here was a time—and one not so many years ago at that—when I wouldn't have even considered becoming a cyborg. Those times have changed. I guess that subconsciously, I was always expecting that they would. But what I didn't expect was that the times would change so quickly.
It was just about three years ago in an editorial for SCI FI magazine that I first contemplated the possiblity of becoming something other than a 100 percent flesh-and-blood human. Friends were getting LASIK surgery, which set me to thinking that the future promised even greater possible physical changes through elective surgery—such as bionic body parts to give us increased strength and agility, neural jacks that would allow us to connect our brains directly to the Internet, and any number of other medical and technological advances that had long been promised to us by science fiction.
At the time, I would have none of it. I'm not entirely sure whether that was because I was more a coward or a curmudgeon, but I decided to remain as nature intended me. "I'm not yet ready to upgrade to Edelman 2.0," was what I wrote then.
But I've come to see that those were just the arrogant thoughts of the young and healthy. So it turns out that it isn't just the times that have changed—I have changed. But at least I left myself a loophole in that editorial. Luckily, in answer to this question about the evolving nature of humanity, I also wrote: "Check with me next millennium and my answer may have changed."
Well, the next millennium has arrived. And as for my answer now, read on.
Shouldering the future aside
Earlier this year, I began to have difficulty sleeping due to a pain in my upper right arm, a pain which I at first thought was merely a pulled muscle. But after a few weeks of suffering, I realized that it had to be something more, and so saw my doctor, who informed me I had right rotator-cuff tendinitis. Once physical therapy failed to improve my ever-increasing pain, I was sent off to get an MRI. After the results were interpreted by a surgeon, this eventually led to me going under the knife on May 10 for some scraping away of bone and a little tendon repair.
Here it is, two and a half months and countless physical therapy sessions later, and I'm still struggling to regain the range of motion I had at the beginning of this year. At least I'm back to using two hands to type once again, for one-fingered, left-handed typing is no fun for a man who makes his living editing an Internet magazine. But I've been learning lately that I am an impatient man—particularly when I'm told that it could be as much as a year before I become again what I once was.
Which means that now, instead of bemoaning the impending cyborg future, as I was three years ago in the pages of SCI FI magazine, I'm demanding that it hurry along. Where are my medical miracles? Where is that bionic shoulder I was promised?
By now, I should be a regular Six Million Dollar Man, using my right arm to lift trucks over my head. My body parts should be as interchangable as Legos, so that when a piece breaks down, it can be replaced without all this time and fuss. Unfortunately, for those options, I have a feeling that I will probably have to wait until the next millennium.
As much as my mind may have changed, I'll just have to rely on my dreams to achieve cyborg-hood—or on the vicarious thrills of science fiction itself.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly back in 1974, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. A collection of his short fiction, These Words Are Haunted, is available from Wildside Press.
