Subject: The Future
Chasing New Horizons by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon
Subtitled “Inside the epic first mission to Pluto.” The author was on Voyager I and II. New Horizons got a contract with NASA to make a flight that had to go at 400,000 MPH to arrive and get photos and other information about Pluto. This was quite an engineering feat, partially due to the fact that there was a 20 minute window of time to do it. It took 10 years from launch to window. Can you imagine the engineering problem this presented?
Discussion included what we remembered of photos that had been sent back. How long did it take for the photos to be sent before being received here on Earth. Can you imagine engineering into the craft the necessity of any repairs to be made on the trip? How do you do that? Mindboggling!
Year One by Nora Roberts
Our reader read the description of the book and decided to read it because she had always thought of Nora as a romance writer. Big Mistake. The book tells of a mysterious ‘virus’ that suddenly appears, spreads very rapidly all over the earth, partially due to air travel. They called it “Doom” because once caught there were no survivors. The book follows three groups who seem to be immune and there are regular people, majicks or psychics, including fairies, and people with skills. Of course, there are always a group of “bad guys.” So much of the US Government had succumbed that the President was the former Secretary of Agriculture. The book was interesting, but had a twist at the end, which disturbed the reader, and though there are two follow up books, she said she wouldn’t read them because she didn’t like the twist. Maybe in a year or two.
It was written long before the pandemic so was it science fiction?
The Metaverse by Matthew Ball
Our reader read this because it seems to be the wave of the future and she did not understand it and hoped this would explain it to her. Chapter three defined it as “A massively scaled and interoperable network of real time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”
We spent the rest of the time discussing what that meant. Skype or Facebook with the grandkids to keep in touch? But this was supposed to be more as it included the ability to feel things. Would this bring people closer or would it isolate them more. There is something to be said for the power of the human touch and their actual presence to each other. Would we want to be in a world without that?
– Fran Strauser
Next Meeting: December 13, 2022 at the Grover Beach Community Library, 240 No. 9th St, Grover Beach @ 10:30 AM
Subject: The Season for Presents: Surprise Us With A Book you’ve found.