From Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual comes Cornelius Zappencackler’s Pulp Sci-Fi Title-o-Tron. Keep refreshing the page and thrill to Strange Space Beast of Europa, gasp at The Forgotten Perisphere of Earth, and be amazed by Transformed by the Atomic Creature.

The rest of the site is pretty cool, too. I especially like their Ask Me About My Death Ray T-shirts.

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

1. Who’s the Cap’n of the Bishops?
2. In which planetary system did Luke take his Jedi training with Yoda?
3. In this book, the child hero is subjected to horrific manipulation by the military in order to make him the perfect commander able to annihilate the insectoid aliens who have twice attacked the solar system. Name this novellette-turned-novel!
4. This U.S. writer and film director graduated with an MD from Harvard Medical School. He first published SF under the pseudonym John Lange with Drug Of Choice. Who is he?
5. James Blish won a Hugo for which novel?
6. In this 1970′s movie, microscopic alien viruses can survive only within a narrow pH range.
7. Who played Mork’s son on Mork and Mindy?
8. This 1949 novel from George R. Stewart follows the fortunes of one group of plague survivors in the San Francisco Bay area, who subsist for quite some time on the bounties of civilization that have remained intact. Name it!
9. Due to poor health and an inability to deal with the special make-up that he would have had to wear, Edward G. Robinson turned down the role of what character in Planet of the Apes?
10. In this Frederik Pohl novel, mankind “inherits” the stars by finding and exploiting (with considerable difficulty) the starships and gadgets left behind by the alien Heechee. Name this book!

(Answers below the fold)

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Clear your schedule and head over to NASA’s Eyes on the Earth (plugin installation may be required). It’s a dashboard that displays the positions of NASA’s Earth-observing satellites and describes what they’re doing.

Click for a larger version, and see Abstruse Goose for amusing mouseover text and a theory about R2D2′s nefarious true motives.

Reddit has some important instructions for making first contact: Image | Comments

Seriously. Don’t f$%k this up.

The Hi-Fidelity Quartet participated in the Barbershop Harmony Society International Contest with this entry.

Part 1:

Part 2:

1. This Robert L. Forward novel is about a race that evolves on the surface of a neutron star and which lives on a vastly compressed time scale, but nevertheless manages to make contact with human observers. Name it!
2. What does the “T” in “James T. Kirk” stand for?
3. This first collection of R.A. Lafferty precedes Strange Doings (1971), Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add? (1974) and Ringing Changes (1984). What is it?
4. Which of these movies takes place on a planet with a green sky and pink sand as well as two moons?
   A) Dune
   B) Outland
   C) Dark Star
   D) Forbidden Planet
5. A mentally retarded man’s intelligence is enhanced to that of a normal adult and then to supergenius. “Progress reports” in his diary, with successive changes in diction and spelling as well as intellectual content, chronicle his triumphant progress; and then, as the treatment fails, the reports record his collapse back into subnormality. Name this classic by Daniel Keyes!
6. Who is the main character in Frederik Pohl’s Gateway/Heechee series?
7. What song did HAL sing as Dave deactivated him in 2001?
8. Some of Heinlein’s work has been animated. True or False?
9. In this book Philip Jose Farmer writes of the entire human race being reincarnated along the banks of a huge river. Sir Richard Francis Burton sets off to find out who accomplished this remarkable feat, and why.
10. Firestarter and The Tommyknockers are science fiction works by what famous horror fiction writter?

(Answers below the fold)

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James Lu Dunbar is creating a series of rhyming comic books that illustrate scientific theories about the origin of the universe. Book 1 is available for free as individual images on his site or as a PDF (email him with your request). You can also get a higher-resolution eBook for $5 or a physical copy for $10 from his bookstore.

The series might be a nice, Dr. Seussian way to help introduce a child to science.

(via The Meming of Life)

R2D2 Costume – Warning: May burn your eyes out.

Savage Chickens – This just amused me.

Time Traveler Caught in Museum Photo? – Extremely cool (although sadly explicable) photo.

Giant Lego Tarantula – This is…just what it says it is. Yowza.

How to Speak Zombie – Learn the language and blend in seamlessly when the apocalypse comes.

Miskatonic University Hazard Labels – Downloadable labels warning of various dire supernatural hazards.

Reading – Exactly.

The Internets – There’s a “ghost in the machine” joke in here somewhere.

The Loving Dead – In the runup to print publication, writer Amelia Beamer is serializing her novel about “sex and zombies” online.

Discovery Magazine’s Discoblog has a feature called NCBI ROFL which covers particularly odd scientific studies, such as the one that correlates eye color and sports performance or the one examining indentity exploration in World of Warcraft.

They recently posted this gem from PubMed entitled, “The history of poisoning in the future: lessons from Star Trek.”

Out of the 79 Star Trek episodes, 28 (35%) involved toxin-related incidents. A total of 31 poisoning incidents were documented with 13 environmental, 9 intentional, 5 unintentional, and 4 homicidal circumstances. Biotoxins (10 incidents) were the most frequently involved toxin followed by neurotoxins (9), radiation (3), cytotoxins (3), temporal toxins (3), acids (2), and phytotoxins (1). Of these cases, 2 involved hazardous materials incidents, 1 was contamination of food, and 3 involved therapeutic misadventures.

Apparently there’s a place for Mr. Yuk even in the 23rd Century.