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    Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2012
    Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2012
    Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2012
    Ebook209 pages2 hours

    Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2012

    By DefCon One Publishing

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    Life on Mars, self cloning, military reports on the supernatural, turkeys brought back from the dead. These are but some of the strange tales to be found in this book.

    Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2012 collects three months worth of essays from the fictional worlds of mad science. Included are four new pieces of fiction written for the discerning mad scientist readers written by Sean Frost, Caren Gussoff, Jon Arthur Kitson, and Diana Parparita. Readers will also find other resources for the budding mad scientist, including an advice column and other brief messages from mad scientists.

    Authors featured in this volume also include Darrell Albert, Adam Aresty, Keith Baldwin, Folly Blaine, Andy Brown, Rebecca L. Brown, Gary Cuba, Sylvia Cullinan, K. Esta, James Kowalczyk, Laura Littlejohn, Parker McKenzie, Roger Pattison, Torrey Podmajersky, Eryk Pruitt, James Rowland, Kenneth Schneyer, Justin Short, R.G. Summers, Tamara Zachary, and Richard Zwicker. Illustrations are provided by Justine McGreevy, Katie Nyborg, Eleanor Leonne Bennett.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDefCon One Publishing
    Release dateJan 8, 2013
    ISBN9781301644292
    Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2012

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      Book preview

      Mad Scientist Journal - DefCon One Publishing

      Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2012

      Edited by Jeremy Zimmerman and Dawn Vogel

      Cover Illustration and Layout by Justine McGreevy

      Copyright 2012 Jeremy Zimmerman, except where noted

      Smashwords Edition

      Financial Strategies for Innovative Researchers is Copyright 2012 Kenneth Schneyer

      A Call For Retroaction is Copyright 2012 Rebecca L. Brown

      Coda is Copyright 2012 Eryk Pruitt

      Lenny is Copyright 2012 Keith Baldwin

      On the Perils of Self-Mummification is Copyright 2012 Sylvia Cullinan

      Spaceship Repair Man Inc. is Copyright 2012 Roger Pattison

      The Fine Point is Copyright 2012 Gary Cuba

      Turkey of Frankenstein is Copyright 2012 Richard Zwicker

      Another Living Body is Copyright 2012 Adam Aresty

      Asexual Reproduction in Homo sapiens sapiens is Copyright 2012 Tamara Zachary

      Military Applications of Magical Beings is Copyright 2012 Andy Brown

      How I Learned to Love My Clones is Copyright 2012 Folly Blaine

      Evaporation is Copyright 2012 Justin Short

      Heart of the Warrior is Copyright 2012 Sean Frost

      The Case of Dr. Reynolds' Invention is Copyright 2012 Jon Arthur Kitson

      Emeritas is Copyright 2012 Caren Gussoff

      Doctor Edmund Huntsfee's Perilous Expedition into the Heart of the Flood Plains is Copyright 2012 Diana Parparita

      Ask Dr. Synthia is Copyright 2012 Torrey Podmajersky

      Lost Rat and Scientist Seeks Love are Copyright 2012 Darrell Albert

      Aquatic Beasts and Rent-A-Body are Copyright 2012 Andy Brown

      Osteo-transplant Specialist is Copyright 2012 K. Esta

      Philosopher's Stone is Copyright 2012 James Kowalczyk

      Drab Lab is Copyright 2012 Laura Littlejohn

      Auction, For Sale: Human Organs, Looking to Hire, Hiring, Lost Dog, and Wanted: Three Hundred Live Red Herring are Copyright 2012 Parker McKenzie

      For Sale is Copyright 2012 James Rowland

      Dr. Akington’s Laboratory is Copyright 2012 R.G. Summers

      Illustrations accompanying Spaceship Repair Man Inc. and Turkey of Frankenstein are Copyright 2012 Katie Nyborg.

      Illustrations accompanying On the Perils of Self-Mummification, Military Applications of Magical Beings, and How I Learned to Love My Clones are Copyright 2012 Justine McGreevy

      Photos accompanying Another Living Body and Asexual Reproduction in Homo sapiens sapiens are Copyright 2012 Eleanor Leonne Bennett.

      All other art is stock art courtesy of 123RF

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook 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.

      Table of Contents

      Essays

      Financial Strategies for Innovative Researchers

      A Call For Retroaction

      Coda

      Lenny

      On the Perils of Self-Mummification

      Spaceship Repairman Inc.

