Site News
- This re-starts the ever-popular “Links” posts. (I deleted the rest because there was so little of anything else left that they made the site look like a “Links” site though the fact that they would have required a lot of detailed editing in the Science Fiction sections also wasn’t appealing. But I still like doing them. Sort of.)
Science Fiction
- Simak’s “All the Traps of Earth” | Futures Past and Present
- The Peace-Loving Military Robots’ Plot – Reason.com. (PKD.)
- In Memoriam – Katherine MacLean – SFWA. I really like her collection The Trouble with You Earth People and I love her collection The Diploids. I also really like her novel Missing Man and I love the novella of the same name which makes up the bulk of it.
- Should they rename the Tiptree Award, too? / Boing Boing. It never ends. I like the way this takes for granted that they, in fact, should have renamed the Campbell. I also like the way “both narratives fit the story.” So we will take it upon ourselves to pick the least charitable and judge her guilty over three decades after the fact with no evidence. Because we are the pure, the righteous, the omniscient ones. Who cares if she was one of the greatest SF short story writers ever? Who cares if maybe we should feel sympathy that her life ended in great tragedy as her husband wanted to die and she couldn’t live without him or with what she had to do? No. We know she was a murderer and an unperson.
So who’s next? Shirley Jackson smoked. What a horrible role-model. Ted Sturgeon was worse: in addition to smoking, he was a member of an all-male club. PKD used drugs and his drug-addled visions probably contribute to the opioid crisis. Cordwainer Smith was a right-winger. Arthur C. Clarke was gay and that used to get you jailed rather than honored. Maybe it will again someday. And he was still a white male and British so, y’know: imperialist. (Bram Stoker actually explicitly was.) Chesley Bonestell designed the Plymouth Rock memorial which, as we know, is all about slavery and genocide. Ray Bradbury? “In young adulthood Bradbury read stories published in Astounding Science Fiction, and read everything by Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and the early writings of Theodore Sturgeon and A. E. van Vogt.” Another “fucking fascist.” And all these people were white and all male except Jackson and all published in Astounding except Smith, Jackson and, of course, Stoker. So rename all the awards. None of these people did anything worth honoring.
Science
- Sabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction: Automated Discovery
- How Venus Turned Into Hell, and How the Earth Is Next | Space
- Earth’s Last Magnetic-Pole Flip Took Much Longer Than We Thought | Space
- SF and Nonsense: Returning (whether or not by popular demand). Also, astronomy.
- Astronomers catch a pulsar ‘glitching’ | Astronomy.com
- Sabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction: The Problem with Quantum Measurements
- America’s Largest Asteroid Impact Left a Trail of Destruction Across the Eastern United States | Space
- Is Interstellar Travel Really Possible? | Space
Other
History
Humor
- How to Send a File – xkcd. (Not the regular webcomic but a genius blog post.)
- xkcd: Prescience. (A regular webcomic and, as always, hover for more.)
- The Art of Darkness » Seen Online. (Bronze: Fanfic; Silver: Giraffe; Gold: Chiron.)
Music
We lost two more. To be honest, the only Eddie Money song I really like is below, but I like it a lot. And Ric Ocasek (who wrote most everything, played guitar, and sang lead on most tracks (including the one below) and the Cars produced a lot of really good stuff.
Eddie Money – “Shakin'”
The Cars – “Dangerous Type”
Featured Futures 