SF/F Links: A Few Feb Links

Well, I thought I would bring this feature back.  I’m not going to make it as big as I did in the past, but hopefully it will be of use to folks.  Here goes: Charles Stross and John Scalzi have posted their opinions on the issue of lateness that has GRRM’s fans all twisted in […]

Aliens and Spaceships Do Not a Science Fiction Make

Recently in my South African Literature course my professor, in talking about Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People, mentioned that the story, while not based on any sort of reality that we understand to exist, is also not a science fiction story because it doesn’t contain aliens or spaceships or anything like that. I, obviously, disagreed, but […]

New Scientist: Transporters Are Real?

Recently New Scientist had an article about scientists who had managed to transport ions across a room. They didn’t put it in a box and walk it over. No. They actually transported it. As in: Poof, it’s there! Pretty incredible if you ask me. Maybe we’ll do two ions this time. And then a goldfish! […]

Science Fiction/Fantasy Awards: The Hugos and Other Things

Recently the blogosphere has been somewhat up in arms about the whole SF/F awards thing, particularly the Hugos. After reading some of what Adam Roberts had to say and what some others said in response, I decided that I should give my two cents on the issue. Apparently there are two primary items that folks […]

Steampunk Reading List?

Some time ago I found this list of Steampunk novels that someone had put together as a sort of preliminary reading list of the genre. Interestingly enough, it splits the list into three categories: proto-Steampunk, early Steampunk, and recent Steampunk. I’m not sure that there really is that big a difference between the first two […]

Ten Ways NASA Has Fundamentally Changed the World

…for the better. A lot of folks have been talking about cutting NASA’s funding as of late. The more I read about it, the more I realize that the reason isn’t because NASA hasn’t actually produced anything of value since the moon landings, it’s because people are generally led to believe that NASA just sends […]