Touted by Sci-fi writers and fans for many years, Mars is truly mans destination. There is no other planet that calls to the human spirit more than Mars. We in the Science fiction field want nothing more than for a man to set foot on Mars and send back reaffirmation that many great and wondrous things still live there. As we spend our time writing libraries of books on the possibilities of Mars, I still feel that we have not even begun to dream up the fantastic reality that truly exists there. At no time in history are we so poised to put a man on the red planet - and it does seem that there is finally a strong push to send humans there - yet, funding and a reserved space program still makes that possibility in our lifetime limited at best. I - like all sci-fi writers - fear that our time will pass before the wonders of Mars are brought back to the dreamers that have so loved the planet. Time moves far too slow for us, and we must be content with converting our dreams of the red planet to paper. With luck, our dreams may touch some of the magic that lives there, but that too may only be fantasy to fill yet another work of fiction.
Our human genome is full of viruses similar to HIV-1. These have played an important role in human evolution and still play an important role in human embryology and day-to-day chemistry. Just how important are they to our evolution past and future?
