#Mothers and the Future by Diane Burton

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers and to all the mothers you know!

Mothers come in all shapes, sizes, and ages. There are mothers who gave birth and mothers of the heart. I’m fortunate to have had a wonderful mother and a terrific mother-in-law. I’m doubly fortunate to be mother to two great adult children and to their spouses who call me Mom.

I’m sure we all know couples who long for children but physically cannot have them. Some will go through expensive procedures to have a child from in vitro fertilization to surrogate motherhood. Some couples adopt.

Motherhood is not for the faint of heart. Starting with conception, we have worries and physical pain. The older we are the higher the risks. Two of my grandchildren were lost in miscarriages. The emotional pain expectant mothers go through upon that loss is immeasurable. Childbirth is no picnic, either. In my mother’s day, doctors slapped chloroform on a woman, and the next thing she knew she had a baby. I come from the generation that wanted everything natural. No drugs. We were tough. 😊 And, of course, the father would be in the delivery room instead of pacing the waiting room or off fishing.

Giving birth does not equal motherhood. Raising a child is a lifelong occupation. It’s a good thing we didn’t realize what we were in for when we longed for a child. Worry didn’t end with the pregnancy but exploded as the child grew. And let’s not even go into the expense of raising that child.

Advances in medicine (and attitude) are growing all the time. Think about the advances in your lifetime. What about the future? As a science fiction writer, my imagination can come up with many scenarios. My colleagues imagine even more. We writers play the “what if” game.

What if everyone who wanted a child could have one? What if a woman didn’t have to carry her child? Extend fertilization outside the mother’s body so the whole gestational period was also outside. No inconvenience of frequent trips to the bathroom, gestational diabetes, exhaustion, plus the expense of a new wardrobe. You carried on with your life and popped into the lab occasionally to watch the fetus mature. No waiting for an ultrasound to show what s/he looked like. Also, no pain of childbirth. No drugs, either. You get a call from the lab saying your baby is ready to be picked up. Sort of like a car from the dealership.

Whatever the future brings, our future as humans depends on mothers. 

Motherhood is my greatest accomplishment, my greatest pleasure. Grandmotherhood is even better. 😊

World Building: Medicine by Diane Burton

A couple of years ago, I did a series of world building posts that concentrated on different aspects of the world building we do in our stories. We all build the “worlds” our characters inhabit. Sometimes we call it “setting” instead of world building. Whatever we call it, we develop the conditions surrounding our characters. Today, I’m concentrating on medicine of the future.

In my science fiction romance, The Pilot (An Outer Rime Novel), a medi-healer is used to cure the hero’s infection. In my world, the handheld device is too expensive for a cargo pilot (the heroine) to own. But her brother, who works for a galactic gangster, has one. He waved the device over the patient. It diagnosed and cured. A medi-healer would’ve come in handy for me two weeks ago.

This has been a bad winter health-wise for many people. Influenza that the flu shots didn’t prevent. People in hospitals, even dying. I counted my self lucky that when Hubs and other members of the family got sick I didn’t. My luck ran out right before Easter. I woke up coughing. Okay, a cold finally hit. So I thought. If I’d had a handy-dandy medical tricorder, like Star Trek’s Doctor McCoy, it would’ve told me I had pneumonia. In a scenario from The Pilot, a medi-healer would’ve diagnosed then cured. All with a wave of the device. No going to Urgent Care, no x-rays, no courses of antibiotics—one to cure pneumonia and a second course to take care of a subsequent sinus/ear infection.

That got me thinking about what else would the future hold in the medical field. In The Pilot, my character used a hover board to carry a patient to the medical center. It rises above the ground on a steady stream of air and is guided by one person. Remember the scene in Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back when Han, encased in carbonite, is guided to the bounty hunter’s ship?

Creating a cyborg isn’t the future. It’s here now. Artificial joints are common. I have two titanium knees, and I know people who’ve had hip and shoulder replacements. Mechanical hands that function like real ones by being connected to the brain. The “Six Million Dollar Man” was fantasy back in 1974. Today, the severely injured can now be “rebuilt” with artificial arms and legs.

In Greta van der Rol’s Iron Admiral series, humans are fitted with neuro implants that allow them to speak without words. They can access data ports using their implants, no typing necessary, and store the info until it can be downloaded. Fiction? As his ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) advanced, Stephen Hawking, the physicist and cosmologist who just passed away, was unable to speak. Using a speech-generating device (SGD), he was able to communicate using a single cheek muscle. SGDs are used by many people for whom speech is impossible or difficult.

What else is coming in the medical field? Organ transplanting isn’t new. Creating an organ, like a kidney, using a 3-D printer is a real possibility. Curing diseases using a cell instead of a pill. Surgery using ultrasound instead of a knife. A vaccine patch instead of an injections. Robots doing surgery.

Nanobots, microscopic machines, could carry medicine to certain parts of the body to heal diseased parts or destroy (cancer cells) on a molecular level. In science fiction, nanobots are commonly used. Yet the thought of tiny robots running around through my blood stream is kind of creepy. If nanobots could destroy cancer cells without the debilitating effects of chemotherapy and/or radiation, I’d take the nanobots.

What other fantastical medical advances are possible?

The Pilot (An Outer Rim Novel) blurb:

Sparks fly around the Outer Rim when rule-bound Administrator Trevarr Jovano clashes with free-spirited space pilot Celara d'Enfaden. She must deliver her cargo or lose her ship to a loanshark. Having lost her last shipment to pirates masquerading as Coalition Inspectors, Celara refuses to be duped again. Determined to make an example of those who flaunt the law, Trevarr seizes her ship. Yet, they must work together to rescue her brother and find his wife's murderer.

The Pilot (An Outer Rim Novel) is available at:

Amazon ~ Amazon UK ~ B&N ~ Kobo ~ iBooks ~ Smashwords