John K. Strickland, Jr. was born in New York City during the Second World War. He lived for 30 years in western New York State before moving to Austin, Texas in 1976. He received a B. A. in Anthropology with a minor in Biology from SUNY at Buffalo in 1967, and a second B. A. in Computer Science from St. Edwards University in Austin in 1986. He also earned graduate credits in both Anthropology and Biology. He has been a professional programmer and analyst since 1980, and has been employed as a senior Programmer/Analyst for the State of Texas in Austin since July 1989.

Mr. Strickland has been an active member of space and science related organizations from 1961 (when he joined the American Rocket Society as a student member) to the present. He created the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award for the National Space Society in 1988.

He contributed a comprehensive chapter on energy systems in the book, Solar Power Satellites - a Space Energy System for Earth, edited by Dr. Peter Glaser et al., and published by WileyPraxis in 1998. He since has contributed several additional technical papers and presentations to the Mars Society 1999 Convention, the Wireless Power Transmission Conference of 2001, and the World Space Congress in 2002. He is currently the National Space Society Regional Director from their Region 3 (the southwestern US states).

He is a director of the Sunsat Energy Council. He has also been a moderate Delegate to the Texas State Republican Convention in 2000, 2002, AND 2004 where he has helped to place prospace, proenergy and rescue technology issues on the state platform. (shortly after that author's death), and has managed the award from then to the present. His involvement with both Austin environmental groups and CSICOP, a national group working for better science coverage and less pseudoscience in the mass media, has given him a unique perspective in dealing with energy vs. environment and other controversial issues. In 1981 he was one of 3 founders of the Protect Lake Travis Association of Austin, Texas, and still serves on its board of directors.

He has been a member of the National Speleological Society since 1964 and a member of the Heart of Texas Orchid Society since 1976. He also enjoys reading about History, Science Fiction, Science and Space in books, magazines and on the web.

In 1976, his work with pro-space organizations brought him into contact with Keith Henson, a wellknown supporter of Cryonics and space settlement (and cofounder of the L5 Society), and later K. Eric Drexler, another space activist who made promoting nanotechnology his life’s work. Drexler early pointed out the possibility of future nanoassisted medical repairs which validated the basic concept of cryonics.

John has been a supporter of Drexler’s Foresight Institute from the beginning, and notes that the prospace, protechnology and prolife extension groups all have a compatible and "positivist" philosophy. He has a full contract with C.I. His position is one of pragmatism in the service of idealism. In Theodore Roosevelt’s words, this means "keeping your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground".

Since 1976, he has produced numerous articles for "The Humanist", "L5 News", "Ad Astra", "Space News", "Solar Power" and for other local and regional publications. His articles have focused primarily on national space policy, access to space, and space solar power.

His creation of a slide show and talk in 1990 which explains and promotes space solar power to nontechnical audiences led to the publication of his first technical SPS article in 1995, and a second in 1996. He served as the director for science and space programming (about 50 events) at the 1997 LoneStarCon World Science Fiction

I have a full contract with C.I. I fully support the current direction the Institute is taking, especially with the vitrification research. I believe that the Institute should continue to fund such research. Freezing damage is the number one reason most "authorities" find it easy to dismiss Cryonics, in spite of the seeming omnipresence of the word nanotechnology in the mass media.

Of course, most of the media visualize this as a mere extension of current "microtechnology" and the implications of full nanotech completely escape them, thus allowing them to continue to dismiss cryonics. Work with the mass media, in an effort to get our point of view across, is thus very important.

C.I. should also work on extending even better services to its members. For example, I would favor (if feasible) the creation of a list of C.I. Accredited funeral homes, which have received the equipment and training to handle patients quickly. This list would be only available to C.I. members, and then only the portion of it covering the specific geographic areas where each member is living or plan to move to. This list could be updated on an annual basis, and could serve to reassure member that the home nearest them is still ready with uptodate equipment and training.

