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The Genre’s All Right
Jim Van Pelt has taken issue with those who argue that there’s something “wrong” with science fiction. He’s posted a rebuttal on his site, listing ten reasons why the genre is just fine. There’s more new interesting science fiction in both the long and short form than I can possibly read. There are plenty of…
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More Pratchett
Charity auction for research for the treatment and cure of Alzheimer’s disease. Or look here
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Discworld Character goes Modern?
Vrooommm … (from http://thecontaminated.com/ )
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Suicide Mission to Mars
There’s a lot of buzz in the blogosphere surrounding a former NASA engineer’s recent suggestion that a manned mission to Mars would be much easier if we didn’t worry about bringing the astronauts back. Jim McLane worked at NASA for 21 years, and noted the difference between Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts: “Cosmonauts are primarily…
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The Future Ain’t What it Used to be
The Website at the End of the Universe points to a couple of sites which examine books written a few decades ago to see how well their predictions about today hold up. The results are definitely mixed. The Pointless Museum has pretty scans of The Usborne Book of the Future, written in 1979 about the…
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How Alien Should Aliens Be?
The Biology in Science Fiction blog has a nice discussion about the innate “humanness” of most aliens in science fiction. But at least a touch of humanness is necessary, I think, if you want your human characters to have meaningful interactions with the alien characters. Even Lem’s alien ocean had to know that humans are…
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Time Travel Resume
I’m tempted to apply for random jobs just to submit something similar. See the whole thing here (via Miss Cellania)
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Locus Editors’ Best SF of 2007
Locus Magazine has come out with its Recommended Reading list for 2007. It’s the critical consensus of their editors and reviewers on the best SF and Fantasy of the year, and Cory Doctorow says, “a more reliable guide to great speculative fiction you will not find.” Lots and lots of British authors on the Novels…
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How Much Award-Winning SF Have You Read?
Big Dumb Object had a recent entry examining the percentage of award-winning science fiction novels he’d read. In my particular case, because I suck, the percentages are: BSFA Award Winners 8% Hugo Award Winners 16% Nebula Award Winners 12% Arthur C. Clarke Award Winners A whopping 0%. I haven’t even heard of some of these.…
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Balkanized North America
Here’s an interesting exercise in alternate history: What if every time a separatist movement arose in North America, it succeeded? The Strange Maps blog features a map that redraws the face of the continent to feature this balkanization. What if Napoleon had refused the Louisiana Purchase? What if the Mormons had founded the state of…