(reprinted from: Delicious/tsangal)
Archive for the ‘scifi’ Category
Salon Futura
Friday, September 3rd, 2010Crossed Genres
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010(reprinted from: Delicious/tsangal)
Crossed Genres
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010(reprinted from: Delicious/tsangal)
BULL SPEC
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010(reprinted from: Delicious/tsangal)
Bull Spec is a magazine of speculative fiction -- roughly, science fiction, fantasy, slipstream, and a few other bits around the edges -- published quarterly from Durham, North Carolina.BULL SPEC
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010(reprinted from: Delicious/tsangal)
Bull Spec is a magazine of speculative fiction -- roughly, science fiction, fantasy, slipstream, and a few other bits around the edges -- published quarterly from Durham, North Carolina.Short Story: “The Cockroach Hat”, by Terry Bisson
Monday, June 28th, 2010“The Cockroach Hat”, by Terry Bisson. 6/10
Robert J. Sawyer’s talk at Google’s Waterloo office
Friday, June 19th, 2009Robert J. Sawyer, a Canadian science fiction author, gave a fascinating talk at Google’s Waterloo office. He discusses how the world wide web might gain consciousness, the subject of his latest trilogy. The talk touches on several topics related to theories of consciousness, and is worth watching.
I would also recommend picking up his latest novel, Wake, the first book in the WWW (Wake, Watch, Wonder) trilogy. I’ve read the book and the trilogy is off to a great start. I will definitely be picking up the other books when they come out.
Hugo Award winners for 2008
Monday, August 18th, 2008The Wizard in the Space Station: A Look Back at the Works of the Late Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008Great retrospective looking back at Clarke’s most influential works.
But relatively little space has been devoted to Clarke’s writing—the notable exception being the essays of his collaborator and friend, Gregory Benford, an astrophysicist and author of many science fiction novels including Timescape, the Galactic Center Saga, and Beyond the Fall of Night (a collaboration with Clarke).
In many of Clarke’s obituaries, there is a subtext (occasionally text) suggesting that while his way of seeing the future was extraordinary, his writing was perhaps not very good. Nothing could be further from the truth. Though he wasn’t known for vivid character portraits, his prose was always elegant, and its style precisely suited to his purposes: prompting readers to think and to wonder.
New York Times article on the life of Arthur C. Clarke
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008The New York Times has an article commemorating the life of science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who just passed away.
The author of almost 100 books, Mr. Clarke was an ardent promoter of the idea that humanity’s destiny lay beyond the confines of Earth. It was a vision served most vividly by “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the classic 1968 science-fiction film he created with the director Stanley Kubrick and the novel of the same title that he wrote as part of the project.
His work was also prophetic: his detailed forecast of telecommunications satellites in 1945 came more than a decade before the first orbital rocket flight.
Other early advocates of a space program argued that it would pay for itself by jump-starting new technology. Mr. Clarke set his sights higher. Borrowing a phrase from William James, he suggested that exploring the solar system could serve as the “moral equivalent of war,” giving an outlet to energies that might otherwise lead to nuclear holocaust.
Fiction: Wikihistory
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008This is a pretty funny piece of fiction on what could happen when nearly anybody can time-travel and change history.
At 14:57:44, SilverFox316 wrote:
Back from 1936 Berlin; incapacitated FreedomFighter69 before he could pull his little stunt. Freedomfighter69, as you are a new member, please read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler before your next excursion. Failure to do so may result in your expulsion per Bylaw 223.At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what’s the harm?
The Compleat Gamer Geek’s Guide to Futurama
Monday, December 24th, 2007Wired’s Game|Life blog has just finished a series of articles on Futurama. Check them out for another look behind the scenes.
This week on Game|Life, Wired magazine senior editor Chris Baker took us through the crazy videogame-obsessed brains of the creators of Futurama, the geekiest show on television.
In case you missed any of the in-depth reports on how Futurama and games have and will continue to intersect, here is the complete set of links. Please waste your entire Friday reading them! I will.
Related:
Wired Magazine on the resurrection of Futurama
Friday, November 30th, 2007Wired has a great series of articles on the new season of Futurama, and the story behind it.
Cohen has another reason to be happy. The segment he’s watching is from Futurama, the show that he codeveloped back in 1999 with Simpsons creator Matt Groening. (Cohen wrote and produced some of the animated sitcom’s most popular episodes.) With that pedigree, Futurama seemed like a can’t-fail proposition, but it was canceled five years ago. This footage, however, is new: Futurama is back in production, and the unexpected return is as curious as the story of its abrupt cancellation.
Top 10 science fiction novelists of the ’00s — so far
Monday, June 18th, 2007This is a great list of some excellent science fiction authors of this decade.
We are blessed so far this decade with an amazing crop of new science fiction novelists.
Writing in a variety of styles, this crew is arguably more insightful, more interesting, higher intensity, and bolder than many (but not all!) of their predecessors — and in my view revitalizing the genre at a time when more new technologies that will radically reshape all our lives are incubating and percolating than ever before.
So, taking nothing away from authors like David Brin who have long been established and continue to produce top-notch work, here are my nominations for the top 10 new science fiction novelists of — more or less — the decade, plus one bonus.
And, they’re not all British.
We Are Not Going There With Rockets
Sunday, June 17th, 2007Hard science-fiction author Charles Stross has laid out his argument for why space colonization is basically impossible.
And I don’t want to spend much time talking about the unspoken ideological underpinnings of the urge to space colonization, other than to point out that they’re there, that the case for space colonization isn’t usually presented as an economic enterprise so much as a quasi-religious one. “We can’t afford to keep all our eggs in one basket” isn’t so much a justification as an appeal to sentimentality, for in the hypothetical case of a planet-trashing catastrophe, we (who currently inhabit the surface of the Earth) are dead anyway. The future extinction of the human species cannot affect you if you are already dead: strictly speaking, it should be of no personal concern.
Historically, crossing oceans and setting up farmsteads on new lands conveniently stripped of indigenous inhabitants by disease has been a cost-effective proposition. But the scale factor involved in space travel is strongly counter-intuitive.
SF Paper Craft Models
Thursday, May 24th, 2007This site has some pretty sweet paper craft PDFs you can download and assemble, including this incredible AT-AT. I know what I’m doing for the next little while.
- Link (via Boing Boing)
Robert J. Sawyer Book Signing for Rollback
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007
Just got back from the book signing for Rollback
Was the Death Star Attack an Inside Job?
Monday, March 5th, 2007This is an amusing piece that claims that the destruction of the Death Star may have been part of a massive conspiracy!
Presented here are some of the results of my soul-searching regarding this painful event. Like many citizens, I have many questions that I would like answered: was the mighty Imperial government really too incompetent to prevent a handful of untrained nerf-herders from destroying one of their most prized assets? Or are they hiding something from us? Who was really behind the attack? Why did they want the Death Star destroyed? No matter what the answers, we have a problem.
Silent Star Wars
Friday, December 22nd, 2006Futurama’s David X. Cohen Interview
Wednesday, December 13th, 2006Here’s a brief interview with Futurama co-creator David X. Cohen on the upcoming, new season of Futurama.
It’s the good news everyone has been waiting for! A new season of “Futurama”—the brilliant, animated sci-fi comedy from “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening and executive producer David X. Cohen—is finally being produced for a 2008 release.
It’s still not determined whether the new episodes will debut on Comedy Central or DVD, but we’re too excited to care! We pinned down Cohen to get the skinny on what we can expect when “Futurama” reawakens from its cryo-sleep.
Related: