SF/F Links: February Roundup Part One
Lots and lots of links heading your way. This has been a busy last couple weeks for sure. I’ve had essays up the you know where and a midterm, which I pray that I did good on. In any case, I’ve found lots of interesting things to share and that’s exactly what intend to do: share. So enjoy! First and most important, however, is that there are actually some writers in serious need of financial assistance. Now, I’m broke due to school, but I do understand that writers simply don’t make a lot of money in the first place and sometimes bad things happen they can’t account for. You can find all the information about the following two writers and their predicament, plus how you can help (i.e. where to send money to), at this link to Bibliophile Stalker.James Reasoner recently lost his house and EVERYTHING due to a wild fire caused by some idiot tossing a cigarette out a car window. They’ve lost everything and need everything.Also Caitlin R. Kiernan, another writer, has come into financial difficulties over a medical condition, something I imagine we all have gone through.Click the link above and please please please give a dollar or ten or twenty or more. Anything you can for these folks. It’s tragic and unfortunate that writers get paid so very very little, but it’s true. Thanks on that. Okay, to usual links: Universe Today: Astrospies…possibly the coolest documentary show that isn’t about aliens or secret Star Wars projects to ever be made and I’m praying I get the chance to see it! Yes, the name says it all. New thinking from U of Hawaii challenges the theory that galaxies all formed slowly. What if they formed fast and ended up like ours? How to find worm holes…and other stuff about wormholes. io9: Probably already mentioned this, but oh well. Scientists have found a gas giant around another star that contains organic compounds (i.e. the building blocks of life). Holland isn’t scared of global warming. Why? Well, if the sea levels rise they’re building the whole country so it can float, or so they say. The first child to have THREE genetic parents! That’s right, THREE! A nanotube radio. Self explanatory. Climb like a gecko with adhesive microfiber gloves! Apparently pollution is mutating my little swimmers faster than I once thought, which might mean I don’t have to have kids after all…just kidding, sweety. The U.S. Navy has an awesome electromagnetic rail gun. Yes, it’s cool. I want one. One of Roger Zelazny’s novels that was never brought to print is actually being published, well after his death of course. Good news indeed. Morgellons. I don’t know what it is, and neither do most people, but if it’s a real disease then it’s one of the most bizarre diseases ever…wires growing out of your skin…weird. Stemagen’s chief executive is the first person to see his clone grow into a viable embryo. I thought this was illegal in most places, but guess not. Steven Colbert talks to David Levy. Sex with robots…yeah, weird, but remotely interesting. This is fascinating: Why reality fatigue has made SF more interesting. The U.S. needs a space race with China, and I agree! NASA apparently is teaming up with City of Hope (cancer research) to develop low-invasive nano-surgery. I’m in, sounds like a great idea! A fun, yet crazy Japanese inventor says he can save the world in three ways! As io9 says, it sounds nuts but it might be true considering who this is coming from. From SF Signal: Emil Jung talks about the value of SF and F. The first documented case of pest resistance to biotech cotton! Or, in translation, EVOLUTION! Eat that Creationists! 10 Sci-Fi Techs We Could Build If They Weren’t So Damn Expensive! This is a really cool list by the way. Cockroaches get stronger in space by the way…which lends some interesting ideas about insects… A quote that gives the only reason why you should never buy from Apple again. Steve Jobs = Moron. How popular does Google say SF is? Check this post out and find out. It’s really close to overtaking God. Go SF! Where SF gets serious! Stuff from the books and TV we love that could actually come true in the near future! Why giant mecha robots are stupid! I don’t agree. I do agree with this: Why giant mecha robots are totally awesome! Futurismic: The Large Hadron Collider (i.e. a machine that collides particles together…which is fun and dangerous at the same time) may actually introduce us to other dimensions. We’re on our way to contact lenses that can display digital data in your vision. Videos from a science teacher on Global Warming. The main video has a very smart premise to it: it doesn’t matter whether it’s real or