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Vote for Real Science
A pseudoscience blog called “Climate Audit” is currently in the lead to win a Best Science Blog award because influential conservative sites are asking their readers to vote for it whether they read it or not. It’s a denialist blog that argues humans have no responsibility for global warming and promotes political ideas as “science.”…
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“Best Book” Lists of 2007
Hey! You guys! There’s almost two months left in 2007. Shouldn’t you be waiting to publish these lists? No? Huh. This is the same mindset that starts hawking Christmas merchandise in August. Anyway, lists: Publisher’s Weekly: Inferno edited by Ellen Datlow Acacia by David Anthony Durham Ilario: The Lion’s Eye by Mary Gentle In War…
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Gateway SF
SF Signal has an interesting article on “science fiction for people who hate science fiction,” and mentions an anthology published in 1968 which was designed to be accessible. Is short fiction the way to lure new readers, or is it better to hit them with a really good novel? And if so, which novel should…
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Let’s Just Cancel it Now and Avoid the Rush
First, the good news: Joss Whedon, of Firefly fame, is coming back to television with a new SF series called Dollhouse. Now, the bad news: It’s been bought by Fox, who seems to make a hobby out of canceling promising SFTV. The premise is kind of neat: The ultra-rich can buy a perfect fantasy, whatever…
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Future Financial Fiction from Forbes
Forbes Magazine was apparently in a weird mood recently and asked five authors to write something about the following scenario: It’s the year 2027, and the world is undergoing a global financial crisis. The scene is an American workplace. Abstract, Michael Bagnulo – This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is…
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Depicting Exoplanets
Here’s a neat article from Scientific American: When a new extrasolar planet is discovered, how do the artists illustrate a planet they’ve never seen? When astronomers make a sexy new discovery that doesn’t lend itself easily to visual inspection, they turn to artists like [Lynette] Cook to bring it to life. A compelling image has…
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Yeah, People Really Will Believe Anything
A recent poll* found that as many as a third of “people” (I would assume this means Westerners) believe in ghosts and other spooky stuff, and nearly one-quarter have seen or otherwise “experienced” a ghost. I would have thought these percentages were a little high, except I slammed face-first into this mindset last Saturday. A…
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Happy Halloween
When hinges creak in doorless chambers and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls, whenever candlelights flicker where the air is deathly still, that is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight…. Although humanity is slowly emerging from the long, dark night of superstition, there are few of us…
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Pixar to Tackle John Carter
(Not literally.) Pixar, creators of Toy Story, Ratatouille, Monsters, Inc., and et cetera have chosen A Princess of Mars as their next project, with a view to doing a trilogy. They also intend to film the novel as a combination of live-action and computer animation, which is a first for them. Whaddaya wanna bet that…
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Seven SF/Horror Films
Movie site Cinematical has a list of seven films with horror and science fiction elements. The post doesn’t really state that they’re considered the best SF/Horror films–and with Lifeforce as one of the entries I’m thinking there’s some bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping going on–but there’s no question that there’s seven of ’em, and they’re SF/Horror hybrids. If you’re…