It. Has. Arrived.

WE ARE EVERYWHERE. You know sf has conquered the world when a net pundit announces that 'Barack Obama is the Democratic Party's Kwisatz Haderach.' (SnarkyBastards.com) [LP]

Wot? Still no mention of the SF fandom marriage of the century? Wot?

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Fred's Reading Report (February 200

Leap Year! An extra day of reading! Nope, just an increased number of hours at work, alas...

Books? 11, year-to-date.

Short works? 74, year-to-date.

Currently being read:

Poul Anderson: The Earth Book of Stormgate. Trader to the Stars. The Trouble Twisters. more...

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Roy Scheider passed away yesterday at age 75. A lot of folks probably remember him best for Jaws, but my favorite film moments were his roles in Sorcerer (an underrated remake of The Wages of Fear) and as Dr. Heywood Floyd in the film version of 2010: Odyssey Two. Tons of other memorable roles such as All That Jazz, The French Connection and more.

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Via the Wayback Machine, pictures of Robert A. Heinlein's bomb shelter! This was the model for the bomb shelter featured in Heinlein's novel, Farnham's Freehold (click on the link for several sample chapters).

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Michael Swanwick tells the story of how science fiction writer Murray Leinster (Will Jenkins) worked to help protect our submarine forces in World War II.

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The ever informative Ansible, Issue #247, is up!

Cory Doctorow announced the birth on 3 February of a daughter proudly named...Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow.

Oh my. Tell me that kid ain't gonna catch heck in school.

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...and don't think. My, I think any SF fan could come up with a much better list of twenty things you might not know about SF than this piece of dreck from Discover magazine.

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...15 picoseconds of fame! I share the stage with the likes of John Wright and (gasp!) James Gunn. more...

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Mechanical animals and more!

I wonder if future models will allow us to look for giant squid...

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General Grievous's ship Invisible Hand...in Legos!

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This posting can now be viewed here.

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So having a iPod (finally, I buy a gadet before it is obsolete!) and having had some "downtime" at the firehouse last night, I downloaded a bunch of these "podcast" things I've been hearing about. Still having a dial-up connection at home, large downloads are not really an option there.

The new revolution? A way of knocking old media off of the pedestal? Maybe, but probably not. There's an interesting contrast in the podcasts...and the better podcasts are those with money, talent and quality behind them.

Here's an example: William Gibson did a book tour to support his latest novel, Spook Country (still on my personal Mount Toberead). During the course of the book tour he gave probably a couple of thousand talks, interviews, readings and what not (or, it felt like that). I know I've read one of the key phrases he's been using this go round—how if you walked into a publisher in the 1970's and pitched a SF novel with a global pandemic (AIDS) and a climate problem (AGW), you'd be shown the door and they'd call security—several times now. Most of the interviews have hit that highlight a few others.

BoingBoing had Gibson on for one in their short-lived podcasting series (they then moved on to doing short video webcasts but I think that has died as well). It was short. Gibson seemed to be talking to them over a cellphone while outside, so you could hear wind. One of the people from the BoingBoing end of things was dialed in on something (internet telephone?) that had latency problems. Two of the others also had audio quality problems. They kept tripping over each other, and their guest, in asking questions and interjecting useless noise.

Contrast that with this interview done by Rick Kleffel at The Agony Column. The interview runs quite long so you get more than soundbites on how we're living in the future. The interviewer allows Gibson to speak, only interjecting himself when necessary to get things moving again. Gibson even contributes two readings from two novels.

Podcasting may be the radio of the future, but quality will show. I'll be returning to hear more from The Agony Column; on the other hand, I won't be sad about the demise of the BoingBoing effort for long.

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Via Baen Books...Get writing!

Announcing the 2nd annual Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest!

Since its early days, science fiction has played a unique role in human civilization. It removes the limits of what "is" and shows us a boundless vista of what "might be." Its fearless heroes, spectacular technologies and wondrous futures have inspired many people to make science, technology and space flight a real part of their lives and in doing so, have often transformed these fictions into reality. The National Space Society and Baen Books applaud the role that science fiction plays in advancing real science and have teamed up to sponsor this short fiction contest in memory of Jim Baen. more...

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Something to look forward to! Baen Books is bringing more of Poul Anderson's works back into print.

Volume I: The Van Rijn Method (September 200
“The Saturn Game” (novella)
“Wings of Victory” (short story)
“The Problem of Pain” (short story)
“Margin of Profit” (novella)
“How to be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson” (short story)
“The Three-Cornered Wheel” (novella)
“A Sun Invisible”(novella )
The Man Who Counts (novel, a.k.a. War of the Wing Men)
“Esau” (short story)
“Hiding Place ” (novella)
Total wordage: about 190,000 words.

Volume II: David Falkayn: Star Trader
“Territory” (novella)
“The Trouble Twisters” (novella)
“Day of Burning” (novella)
“The Master Key” (novella)
SatanÂ’s World (novel)
“A Little Knowledge” (short story)
“The Season of Forgiveness” (short story)
“Lodestar” (novella)
Total wordage: about 188,000 words.

Now...if they also do the independents and the Flandry tales, we'll be sitting pretty. And I wonder if they'll include the one short story in The Canon that has, as far as I've been able to determine, been collected, a short work called "Sargasso of Lost Spaceships" (Whoops! See comments for correction information! I was thinking of a classic Andre Norton book, Sargasso of Space!). I finally bought it in the original magazine appearance (Planet Stories), but would like it in something a little less...pulpy.

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A pretty nifty short CGI film that shows 2001: A Space Odyssey's Discovery. As the film progresses, you see the EVA pods, the flight deck and other interior details.

In other news...will Russian and the ESA be the first to explore Europa's surface?

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Way back at the dawn of time (1977), Spider and Jeanne Robinson co-wrote (first) a award-winning novella and (then) a series of novels about life in space. The tales centered around a ballet dancer.

We've gotten a little bit closer to making that a reality!

Main site here. Samples of the books here.

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Wil McCarthy has a "wiki" where you can contribute to one of three collaborative tales. Will this be a bold new writing frontier? Or a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth?

Boundary Condition

Plant

Release Notes

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Via the recently-launched io9 site, tips for organizing your living space...in space!

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Issue 246 is up! more...

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Mike Brotherton has released his book, Star Dragon, online (multiple formats, free, no DRM).

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