not, we have to make a decision now because the risks of it being true are worse than taking action and it being false. I can agree on that, however I still think global warming is a load of crap, at least as far as human involvement is concerned. You tell me how you’re going to stop volcanoes from ruining the atmosphere and we’ll talk. Apparently the French have come up with a most interesting flying hotel. Apparently flames work in strange ways in space. Check out this little thing about it from NASA. Here are a bunch of really gorgeous images of galaxies and nebulae (plus a couple pictures about that sex Hubble Telescope). They’re truly stunning. I love space. Rules For Writing A Fantasy Novel. Self explanatory. 100 Phenomena is a site that is predicting future data and keeping track of things happening in real life (including things that are going to happen, which are put into the data for the future). They’re interesting predictions. There is a Church of Spock by the way. For those that are obsessed with Japanese women, or just weird geek fantasies, here is a
SF/F Links: January 2008 Roundup
This is what happens when you have a lot of blogs to watch and a lot of time on your hands to click the stumble button: you find a lot of interesting new articles! So here they are: Wil McCarthy’s Science Wiktion: an experimental collaborative writing project. Essentially he has become busy with a nanotech company and has decided to give up some of his works to anyone wanting to write them. There’s more on the site, but it’s an interesting prospect. James Wharris writes about what SF has to do to survive. “For science fiction to remain vital it must stay above the event horizon or be pulled down into the gravitation hole of fantasy.” An online open-source publishing model for online magazines. Not sure if I linked this already, but check out these amazing steampunk-esque creations! They’re robotic animals and the like. It’s so cool! Did You Know? 2.0: A really interesting video I found that shows you a lot of things you probably didn’t know about the world. Watch it. It’s really cool. The International Space Station of the future! This is one of the coolest videos I’ve seen. Someone decided to make a 3D movie of future modifications to ISS as they develop. Watch it, it’s wicked cool! The Sun. That’s all. The Sun as a Google Video. Cool? Yes, and if you don’t think so you have no respect for that glowing orb of burning gas that makes sure you can live every day. I found this company website called Solar Style. They have some really interesting solar products that you can buy such as conversion kits for your mp3 player or cell phone. An eclipse as shown from space! (Take from Mir). Jupiter has cool eclipses too, such as this one of Io. In October of 2007 the Pentagon apparently supported the idea to put a satellite facility in space to gather solar energy and beam it down. It’s about damn time! My biggest concern is that the NSSO is recommending a 10 year project for a test satellite. My thoughts are if it’s going to take 10 years to get that up, then it’s going to take 30 to get a real program going. Cut it down to 2 years to get a test one up…let’s get a move on people! All Your Base Are Belong To Us! You should know that phrase from this video. Spielberg is doing another WW2 miniseries called The Pacific. This one, it seems, is going to follow the soldiers who fought in, obviously, the Pacific Theater, much like Band of Brothers followed people in the European Theater, specifically the airborne members of Easy Company. I’m stoke, by the way. I love Band of Brothers. Need a definition of science fiction? Here’s a huge list of definitions from authors in the field. Matt Mitchell talks about the differences between SF and F. The top ten science-based movies. It’s a decent list I think. (Courtesy of SF Signal) BMW has said they are going to pull out the stops and create a hydrogen-powered car this year. Maybe it’s not quite there, but I imagine that BMW will have them for sure by 2010. Alternately there is the air car from MDI. 11 Philip K. Dick books that have been turned into movies. I have some new reading and watching to do. