Science Fiction
- Some Thoughts on Science Fiction Visuals. A eulogy for Syd Mead and an appreciation of Blade Runner.
- RIP, Mike Resnick | Adventures Fantastic. I found this out from Dave Truesdale but this was the first place I saw it on the web. It’s sad and somewhat shocking news. I’ve had email conversations with him and found him to be a great guy as well as a great writer. I think I most enjoyed his Africa works such as Kirinyaga, Ivory, and the Galactic Comedy/Chronicles of Distant Worlds trilogy but I also enjoyed a lot of his other stories, the first big batch of which can be found in Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Shut Off the Sun?.
- Flogging Babel: Mike Resnick: The Man With A Thousand Little Rockets. Another great write-up on the above.
- Compelling Science Fiction is back! Most readers of this blog know my feelings about the current state of short SF. Compelling has been an exception to that state, not because it mimics a particular era or has a particular political stance, but because it exemplifies the expression that “science fiction is a literature of ideas” and specifically does not omit “science” or “ideas.” So this is great news.
Science
- Sabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction: The Real Butterfly Effect. Some things get lost in popularization.
- NASA Planet Hunter Finds Its 1st Earth-Size World in the ‘Habitable Zone’ | Space
- TOI 700 d: A Possible Habitable Zone Planet. Another write-up of the above, this from Centauri Dreams.
- A Possible Proxima Centauri c. Another possible planet discovery, closer to home.
Other
History
- The History Blog » Heslington brain may aid dementia, Alzheimer’s research. I encourage folks to read this but maybe not during lunch hour.
Humor
- Growth in number of TV series ‘bananas,’ network boss says. (For odd values of ‘humor’.) And of all those shows, after dropping what I watched last season, I now watch, um, three minus three plus nothing is–let me do the math here. Nothing into nothin’. Carry the nothin’…
- The Art of Darkness » Seen Online. Hieronymous Bob – I completely lost it. And I’ve always said what stimman4000 said, except not quite as funny. Lots of good stuff in this one.
- xkcd: Bad Map Projection: South America. I think it’s worth the cost, myself.
Music
I seem to almost always be shocked when people die. It’s a very sad event but it takes a little of the sting away when a person’s art lives on.
It always seemed that Moving Pictures was a great album but sort of overplayed and over-referenced (cliche in an extrinsic sense, basically) so I haven’t played it much lately but I just played all of my Rush albums (except the first one with Rutsey on the kit) and am kind of blown away all over again at how intrinsically fantastic it is. For a showpiece of Peart’s drumming, it’s hard to top the cliche-iest of them all:
Rush – Moving Pictures: “Tom Sawyer”
And, for a magnum opus, I’m going to go with the seven-movement “concept side” of “2112,” just one of Rush’s many science fictional excursions.
Rush – 2112: “2112”
Featured Futures 