      The Fine Point

      Turkey of Frankenstein

      Another Living Body

      Asexual Reproduction in Homo sapiens sapiens

      The Saddest Mad Scientist

      Military Applications of Magical Beings

      How I Learned to Love My Clones

      Evaporation

      Fiction

      Heart of the Warrior

      The Case of Dr. Reynolds' Invention

      Emeritas

      Doctor Edmund Huntsfee's Perilous Expedition into the Heart of the Flood Plains

      Resources

      Ask Dr. Synthia

      Classifieds

      About

      Bios for Classifieds Authors

      About the Editors

      About the Artists

      ________________________________________

      Financial Strategies for Innovative Researchers

      An essay by Kelvin Schrödinger, as provided by Kenneth Schneyer

      ________________________________________

      From the Bulletin of the Society for Innovative Research and Invention, vol. 195, no. 3 (Summer, 2012):

      Everyone knows that funding is a perennial problem. With so little hardware and so few suitable reagents available off-the-shelf, your work becomes impossible without moles of ready cash. It's no coincidence that our big success stories have been men of independent means, successful industrialists, or war profiteers.

      If that's your situation, congratulations. I wish you well in your Carpathian castle or your Schenectady manufacturing plant; please invite me to tea! But if you're like most of us, you wear out your slide rule trying to figure out how to pay for your next Beam-Based Armament or Program for Global Governance.

      Yet even the genius of humble origins can capture enough golden geese to supply his most demanding needs for protoplasm and plutonium. I've helped many an unheralded Prometheus find the wherewithal to assemble his dream. Let me take you through some of the most promising lines of capital acquisition.

      1. Angels and Patrons

      In a just world, your rich friends would recognize the importance of your work and cheerfully back it. Failing that, a wealthy man or woman may adopt you as a project, much as she might take in a stray painter or poet. The social benefits of such an arrangement can rival the financial ones, and I could name several good marriages (and a dozen stormy affairs) that have grown from such seeds.

      Finding a patron can be as much a matter of luck as inheriting wealth yourself, but I know several methods of putting yourself in the way of such opportunities. Saving strangers drowning in ponds is an established technique for breaking the ice, as is opening your door to disheveled young ladies seeking shelter from nighttime thunderstorms.

      Warning: those affections can evaporate as easily as they coalesced, leaving you with a broken heart and unpaid electric bills. Further, your angel will probably be uninterested in learning the first thing about your chosen field, and may innocently blab your research in Predatory Flora in the local pub. Before you know it, her drinking buddies will be pounding on the lab door with pitchforks.

      2. Creative Grant Writing

      Most charitable foundations and government agencies blinker themselves to consider Mundane Research only, rejecting out-of-hand even something so sensible as a Servitor Species project. DARPA will support Innovative Research with military applications, but then your Pentagon masters will hobble the work in the narrowest way: they will want your Aggressive Pathological Microbe to infect only an opposing army, and won't hear of its broader applications for Eugenic Improvement.

      This is why I teach creative grant writing. With a little imagination and nimble use of language, you can reframe your Reanimation of Dead Tissue as a life-saving surgical appliance, your Obedient Android Phalanx as manufacturing automation. I can show you how to divine the foundation's tastes from its current projects, then write the grant accordingly. Chances are that one of your colleagues already has a project on the list!

      Some of us lack the compositional skills to pull off such a feat; long hours with petri dishes and Van de Graaff generators don't turn you into Mary Shelley. But you can hire wordsmiths to massage your proposals, which presents only the minor problem of what to do with your ghost-writers afterwards.

      Alas, creative grant writing has a built-in time limit. Foundations demand regular reports on progress from each Principal Investigator, and there's only so long that you can pacify them before they pull the plug. Larger agencies may send an inspector first, and although this gives you more breathing room as you divert and dispose of him, ultimately it invites premature attention to the work.

      3. Patent Sales and Licensing

      Most of us sensibly prefer to protect our innovations through trade secrets instead of patents, in order to avoid public disclosure of our methods and designs. It's hardly worthwhile to invent a Planetary Collapse Initiator if everyone else knows how to build one.

      But consider the operating capital you can generate by selling a valuable patent, or the revenue that precipitates from licensing! Patent trolls (trolls you do not have to build yourself) will take all the nasty work off your hands, filing lawsuits against major tech corporations and leaving you free to perfect your Gravity Negation Engine!

      If you don't want to license the big, world-changing innovation, what about patenting some of the smaller developments along the way? Can the early components of your Temporal Displacement Device be marketed separately as food preservation or childcare apparatus? The license fees can speed the progress of the final stage, at which point you'll have all the time you need.

      Yet patents are infringed all the time, and the litigation can take years. And there's always the risk that one of the infringers will take your Carefree Pet SitterTM and use it to develop Canine Lab Assistants before you do.

      4. Private Debt Financing

      Commercial lending is the global legacy system for securing liquidity; revolving lines of credit are especially convenient. Should the Innovative Researcher take advantage of this perennially deep pocket?

      I'd advise against it. Banks are notoriously skittish about risk, and today's loan agreements are filled with acceleration clauses and default triggers that let the lender disengage at a whim. They may institute monthly, weekly, or (in today's technological environment) even daily assessments that can flatline you in a heartbeat. You could lose all your funding just as your second generation of Advanced Arthropods is hatching.