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Universe Today has an article suggesting that some stars go through two planet-formation phases. That’s pretty cool when you think about it. Also, apparently that asteroid that was going to hit Mars isn’t going to after all. A really cool image. I’m not sure what it’s of (as in the specifics), but I imagine it’s a supernova or a nebula with massive gas jets. Wil McCarthy talks about the credibility of the AvP movie. The short version is that there isn’t a whole lot of credibility. Futurismic tells us that Neuromancer by William Gibson is to be made into a movie. To be honest, I’m fearful. Read the article and you’ll understand why.What about whether or not space travel is worth it? Is it? I think so, but look at what some other people think.And robots can lie! Yup, read this! They also evolve by the way. Sometimes people have too much time on their hands. Look no further than time wasting than this candy recreation of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields from Lord of the Rings. It’s ridiculous and awesome at the same time. My io9 Roundup: Concept art of a spaceport on Titan. Beautiful work here. Stem Cell research gets another point as a man regrows a jaw bone in his stomach. Geneticists think they may have discovered how to expand our lives by hundreds of years. They’ve (USC) managed to extend the lifespan of yeast bacteria tenfold. Parents who get sick of their kids not concentrating have hope that scientists will be able to turn them autistic temporarily, since they can now do it with mice. McCarthy’s The Road is going to be turned into a film with Viggo Mortensen. Scientists have also created a new method to ‘fix’ men that can be turned on and off via remote, which is good news for people that suddenly change their minds. The Zombie Food Pyramid. Learn it. It’s important. Will Smith has gone crazy just like most of Hollywood and joined the crazy folks known as Scientologists–in some circles they’re seen as criminals against humanity. Needless to say I just lost a lot of respect for him. Ender’s Game is going to become a video game. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Clive Thompson talks about why SF is the last bastion of philosophical writing. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Jeremiah Tolbert brings up this really bizarre conspiracy theory that suggests that a good 300 years of European history was faked. I think the theory is crazy, but it’s interesting nonetheless. What SF gets wrong about human nature! (Courtesy of SF Signal) A
Why I’ll Never Buy A Mac or Anything By Apple
This was all inspired by a recent viewing of this most excellent funny video about Bill Gates on his last day at Microsoft. It’s a spoof video with real people in it and it’s quite brilliant and an example of why Microsoft is so much better than Apple anyway. I have a lot of reasons besides being an avid Windows user as to why I will not buy anything from Apple. And here it is the list: iPods actually suck. I’ve used one. And everyone I know who has owned one has watched the darn thing die over and over. My sister’s broke, and a friend of mine had hers break at least six times. The batteries suck too. I have a Creative Zen Vision:M 30 GB and it can do a lot of things many of the iPods can and the darn thing is practically perfect. The iPhone is overpriced and Apple is being sued for some hundreds of millions over patent infringement. Seeing Apple products get blown up in movies makes me laugh. Seeing Microsoft products (except Windows ME) get blown up makes me cry. Windows is a superior operating system for a lot of reasons. In fact, it’s so superior that if not for Bill Gates making sure poor Apple stayed afloat it would have become a monopoly. Remember, you Apple folks owe it to Gates for your existence. Bow to Windows in all its glory. When Windows breaks you can fix it by yourself and it’s really not that hard. When Macs break it’s not the same. Jesus doesn’t like Macs. Yes, I’ve asked him. He told me in a dinner conversation with Joseph and Moses. By the way, apparently Lucifer is a huge mac fan. Not sure what that means, but he was banished to hell for a reason… I refuse to buy anything that freezes when I try to print a document. Yes, this happened to me on Campus. I clicked “print” and the window froze. I had no idea how to close it and neither did anyone else and I tried forcing the program to end and it wouldn’t. If Mac OS freezes on something that simple, why should I bother using it? You know what I have to do to get my Windows PC to freeze? I don’t because it rarely ever happens. The blue screen of death? Never seen it. The worst I’ve ever had with Windows is a virus, which was easy to remove. You might see it as a flaw that Windows has viruses, but remember that if the Mac takes any sizable portion of the OS market it will have virus problems too. And they are going to suck really bad. You know what I’ll be doing when that happens? Laughing so hard that milk shoots out my nose because it’s ACTUALLY FUNNY. And Apple will deserve it