As Cryonics (hopefully) becomes more accepted, this listing could become an asset to the funeral home owners, and they may eventually be willing to let us publicize the list. The current discussion of alarm systems to alert other family members and previous discussions of personal ID cards, bracelets and tattoos is an important part of better member services. For example, a fullsize plastic ID wallet card (the same size as credit cards), deliberately designed to look very "official" with vivid colors along the top and bottom edges to attract attention, is one possible improvement.

As I am involved with an existing series of email discussions with members and directors of several other national organizations and am rarely away from home for extended periods, I will have no problem with participating in the C.I. directors discussion.

Question: Could you tell us when you first heard about cryonics, how long it took you to join and how do your friends, family feel about your interest?

Discussion: My brother Edwin and I had always been interested in biology and antiageing research, and our interest in space and science fiction brought us into direct contact with people who were doing something about it. In the 50’s and 60’s, the word "Cryonics" did not yet exist. The closest concept that existed then was "cold sleep", such as was used in Andre Norton’s "classic novel The Stars are Ours. In that story, all the interstellar colonists are given a drug and then frozen, to be awakened automatically as the ship neared the destination star. Of course many authors had lifeextension drugs as parts of their stories. We anticipated that someday there would be artificial cell organelles, probably in some ways equivalent to Drexler’s assemblers. In the 70’s we invented names for them: "artisomes" and "techniplasts".

I have no idea when I first heard the word "cryonics" mentioned, but I have attended North American World SF conventions regularly from about 1966, and we probably heard it at a party sponsored by one of the then existing cryonics organizations during the 1980’s. When I first heard how expensive it was, I had no idea that I would ever be able to afford it. Discussion in the early 1990’s of how a cheap life insurance policy could fund cryonics kept up my interest.

A discussion on a 1991 car trip of the Hayflick cell growth limit and Poul Anderson’s Boat of a Million Years led to speculation about natural vs. artificial immortals. (Note how good a tool SF is in thinking about reality). Familiarity with the "limit switch" idea used by Drexler to control runaway nanoassemblers led to the concept of the Hayflick limit as a natural limit switch to stop runaway cancer cells from dividing. In 1991, I had not seen any proposed Hayflick mechanism described, but figured that the very first anticancer "gene" among the first multicellular (metazoan) animals may have been the one that created that division limit.

I also guessed that if there ever were any natural immortals born, they would probably all die of cancer very quickly! Just a year later, the article about telomeres and aging in the December 1992 Scientific American finally revealed a possible Hayflick mechanism. In early 1993, I submitted an article to several of the other popular science magazines but none accepted it. (I did accumulate a good collection of life extension books). Finally, the discovery of C.I. in the late 1990’s during a web search for other cryonics groups that might exist, led me to sign up with them in 2000.

Very strong negative social pressure from relatives (rather than fear of losing inheritance money to a cryonics group) is certainly the main reason most people who are interested in it eventually do nothing. (Of course, inheritance money is one reason that cryonic treatment is sometimes denied (by their relatives) to people who have actually arranged for it).

My recommendation is that if you want to persuade relatives to accept cryonics for themselves, tell them "If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for me".

This approach has worked for at least one relative. Those of us who are familiar with concepts of nanotech, cell biology, and cell repair forget how great a gulf in perception, (even over the events that occur at legal death), exists between technically knowledgeable few and the vast bulk of people, who are not. Other relatives have remained steadfastly either hostile or contemptuous of the whole idea.

One told me once, "what makes you think that "they" are going to save you", (when all those other famous people are dying). Of course,

(1) almost all the famous people have had no exposure to the ideas that my brother and I have been, and

(2) "you can bring a horse to water but . . .. ".

Any famous person who does receive Cryonics treatment represents a doubleedged sword to the Cryonics community. This is due to the enormous power of members of the news media to exploit, distort and sensationalize stories for their own benefit.