The Visioneers; How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Brian W. Robb (author photograph). xii, [2], 351, [3] pages. Inscribed by Patrick McCray on a Noblis bookplate on the front free end paper. Inscription reads: To Robert, At the Frontier, Patrick McCray. Includes List of 17 Illustrations (that appear throughout the book), Acknowledgments, A Note on Sources, Notes, and Index. Also includes chapters on Utopia or Oblivion for Spaceship Earth? The Inspiration of Limits; Building Castles in the Sky; Omnificent; Could Small Be Beautiful?; California Dreaming; Confirmation, Benediction, and Inquisition; and Visioneering's Value. W. Patrick McCray (born 1967) is a historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He researches, writes about, and teaches the history of science and the history of technology. In The Visioneers, McCray presented the concept of "visioneer" as historical actor. As he defined it, the term is a portmanteau that refers to individuals (often with a science or engineering background) who imagined, designed, and built exploratory technologies. The Visioneers provides a balanced look at the successes and pitfalls they encountered. The book exposes the dangers of promotion--oversimplification, misuse, and misunderstanding--that can plague exploratory science. But above all, it highlights the importance of radical new ideas that inspire us to support cutting-edge research into tomorrow's technologies. This work was the winner of 2014 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize (History of Science Society) and the 2012 Eugene E. Emme Award for Astronautical Literature (American Astronautical Society). For more than 25 years, Noblis has been an innovator within the federal government, committed to solving the challenges of today and investing in the mission of tomorrow. As a nonprofit, Noblis works for the public good, bringing together the best possible capabilities, including science and technology expertise and solutions, in an environment of independence and objectivity to deliver enduring impact on federal missions. Patrick McCray traces how these visioneers blended countercultural ideas with hard science, entrepreneurship, libertarianism, and unbridled optimism about the future. He shows how they built networks that communicated their ideas to writers, politicians, and corporate leaders. But the visioneers were not immune to failure--or to the lures of profit, celebrity, and hype. O-Neil and Drexler faced difficulty funding their work and overcoming colleagues' skepticism, and saw their ideas co-opted and transformed by Timothy Leary, the scriptwriters of Star Trek, and many others. Ultimately, both men struggled to overcome stigma and ostracism as they tried to unshackle their visioneering from pejorative labels like "fringe' and 'pseudoscience.' In 1969, Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill began looking outward to space colonies as the new frontier for humanity's expansion. A decade later, Eric Drexler, an MIT-trained engineer, turned his attention to the molecular world as the place where society's future needs could be met using self-replicating nanoscale machines. These modern utopians predicted that their technologies could transform society as humans mastered the ability to create new worlds, undertook atomic-scale engineering, and, if truly successful, overcame their own biological limits. The Visioneers tells the story of how these scientists and the communities they fostered imagined, designed, and popularized speculative technologies such as space colonies and nanotechnologies.