Science Fiction
voltagegate | January 4, 2008I wrote this on nearly the same day last year, and since I've been reading some Asimov lately, thought I would repost. The dates have been changed for relevance.
On January 2, 2008, Isaac Asimov would have been 88 years old. Simultaneously, on the second, I turned 29 (edited).
Asimov died of AIDS from a tainted blood transfusion in 1983, a little known fact, even among his fans. It wasn't publicized until his wife, Dr. Janet Jeppson wrote a bit about it in the epilogue of Asimov's memoir It's Been a Good Life, published in 2002. Why wasn't it addressed until then? The following letter…
gregladen | December 15, 2007I hope these stories are not related to each other
Great beasts peppered from space
There is fairly convincing evidence that the explosion of an object not of this earth hit mammoths and other Pleistocene Mega Beasts with shrapnel up in Siberia and Alaska.
Boeing's 12,000lb chemical laser set to fry targets from aircraft
Earthlings have finally developed an effective, large scale, and portable Ray Gun.
Global group aims to return Martian soil to Earth
There is a plan to go to Mars and bring back some dirt. Who knows what is going to be in that dirt?
Who Speaks for Earth? ... From Seed…
voltagegate | October 20, 2007I picked up a couple of shifts catering homecoming this weekend, which is why things have been dead the past couple of days. I did, however, finish a couple of Jack Vance books which I want to discuss next week, specifically the social/lingual aspects of them. I also found a great paper about habitat fragmentation which opens the door for me to go into edge effects (the resulting edge of clearing a natural habitat and imposing another - ex: forest/farm land) and a new theory regarding its variability.
The next couple of months should be very interesting. We're moving at the end of November,…
oracknows | August 31, 2007Sadly, I won't be in London for 10 more days. Consequently, I'll be missing something really cool that'll be happening a mere couple of blocks down the street where I'm staying now:
I did, however, purchase a nice cast metal replica of the TARDIS at this shop, the Stamp Centre, which seems to carry a lot of science fiction stuff (particularly Doctor Who paraphernalia) as well as stamps. It's a bit of an odd combination, but it works. In any case, the TARDIS will grace either my desk or my bookshelf.
For those of you who live in London or who will be in London on September 10, though, you…
voltagegate | July 4, 2007Science fiction has been the "buzz" in the past few days, starting with PZ's post on how biology gets snubbed by SF authors and followed by thoughts from Chad, Razib, Rob and Janet. The consensus? Science in general gets snubbed by most SF authors.
Why? As many of the commenters correctly point out, SF is still fiction and fiction has its own rules that are usually more important than the science. Bending the laws of physics (arguably the most abused section of science in SF) is not just a playful extrapolation of existing knowledge, it is a tool for the author to further the story. Without…
voltagegate | April 12, 2007I'm sure everyone has heard by now that the life of American novelist Kurt Vonnegut has been cut short:
His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
He was an ornery man and an ornery writer; if the fall had not have happened, I wouldn't have been surprised to see Vonnegut live well beyond 90 years. In fact, after seeing him on the Daily Show some months ago, he seemed invincible.
I have always held Vonnegut in my elusive and incomplete top [insert number] favorite authors list. He…
voltagegate | April 11, 2007Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my own head.
And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him.
-from "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov
Before spring break, I received a packet in the mail from one of my readers--a member of the faculty. Inside I found a photocopy of "Superiority", a science fiction short by Arthur C. Clark, a memo from the FSU bookstore to the faculty addressing textbook ordering protocols and a note from the professor, believe it or not, that tied it all together…