      5. Private Venture Capital

      Venture capitalists are visionaries, earning their bread by taking risks on the untried and unexplored. They are more likely than most to see the possibilities in Thought-Based Communication or Intelligent Megafauna. Some of your ambitions, such as Global Governance, may appeal to their own plans. Venture capitalists have enormous treasuries at their command that can keep you in particle accelerators and centrifuges for years. Lovers of proprietary business models, they will protect your secrecy and help you leverage it.

      But these fellows are all about return on investment. They won't fertilize a project unless they can calculate the schedule of probable profits. Some of your more speculative undertakings, such as Deific Simulation and Wholesale Hominid Replacement, may have too long a payback period to please them.

      And they love to hold the reins. Your venture capitalist will insist on a controlling interest as quid pro quo for the risk, and it's inevitable that you'll come to a clash of wills. Still, the advantages are considerable, and you may be able to come to an accommodation or some other permanent resolution to your dispute.

      6. Putting It Together

      Taking into consideration the burdens of accountability and the unreliability of the uninitiated, there are no ideal solutions to the problem of funding Innovative Research. The advantages of each seem, at best, to be balanced by its drawbacks.

      But Innovative Researchers are renowned for thinking out of the box and devising hitherto undreamed-of solutions to age-old problems. Why not the same in the area of finance? Why have our underappreciated geniuses focused so much on the hard sciences, ignoring the fields of economics and international currency exchange?

      They haven't. In the dungeon of some deserted Balkan monastery, even now a modern alchemist transmutes gold, which is only the first step. How do I know he's taken this road? Because I helped to put him on it.

      ________________________________________

      A regular contributor to the Bulletin, Kelvin Schrödinger has earned accolades for his five-day intensive seminar, Getting the Research Support You Deserve. 2012 Registrants who mention this article will receive a 20% discount. He is also available for lectures and conference appearances. Visit his web site at www.KelvinSchrodi.com.

      ________________________________________

      Kenneth Schneyer's stories have appeared in Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clockwork Phoenix 3, Abyss & Apex, GUD, Daily Science Fiction, Ideomancer, The Drabblecast, and that disquieting note you found in your mailbox yesterday. He attended the Clarion Writers Workshop in 2009 and joined the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop in 2010. In his other life, Ken is a college professor who teaches business law and science fiction literature. Born in Detroit, he now lives in Rhode Island with one singer, one dancer, one actor, and something striped and fanged that he sometimes glimpses out of the corner of his eye.

      ________________________________________

      A Call For Retroaction

      An essay by Professor B.A. Darling, as provided by Rebecca L. Brown

      ________________________________________

      To all at 'The Journal of Better Times,'

      I am writing in response to Dr. A. Muchworthy's paper of July 1892, which I believe was entitled 'Looking Towards a Better Future: Potential Techniques of Forecasting and Prediction.'

      I feel that I must express my growing concern and dismay at the preoccupation with which Dr. Muchworthy--and indeed much of the scientific community at large--display with regards to the future and future events.

      Whilst it is understandable and perhaps even commendable that Dr. Muchworthy seeks to advance scientific understanding through the use of informed prediction--or 'foresight,' if you will--I am concerned that these new discoveries will be at the expense of the inventions and advancements of the past.

      Whilst the vast majority of the scientific community cheapen themselves through the pursuit of new inventions and new advancements, chasing the fame and fortune which we have come to associate with the science of the future, there are a few truly committed scientists amongst us who remain committed to the re-discovery--or retro-discovery--of our scientific heritage.

      Take electricity, for example; where would these visionary scientists be without the very power on which their work is based? If it was not for my colleagues and myself who have dedicated our lives to discovering, time and time again, the wonders of the electrical, their search for a 'better future' would have no foundations on which to stand.

      It may come as a shock--pun intended--to many that such an important sphere of the scientific community goes both under-funded and under-recognised. Where would we be, you may rightly ask, without the men who time and, indeed, time again diligently rediscover the wheel for us? Where would we be without the men who have dedicated their lives to the reinvention of fire?

      By writing to you, I hope that I might be able to--perhaps retroactively--convince Dr. Muchworthy and the many others like him that there is more to science than progression. Spare a thought, kind doctor, for those who are seeking to scientifically regress and thus to redress the current, unbalanced nature of the scientific community! Would it be too much to ask that, as you look towards the future, you spare a moment to look the other way? Would it be too much trouble for you to be regressive, just for a moment, or perhaps--if that is too much to ask--to look both ways at once and do both at once; to digress, if you like.

      I look forward to rereading your responses to my concerns.

      Yours retrospectively,

      Professor B. A. Darling (PhD, MMA, TBC)

      ________________________________________

      Professor Darling is the world's hindmost expert in retrospective science. He currently lives in lesser Anklesfield

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