James Maxey (author and "big science geek") and Jim Craig (planetarium director) are our featured guests.

Topic: The Year in Science. What's new and what's happening. Such as: Is science slowing down?; water verified on the moon; eyeglass head-up computers; a thousand planets discovered outside our solar system; and a vast cloud of alcohol discovered in space large enough to keep every living human drunk for the next three million years.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 13, 2011 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 38 minutes]. This is the first half of a discussion panel recorded before a live audience on June 4, 2011 in Charlotte North Carolina at the SF&F convention ConCarolinas. (The second half will be presented next week.)

James Maxey is the author of the superhero novel Nobody Gets the Girl as well as the Dragon Age fantasy series which includes the novels Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and Dragonseed. Set a thousand years in the future, after the fall of our modern civilization, in a world dominated by the intelligent dragons we created through genetic engineering. Humans are reduced to slaves, and the remnants of long forgotten nanotechnology make the world a wondrous place of magic.

Jim Craig is the director of the James H. Lynn Planetarium at the Schiele Museum in Gastonia NC. He is a lifelong science fiction fan and has given presentations on the history of science fiction. He is an outspoken activist for science education, critical thinking, skepticism and free thought. In 2006 he was allowed to name a crater on Mars.

Bonus: Your host reads a few paragraphs from his new novel Skinbrain (Cerebrodermus Fantastica) which features the alien character who calls herself Pug. Pug believes our galaxy belongs to her, which would be a meaningless notion if she did not have the power to destroy whole civilizations. And indeed, the habit.