News has just been received, most newscasts began, "that Phillip Olin Powers died in his home of choice today on the 150th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the anti Alzheimer’s drug, Damitol. He was believed to be 182. Reruns of the Tonight Show will be delayed 15 minutes that we may bring you a special update on this most curious medical and ethical problem."

      It had been a strange century and a half. Peace had broken out and it looked like the Biblical millennium itself … until Damitol came along to reveal the blackest side of human nature. As people sat glued to their television sets through the sports and weather, only one question was on their minds: ‘What was the answer?’ Then the special began.

      "As has been mentioned earlier, news has been received that Phillip Olin Powers died in his home of choice today on the 150th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the anti Alzheimer’s drug, Damitol. He was believed to be 182.

      As we all know, Damitol was the first of several drugs that successfully treated Alzheimer’s disease and the first of many drugs created by Professor Powers’ then new conglomerate P.O.&P. Its success was heralded as the marvel of the age and it would be many years before the problem of doing too much good, would be known.

      Film was run of the first Alzheimer’s patient treated with the drug leaving her rest home on the arm of her husband, a retired professor. Further clips followed documenting her medical progress through the years and the segment ended with a clip of her at her husband’s graveside.

      The man on her left, the announcer said, is Phillip Olin Powers. As you can see, this professor, corporate mogul and possibly the inventor of Damitol itself — although he always denied it — did not age a day in 130 years.

      The screen then flipped through clips of Phillip Powers decade by decade and it was true: they could have been taken on the same afternoon.

      "It had seemed strange even then. Doctors monitoring the drug’s first recipient noted early-on that the drug not only arrested her illness, it reverted her to a more alert and healthy state than she had been in before the onset of her symptoms.

      "It soon became obvious that any Alzheimer’s patient taking the drug — and strangely enough, the drug had no affect whatsoever on those not having the disease — any patient taking the drug could revert to any age they chose and most chose to be younger. And they were younger by every medical standard known except one — no taker of the drug was ever known to become pregnant or sire a child.

      "For the first decades, Damitol users were cheered. But as the years rolled by, those with birth certificates hinting they were living fossils became more and more annoying to normal people who eventually came to hate them.

      "Science may have reveled in its achievement, but churches rebelled against this alleged meddling in the affairs of God. ‘Can man play God and remain Sane?’ became their battle cry, and until today, their question has not been answered.

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