Stephen Euin Cobb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stephen Euin Cobb (born February 3, 1955) is a U.S. science fiction author, futurist and the host of the award-winning podcast The Future and You.[1] He's also a columnist[2] and contributing editor[3] for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine, the online magazine from Baen Books. Cobb is also a game designer, artist, essayist and transhumanist; and is now on the advisory board of The Lifeboat Foundation.[4]
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[edit] Non-fiction
As the host of The Future and You, a weekly one-hour long talk-show style podcast, he interviews authors, celebrities, scientists and "pioneers of the future" as to what they believe both the near future and distant future will be like.
His articles and essays generally deal with the future or with science. Both are incorporated in his essay entitled The Universal Diagram (published in the February 2007 episode of Jim Baen's Universe Magazine). In it he proposed a method of charting, in three dimensions, all the celestial objects in the universe to make their relationships more obvious. (This can be considered vaguely analogous to the two dimensional Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of stars.)
[edit] Fiction
Bones Burnt Black (2004) is his most widely read novel. It was serialized as an audio book in his podcast during the show's first two years (from December 2005 to November 2007). It is an action/adventure, murder/mystery involving a series of murders aboard a large passenger spacecraft which has been catastrophically sabotaged by the killer.
Plague at Redhook (1999), was his first published novel. It's story involved a nanotechnology so highly advanced that it resembled magic and resulted in human immortality.
He also contributed a short story called The Errand Boy to the anthology Writers for Relief. (All the profits of this anthology are being donated to the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.)
As a novelist, he specializes in hard science fiction (fiction with a high degree of scientific accuracy). All of his novels occur within the same fictional universe which has been nicknamed "Naked Space" in honor of a fictional cosmological theory put forth by a character in one of his novels. (His short story The Errand Boy is a timetravel story, and so does not seem to fit within his Naked Space universe.)
[edit] Boc Cryotank
Boc Cryotank is the main avatar (online personality) of Stephen Euin Cobb in the online world Second Life.
Within that virtual world he helps organize and promote events dealing with science fact, science fiction and the future. Examples include his arranging David Brin's personal appearance for the Yuri's Night 2008 celebrations within Second Life which took place on April 12, 2008; and his arranging the personal appearance made by Robert J. Sawyer for an open forum lecture in the Grand Hall of the Central Nexus Building, followed immediately by a smaller discussion with the Extropia Book Club concerning Robert J. Sawyer's latest novel Rollback which was held on April 6, 2008.
He is also a noted photographer and maintains office space on the eighth floor of the Central Nexus Building in Extropia Core.
[edit] Miscellaneous
He has invented a number of games, the most famous being Death Stacks, for which there is an annual tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is also the inventor of the Ignorance Index, an empirical rating system for talk shows on radio and television.
His hobbies include: astronomy (he has a 10.1 inch Dobsonian style Newtonian telescope), handwriting analysis, and drawing in pencil, charcoal and pastels. He also collects fossils, artwork and autographed books.
Cobb is a member of the Beaver Creek Tribe of Native Americans in South Carolina. His mother, Jewel Caroline Cobb (maiden name: Hoover), served one term as a member of the Tribal Counsel. (His mother's sister Emaline Barr has also served one term.) For the tribe to achieve state recognition, complete genealogical records of several tribal members had to be produced and certified as accurate; his mother was one of this core group. Records authenticate that her ancestry is no less than 1/4 Native American (uncertified records indicate that she is probably 1/2 Native American). Because of this, Stephen Euin Cobb is somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 Native American.
Stephen Euin Cobb was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina; spent his childhood in Forest Park, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago); and now lives in South Carolina.
[edit] References
- ^ The Future And You.
- ^ List of Stephen's articles written for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine.
- ^ List of staff at Jim Baen's Universe Magazine.
- ^ Lifeboat Foundation list of advisory boardmembers.
[edit] External links
- Bio at Lifeboat Foundation
- Bio at Jim Baen's Universe Magazine
- Stephen Euin Cobb official website Includes photos, a biography and opening chapters for two of his novels. (Warning: Dial-up users may find it slow to load because it has many photos of the SF&F conventions he has attended.)
- Boc Cryotank's photos on Flickr
