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Redshirts!
It’s the ELO soundtrack that really makes this. (via SF Signal)
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My Kind of Fossil Fuel
California Polytechnic State University scientist Raul Cano drilled into a 45-million-year-old weevil trapped in ancient amber and extracted more than 2,000 different kinds of microscopic organisms. One of the things he dug out was ancient yeast, which he managed to reactivate. And now he uses it to brew beer. The beer has received good reviews…
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(Political) Science Fiction
io9 has figured out why Sarah Palin wasn’t a perfect replacement for Hillary Clinton in the minds of voters: Hillary is Star Trek and Sarah is Star Wars. Sarah Palin is Yoda, Hillary Clinton is Deanna Troi Sarah is full of wise sayings, even if they often don’t make sense and lack a certain amount…
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Scientific (Fiction) American
CNET Editor Tom Merritt used the articles in October’s Scientific American as the basis for an SF novel(la) story treatment. Marlin doesn’t have the genes to be a scientist. He knows that and the academic world he wants to break into very much knows it. While the law prevents them from outwardly discriminating and stopping…
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Vote for Your Favorite SF Books and Movies
New Scientist’s November issue will feature a look at the future of science fiction. To help them prepare, they’re asking fans to vote for their favorite SF movies and books (and to explain why they’re favorites). This should be an easy task; if there’s one thing that fans never seem to tire of debating, it’s…
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Pulp Fiction
Dark Roasted Blend has a great article on “pulp” SF magazine and book art, including examples from masters like Frank Kelly Freas and Chesley Bonestell. They make an interesting point, too: At the time, the artists working for the pulps weren’t considered anything but cheap creatives providing cheap entertainment for cheap minds. But now we…
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Magic for Beginners Free Download
Kelly Link’s collection of short stories Magic for Beginners–for which I have never heard anything but praise–has been made available for download on the Jelly Ink Press site. The title story and The Faery Handbag both won Nebula and Locus awards. (They aren’t included in the free download for contractual reasons, although you can read…
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Teach the Controversy
The theory of childhood, also known as child origin, is a damnable, loathsome and indefensible lie. How can any thinking person suppose all humans used to be babies once? There is no development path from babies to adults, no transitional forms between these two species. Show me even one baby with the head of a…
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Height
xkcd has a wonderful log-scale illustration of the height of the observable universe, from 46 billion light-years clear down to brachiosaurs. (The top is pictured above.) It’s also available for pre-order as a poster.
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Happy Birthday NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operation on October 1, 1958. The Washington Post has an article on its history which includes a photo gallery of some NASA highlights. If we could travel back to 1958 and tell the people who were founding the organization what it would accomplish in the next 50 years,…