for the next thing on the list. Apple and Apple people lie…a lot. You know those cute little Mac commercials? They are 90% B.S. In fact, Apple should have an honorary B.S. degree for those things. They exaggerate everything as a smear tactic, which I think is remarkably pathetic. If Apple is so great, why should it have to smear Windows just to get a bone. I’ve yet to see Windows, the OS with class, do any such videos.As a rule, I don’t buy products from companies that have annoying commercials or smear the competition just as I don’t vote for politicians that do the same thing. If you want me to buy your product you should give me a reason to, not make me hate you. Microsoft doesn’t have DRM like Apple does in their iTunes market. DRM is stupid. Well, maybe they do, but I don’t know where it is and they’re not cramming it in my face like iTunes. iTunes sucks. I’ve used it, it sucks, it’s annoying, and I shouldn’t have to use some stupid program to put files on my mp3 player. I just drag and drop and Windows Media Player keeps my files all organized for me. The PC gods wrote on Stonehenge: “Windows doth rule.” Umm, because using Apple computers with Intel hardware to run Windows is way too much freaking work. I can just turn on my PC and Windows just goes. I can’t play my computer games on a Mac. I can’t do the things I can do on my Windows PC on a Mac, contrary to popular belief. I don’t need fancy programs and user-unfriendliness in an OS. I like my OS to be simple and easy to use. Windows is easy to use. “Start”…how much clearer could that button be? I refuse to join in to the pandering masses of Mac users who think Mac is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s not, get over it. It might be the greatest thing since sliced bread shaped as triangles, but it’s not better than sliced bread. I can’t make a sandwich out of a Mac. I already know how to use Windows. Why should I switch when Mac offers me nothing I want? That’d be like finding out that your Cheerios were turned into Cheerisquares and lost all nutritional value. Because people at Mac are stupid enough to build space probes and shuttles that use Mac software as a basis. Windows people aren’t because they know what will happen if the system crashes. Macs are sort of like that accident we had a while ago where the scientists forgot to convert properly into metric… Bill Gates is cooler than Steve Jobs. Did you watch the video? Yeah, so much better. Look at that A-list cast! In nature the following number sequence shows up in relation to all things coming to life: 23, 9, 14, 4, 15, 23, 19. In relation to all things dying you get: 13, 1, 3. (Yes, those the alphanumeric values of Windows and Mac…I worked it out) Because Mac people are delusional. When I
Genre Links For Jan. 17th
Yup, more links for all of you. I read so many blogs and I poke around with stumbleupon and can’t help myself. Enjoy: The Fix has a great article about writing Hard SF even if you’re not a scientific genius. Good stuff there. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Is sci-fi out of good ideas? This is probably a good topic for a later article, but read this one here and ask yourself if you think so. Here are some scribd articles on Cyberculture and A Cyborg Manifesto. Check them out. Alternately I found this book at Google about Young Adult Science Fiction. Sounds interesting. John Howe (yeah, that artist for LOTR) has a great post about worldbuilding. The Guardian asks why critics sneer at SF. It’s not really all that negative. Really it’s like praise for Alfred Bester. (Courtesy of SF Signal) io9 has this about new technology that uses hyperventilating to turn on computers. Well, it’s not that far-out, but it’s interesting to think what we’ll be changing in the future about how we turn things on and off. L. E. Modesitt, Jr. says everyone is wrong about what type of fiction is better: character driven or plot driven? Modesitt sayeth neither be good. I agree-eth. Need a crazy looking house made of steel? io9 can help you out with this article. Something straight out of a bizarre Star Trek episode or something. Apparently someone wants to turn Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End into a movie! Check it out here. (Yeah, I know, MTV…get over it). Roger Ebert (you know, that review guy) talks about the sad state of Catholics who bash Pullman and not C. S. Lewis. I really agree too. The Speculist has this article about the new $2500 car in India. Congrats India, you’ve done something incredibly stupid. Sometimes things done with good intentions are done in blindness. Ron Howard and Universal are talking about