All those moments have been lost.
Like tears in rain.
Entering eternity.
Farewell, Roy Baty
July 24, 2019
12 Times SFF Characters Trained Their Own Duplicates
July 3, 2019
My award-winning SF novella Adam’s Stepsons featured clones, which as some reviewers noted came a little after the peak of clones (although I wonder if we have yet to hit the “peak,” given scientific progress).
So as I was scouring the net for summer reads, I came across a lot of books about clones and ethical dilemmas (or lack thereof).
The main article I’ve linked here is from Tor.com, which often posts great stuff about SF Continue Reading
Full Metal Asteroid! Um. Maybe.
June 24, 2019
“Final planning stages” usually translates into “we have no idea when, if ever, this thing will work.”
Psyche!
Yes, actually.
Let’s hope NASA doesn’t resort to this:
Vulcan does not exist — but 40 Eridani does
June 13, 2019
As a kid I remember reading about “Vulcan,” which people used to think existed between Mercury and the Sun but always orbited on the opposite side.
Completely fictional, of course.
But…
Vulcan made a comeback as the fictional home of Spock in Star Trek. It was said by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry to be orbiting around 40 Eridani (also called HD 26965), a triple star system in the constellation of Eridanus “the river” in the southern hemisphere just 16 light years distant. In September 2018, astronomers at the University of Florida in Gainesville found a “super-Earth” exoplanet orbiting exactly where Vulcan was said to be.
There is only one logical conclusion…
The Moon, Mars, and What?
June 8, 2019
No, the Moon is not “part of Mars.”
No, I don’t know what he meant.
No, I don’t really feel like posting about it.
So there. Nyah.
Aliens are among us! Um, apparently…
April 30, 2019
Still, the fact that someone as highly educated as Chi wrote an entire book based on salvation by extraterrestrials could be a sign of how daunting our future is starting to look.
Or, conversely, how wack some Oxford dons really are…
New Lifelike Biomaterial Self-Reproduces and Has a Metabolism
April 25, 2019
“Fundamentally, we may be able to change how we create and use the materials with lifelike characteristics. Typically materials and objects we create in general are basically static… one day, we may be able to ‘grow’ objects like houses and maintain their forms and functions autonomously.”
You mean like Iron Man from a decade ago (as seen in Infinity War)?
Or Venom back in 1984?
Honestly, scientists these days…can’t even keep up with comic books from the ’80s…
(That said, I’m not entirely thrilled with the idea of living in a living house that can maintain its own form and feed itself…on what?! you might ask…)
— Read on singularityhub.com/2019/04/24/new-lifelike-biomaterial-self-reproduces-and-has-a-metabolism/amp/
Quantum downloading the brain
April 16, 2019
The research is in early stages, but it invokes ideas like uploading brains to the cloud or hooking people up to a computer to track deep health metrics…
Hm. This sounds like an idea for a cool science fiction…
Ah.
RIP – Vonda N McIntyre
April 7, 2019
I bought her Star Trek novelizations when I was a teenager. At the time, I had no idea that (a) she was an original Trekkie (b) had studied genetics and (c) had won both the Nebula and the Hugo Award (the Nebula multiple times).
She also made it a point to prove that women could write science fiction just as well as men, in a completely male-dominated science fiction landscape.
She managed to finish her final novel less than two weeks before she died.
RIP.
(Read here if you don’t have access to or don’t care for the NYTimes: https://www.geekwire.com/2019/vonda-n-mcintyre-1948-2019-seattle-science-fiction-star-dies-cancer/)
Why bother looking for aliens? Because we’re probably not all that smart
March 5, 2019
[A]n obvious obstacle to identifying our neighbors is the tendency to limit our imagination to what we already know. But this should not necessarily remain the case in the future.
Frankly, I think it’s high time that somebody invent the warp drive so that the Vulcans will finally notice us.
blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/are-we-really-the-smartest-kid-on-the-cosmic-block/
