An essay by Kelvin Schrödinger, as provided by Kenneth Schneyer
From the Bulletin of the Society for Innovative Research and Invention, vol. 195, no. 3 (Summer, 2012):
Everyone knows that funding is a perennial problem. With so little hardware and so few suitable reagents available off-the-shelf, your work becomes impossible without moles of ready cash. It’s no coincidence that our big success stories have been men of independent means, successful industrialists, or war profiteers.
If that’s your situation, congratulations. I wish you well in your Carpathian castle or your Schenectady manufacturing plant; please invite me to tea! But if you’re like most of us, you wear out your slide rule trying to figure out how to pay for your next Beam-Based Armament or Program for Global Governance.
Yet even the genius of humble origins can capture enough golden geese to supply his most demanding needs for protoplasm and plutonium. I’ve helped many an unheralded Prometheus find the wherewithal to assemble his dream. Let me take you through some of the most promising lines of capital acquisition.
But if you’re like most of us, you wear out your slide rule trying to figure out how to pay for your next Beam-Based Armament or Program for Global Governance.
To read the rest of this story, check out the Mad Scientist Journal: Autumn 2012 collection.
A regular contributor to the Bulletin, Kelvin Schrödinger has earned accolades for his five-day intensive seminar, “Getting the Research Support You Deserve.” 2012 Registrants who mention this article will receive a 20% discount. He is also available for lectures and conference appearances. Visit his web site at www.KelvinSchrodi.com.
Kenneth Schneyer’s stories have appeared in Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clockwork Phoenix 3, Abyss & Apex, GUD, Daily Science Fiction, Ideomancer, The Drabblecast, and that disquieting note you found in your mailbox yesterday. He attended the Clarion Writers Workshop in 2009 and joined the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop in 2010. In his other life, Ken is a college professor who teaches business law and science fiction literature. Born in Detroit, he now lives in Rhode Island with one singer, one dancer, one actor, and something striped and fanged that he sometimes glimpses out of the corner of his eye.
Image credit: pakhay / 123RF Stock Photo
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