turning E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series into a movie. Well, they’re talking about getting the film rights, but for Howard that probably means “I want to make it”. We’ll see I suppose. io9 has an article about the new techniques in using embryos to get stem cells that don’t actually hurt the embryo. Yup, now all you people who are against embryonic stem cell research can whine and complain about the fact that so many of those embryos are destroyed later anyway because they have a shelf life. Hypocrisy abounds. I found this amazing video of this contraption this guy built in his home. You know, one of those weird things where the marble goes down the tube, kicks the dominoes that knock the man into the water, which causes and age to fall on a plate, etc. It’s not the same as that, but it’s still crazy awesome. Here’s some speculation about casting for The Hobbit. Some of the choices seem pretty good I think. A video that shows the size relationship of all the planets in our solar system and stars that are larger than our sun. It’s amazing really to think about how small this planet really is. Scientists have created a beating heart, here, and that means some crazy advancements are on the way in the near future for organ replacement. io9 has this crazy image of agriculture on our little planet. It looks crazy and weird. The Speculist brings you information about the new electric cars of our future. It’s looking really good for Chevy, who will have a useful model available in 2010 that could very well prevent the use of gas for regular commuters. Universe Today has this article that really boggled my mind. What if the world we live in is really a virtual reality? Futurismic has an article about rights for robots and what one Peter Watts thinks about the idea. I don’t know if I necessarily agree. What about you? Grasping For the Wind has this to say about formulaic fiction! Since everybody else is posting this, I will too. The Book Swede has the image of the side of Mercury we haven’t seen yet. It’s nothing special to me, but everyone else loves it. I’m just not impressed. Mercury is kind of like the pathetic planet that nobody else likes. Here’s the same image from Universe Today. List Universe has the Top 10 Sci Fi Inventions that should never have been. TechRepublic has the 75 SF words every fan should know. (Courtesy of SF Signal) And then there’s this article: Is There Nepotism in SF? (Courtesy of SF Signal) There you have it! I’ll have more for next week I’m sure. Now to more profound posting.
You’ve Got It, More Links For you Genre Folks! (Part Three)
And here is the last of them. Expect quite a lot more standard blogging from me for the next few months. I’m tired of putting links on here. It takes a long time. Enjoy! A huge assortment of worldbuilding links over at SpecFicWorld. Everything from websites to books. Universe Today has a great article about new research into that 1996 meteorite from Mars that shows that life may have started there during a cooling period of fluids, and another event from carbonate materials when the meteorite was chucked off of Mars to begin with. YouTube video of Isaac Asimov talking about the changes in SF after 1949. YouTube video of an H. P. Lovecraft newsreel. YouTube video of an interview with Frank Herbert on TV. YouTube video of a rare Philip K. Dick interview. Writing languages and systems of the world. Lots of stuff here that might help some of you in creating your own languages. Uncle Zip’s Window talks about worldbuilding. Yes, I have a lot of these links. They just pop up everywhere. Ten big myths about copyright revealed. Yup, you need this at some point I think. Apparently they are shutting down FUSE, a satellite used to search for planets and other such goodies out in space. It has outlived its three-year expected use and managed a total of eight. The thing that irritates me about this is that it’s just going to be shut down and in in several decades its orbit will decay and it’ll burn up in the atmosphere. Why can’t we make use of it for other purposes though? Right now it’s being used by a university. So, couldn’t we hand it off to another university, or to a collection of universities that would be willing to pay the upkeep? Just a waste of money to me. The Scots apparently have developed a robotic arm that is stronger than the real thing. It sounds cool, but I wonder if we’re one day going to have little contests where humans try to beat robots in strength contests…sort of like those guys who race monkeys to the tops of trees. And I’ll leave you with this amazing image from NASA. Beautiful.
