Beam Me Up Science Fiction in the news,on tv,at the movies or in print. Whatever is of interest to you and to me is fair game. I also discuss cutting edge science that just might influence new sci-fi Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 0 5471

Articles from Beam Me Up

Aurealis Winners Announced 2008-02-01 00:59:00 The Aurealis Awards recognize the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writer. The folks over at SF Awards Watch have a complete list of this years award winners. Here are the Science Fiction winners, click on article title for the complete list: Best science fiction novel: David Kowalski, The Company of the Dead - Pan Macmillan Best science fiction short story: Cat ...

Sci-fi and fantasy books that “make you dumb” 2008-01-31 12:34:00 I was going through the GEEKEND blog's newest entries and came across this little jewel by Jay Gamon. Jay found an article that was written by students at CalTech which purports to corelate your SATs to your favorite books. As Jay puts it: Here is an insipid little chart published by a CalTech student that purports to correlate SAT scores with favorite books, effectively determining which are ...

Canada's east coast space base may land ISS contract 2008-01-31 10:50:00 PlanetSpace, a Canada/US hybrid company hoping to launch rockets into space from Cape Breton, will find out early next month if it has landed a contract to launch cargo and equipment to the International Space Station. NASA will announce Feb. 8 the successful bidder for the $174.7-million contract. PlanetSpace, an American-Canadian aeronautics company, is working to launch a demonstration cargo ...

A two-mile high tower to house over a million people 2008-01-30 22:31:00 Hey, who has read "The World Inside" by Robert Silverberg? Remember, it was about what he called an Urban Monad - A lofty spire a thousand stories high, where over 880000 souls. Well it seems that Eugene Tsui has a design for a two-mile high, one-mile wide eco-topian tower that houses one million people and contains its own ecosystems. He suggests that the Tower will be completely ...

What's The Game In Ender's Game? 2008-01-30 22:13:00 In IO9 I read that Chair Entertainment Group is planning on developing a series of games based on Orson Scott Card's novel. It is unclear yet if they intend to emulate the games played by "Ender" or that they will tell the story contained in the novel in game form. The company does say that the first game will be based on one of the games that Ender plays during his training. Humm, sounds ...

Codehunters - stunning UK CC anime short! 2008-01-30 17:46:00 Thanks to Boing Boing for this excellent heads up! Codehunters, a short animé film by UK-based director Ben Hibon of stateless films, produced with London-based Blinkink. The port city of Lhek is on the brink of collapse. A Pacific Rim state in a not too distant Asian future with no borders, no meaningful government and little law and order. Corruption and crime are out of control in the ...

What Scifi Cliche Will Come True First? 2008-01-30 01:59:00 Well it's no real big stretch, at least for us here at BMU, to say that at the very least we are on the brink of an Orwellian science fiction society. By way of explanation, I am always finding articles that substantiate the claims made in Shaun Saunders' book Mallcity 14. That's hardly the only example either. It seems that I open my reader each day and there are stories that bionic this, ...

25 more words every sci-fi fan should know 2008-01-30 01:39:00 Based on the wildly positive feedback from 75 words every sci-fi fan should know,the folks over at Techrepublic.com bring you an additional 25 more words every sci-fi fan should know. There, now you have your even 100. alternate history (n.)ansible (n.)Big Dumb Object (n.)con (n.)cyberpunk (adj.)fandom (n.)fanspeak (n.)fanzine (n.)filk (v.)grandfather paradox (n.)hyperspace (n.)rubber science (n. ...

Bluetooth-equipped prosthetic legs help double amputee walk again 2008-01-30 00:51:00 From Engadget.com comes a very interesting "bionicique" development: As we've seen, there's plenty of different solutions out there for controlling prosthetic limbs, but the artificial legs now helping Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Bleill walk certainly have to rank up there with the most inventive, and they don't even rely on brain control. Instead, the legs employ tried and true Bluetooth ... Bluetooth

Genetic 'telepathy'? A bizarre new property of DNA 2008-01-29 16:02:00 Shaun sends in this article from physorg.com: Scientists are reporting evidence that intact, double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. And then like friends with similar interests, the bits of genetic material hangout or congregate together. The recognition — of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits — occurs in a way once ...

First Blurry Pictures of Near-Miss Asteroid Released 2008-01-29 15:44:00 Astronomers have obtained the first images of an asteroid that made its closest approach to Earth on Tuesday, showing the space rock is lopsided. The new images, was taken with the Goldstone Solar System Radar Telescope in California's Mojave Desert. At its nearest, asteroid 2007 TU24 reached an approximate apparent magnitude 10.3, or about 50 times fainter than an object visible to the naked ...

It's not just space telescopes doing cool stuff 2008-01-28 22:47:00 Groundpounder astronomers at the Aricebo Observatory in Puerto Rico were watching and documenting newly discovered asteroid TU24 as it passed today within 1.4 lunar distances, or 334,000 miles, of Earth. Between 150 and 600 meters in diameter – about 500 feet to 1,900 feet, TU24 was discovered last October by the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey, according to the NASA/JetPropulsion ...

Crash of Canada's Space Biz 2008-01-28 20:25:00 British Columbia's outstanding newsrag The Tyee, reports that BC's top space contractor, MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd, is selling out to Alliant Techsystems Inc. of Minneapolis for $1.3 billion. The announcement came days after the resignation of the head of Canadian Space Agency, Laurier Boisvert. Coincidence? Hah! The deal puts control of Canada's Radarsat-2 largely into US ...

Synthetic life closer! 2008-01-26 13:16:00 A US team reports in Science magazine how it built the entire DNA code of a common bacterium in the laboratory using blocks of genetic material. The group hopes eventually to use engineered genomes to make organisms that can produce clean fuels and take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Some researchers have expressed ethical concerns. These critics are calling for a debate on the ...

Dissent Grows as Scientists Oppose NASA’s New Moon Mission 2008-01-24 15:29:00 As plans mount for NASA's push for a permanent base on the Moon, pressure mounts from many quarters, opposing the Moon missions. Trouble is brewing as a growing group of former mission managers, planetary scientists and astronauts argues against any manned moon mission at all. One alternative, they say: Send astronauts to an asteroid as a better preparation for a Martian landing. It should ...