Heavy ion fusion: prospects and status

The occasion of this Symposium on Fusion Engineering marks almost exactly two decades since the late Al Maschke (BNL) and Ron Martin (ANL) began working on the promising synthesis of high-energy accelerators and inertially confined fusion. Although a start on a large-scale fusion driver is still far in the future, it is possible to mark this occasion by noting progress on several fronts. Key events in the heavy ion fusion (HIF) field are usually marked by the dates for the International Symposium series which began in 1976 at the Claremont Hotel (Berkeley/Oakland), and most recently in the eleventh meeting in the series at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in September 1995. The main purpose of this talk will be to review the status of HIF as it was presented at Princeton, and also to try to deduce something about the prospects for HIF in particular, and fusion in general, from the world and the US political scene.