You’ve Got It, More Links For you Genre Folks! (Part Two)
I’m almost through all of my links. One more post after this. There’s just a lot of interesting stuff in here. I’m saving a few items for deeper discussion. Still, here is part two of the links! The Anthology Builder. Everyone else has talked about it, but here I am to bring it up again. Possibly one of the coolest ideas ever. Think about all the things you wish the record companies would let you do in your local Walmart with artist tracks and apply that to short stories. That’s what AB does. You can build your own anthology! Apparently, according to this article provided by Futurismic, sperm actually can affect the psychological behavior of a female. At least that’s so in fruit flies. I wonder if it does anything to female humans… Stargate is real! No, not really, but if you look at the image provided in this article at Futurismic you’ll start to wonder. Apparently some physics students are trying to accelerate two particles at high speeds, collide them, and create new particles that haven’t been seen before. It sounds like science fiction doesn’t it? I wonder if they’ll accidentally discover wormholes. Dusk Before Dawn talks about why Asimov’s three laws will be almost impossible to implement. I have to agree that at this point his laws would be beyond our capabilities. TimesOnline lists the 50 greatest British authors since 1945. George Orwell happens to be number two. Represent. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Rumor has it that Richard Matheson, the author of I Am Legend, has sold the rights to a sequel to the film adaptation with Will Smith. Needless to say it’s not hard to see why. The film has raked in over 220 million dollars, which puts it well above its budget. Hopefully the sequel will be good too. (Courtesy of SF Signal) What about strange machine animals? Look no further than Nantes in France. These bizarre machine creatures have sprung up there. Truly brilliant design I must say. Looks like that was a hell of a project to work for. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Curious what sf/f authors have popped up in the movies? Well, look no further than here. Well, maybe look further, as it does miss some things (namely the fact that Arthur Conan Doyle was in Shanghai Knights), but it’s really interesting nonetheless. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Not sure if I mentioned this before, but here is a brilliant website that helps clear up all that confusing mess about the ten dimensions. Meaning, it’s sort of like complex science for us folks who don’t really want to deal with long words and such. A dictionary of symbolism, for those of you interested in that sort of stuff. A medieval sword resource, with lots of pictures and information about swords from those crazy days. This is probably the coolest thing done with dinosaurs that I have ever seen. Imagine seeing dinosaurs moving as if they were real, but not CG or any of that. Massive puppets with realistic movements! Well, bulletproof vests didn’t give us Robocop, but research by some nanotech folks just might. This article talks about how scientists may have figured out how to create a nano-vest that can stop bullets and repel their force! By the way, in a few years we won’t have to argue about how we get stem cells. So, to all those of you who are complaining about our current methods, here is the wave of the future. They’ve figured out how to use human skin cells to get just about any cell type they want. With growing concern with China’s space program, which has just demonstrated that they have the capability to knock satellites out of the sky, the U.S. is working on a program of their own to take care of those threats that might exist out there now or in the future. It’s dubbed the ‘Falcon’. It’s a super-sonic craft that can deliver a hell of a payload to any location on the planet in minutes. No doubt it’s expensive. Beam Me Up talks about ten books that should be movies. I would argue that Asimov’s Foundation would be near impossible to make into a good movie, but I can see a lot of the others working out. On the other side is AV Club’s list of 20 good books that were turned into bad movies. I don’t agree on Bicentennial Man, because I enjoyed the movie. I never read the book though. It’s an interesting list nonetheless. I don’t agree with their assessment of Stardust either. Here is a huge list of places you can get free books. Some of them are book-swap places and others are e-book sites. I assume all are legit. SFWA has a great checklist for critiquing science fiction. Give it a read and keep it saved somewhere. A chronological bibliography of science fiction history, criticism, and theory. I love it! That’s my Christmas wishlist for the rest of my life by the way. The great thing about Google is that you can find all sorts of amazing free stuff on there. Like this book about Bernard Shaw on Google Books. 30+ tools for the amateur writer. The name explains it all. The grand list of overused science fiction cliches. I’m sure there is some version of this out there for fantasy too. Top 15 best movie sequels at The List Universe. There are a lot of science fiction and fantasy nods in there. Meat, the hilarious science fiction play by Terry Bisson! I love it. I think I linked to a theatrical production of it at one point. It’s brilliant! Remoting Future is a brilliant website that uses a bunch of web clocks counting down the various futures of science fiction worlds (Dune and Blade Runner) and even real world ‘futures’ (Y2K). Some of the clocks have passed, obviously, and are simply counting the other direction now, but it’s really interesting to see what futures just