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Tag Archives: sf-ish
“The Mountain in the Sea” – Aliens Among Us
In the last few years we have been learning an enormous amount about intelligence among animals. In particular, we’ve found that octopuses are startlingly smart. They use tools, they invent hunting techniques, they invent disguise techniques, and they are curious … Continue reading
The Netherlands Would Be a Pretty Nice Future
The Washington Post today has a fascinating article about what would seem to be a dull topic: Netherlands Agriculture Technology. It notes that tiny little Holland, with the land area of Maryland and only 17M people, is the second largest … Continue reading
H P Lovecraft Had At Least One Black Fan
A while ago I came across an amazing piece of fan fiction – Ex Libris Miskatonici by Joan C Stanley: It’s a pitch-perfect listing of the sinister and bizarre works that have been collected over the centuries by the great … Continue reading
William Gibson Reading “Agency”
Gibson is on a book tour for his new novel, and I got to see him read from it and take questions in the First Parish Church in Cambridge. There was a big crowd! It was nearly full, largely with people … Continue reading
A Heinlein Meme Started the Space Race
… according to the excellent Washington Post podcast Moonrise. It’s an account of what led up to the Apollo 11 moon landing, starting with Robert Goddard, John W. Campbell, Sergei Korolev, and Wernher von Braun in the 1920s and 30s, … Continue reading
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Tagged movie-ish, sf-ish, space-ish, tech-culture, tech-history
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Mad Science #5: Fluorine-Based Rocket Fuels
One of the purest examples of maniacal engineering is the field of liquid rocket fuels. These chemicals have to contain as much energy as possible, and so are dangerous by definition. A fun and opinionated version of their development … Continue reading
SF Inventors
Unlike other groups that I’ve written about (Beautiful Inventors, Political Inventors, Criminal Inventors and Movie Inventors), science fiction authors are known for their interest in technology. You would think, then, that a lot of them would have made real-life contributions, … Continue reading
Who Are the Best-Selling SF Authors?
There doesn’t seem to be a direct way to answer this. Book sales data appears to be kept very private between authors and publishers, probably for the same reason that you never tell anyone your income. In any case, books … Continue reading
The Winningest SF Authors Are Women
The New Yorker recently published a charming interview by Julie Phillips of Ursula K. Le Guin. It described her upbringing in a house full of myth and story headed by her father the great anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, her difficult relationship … Continue reading
SF Fail #1 – Bionics
Science fiction has failed in many ways, but I was reminded of one of its more egregious lapses, bionics, just the other day. I was talking to a coworker who turned out to be an Extropian. We don’t get many … Continue reading
A Niche in the Library of Babel 