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 47 4889

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Tips for the gravitationally challenged. 2007-11-22 18:24:00 Twenty things you didn't know about living in space. By Corey S. Powell. In Discover Magazine, November 2007.1. Nearly every astronaut experiences some space sickness, caused by the wildly confusing information reaching their inner ears. In addition to nausea, symptoms include headaches and trouble locating your own limbs. Just like college, really.2. And those are the least of your worries. In weightlessness, fluids shift upward, causing nasal congestion and a puffy face; bones lose calcium, forming kidney stones; and muscles atrophy, slowing the bowels and shrinking the heart.3. At least you'll be puffy, constipated, and Tall: the decreased pressure on the spine in zero-g causes most space travelers to grow about two inches.4. Lab rats sent into space during midpregnancy, while their fetuses' inner ears are developing, spawn some seriously tipsy babies.5. No humans have yet been conceived in space, so we can only imagine.6. So that's what it takes: A 2001 study showed that ...

Strike may kill BSG 2007-11-21 20:40:00 It's no mystery that the writers strike is having a crippling effect on television in general and many programs that are teetering on the brink.Case in point is Battle Star Galactia. Already on hiatus on the SF Channel - NBC has pushed back new production of any new episodes of BSG to the point that there is now rumor that NBC may be going to cancel the whole project. That would be a major disappointment in my book. After we were told that this would be the last season, I reconciled myself to the fact that I would at least see the series to a proper end. Now even that may be in jeopardy. Well, nothing solid yet, but if something permanent comes along, I will let you know. ...

Forced Immunization - one step away from MallCity says Saunders 2007-11-21 13:04:00 A recent action by Circuit Court Judge C. Philip Nichols to force parent of school age children in Maryland to prove that their children have been vaccinated or risk up to 10 days in jail - has spawned some very heated debate from many people. One of our resident social critics, writer and psychologist Shaun A. Saunders has aptly pointed out that, right or wrong, this is a move well into his MallCity universe where civil liberties, personal freedom and privacy are things of the past. He has cited several recent news articles that describe in detail, just what is going on in Maryland.Shaun writesThe weblink below tells of forced vaccination of schoolchildren in Maryland, USA, where kids were literally herded up into a courthouse and illegally and forcibly vaccinated without their or their parents' consent. Is this a democracy? Or another example of government and state acting as paid agents of big industry?I've said more than once in recent radio interviews about my books Mallci ...

Virtual Eve: first in human computer interaction 2007-11-21 12:17:00 Shaun Saunders sends in this piece from Physorg.com with the commentMeet the software behind the Infopanels of mallcity 14!!!!!!!!!!The near-human performance of a virtual teacher called Eve created by Massey researchers has drawn the attention of scientists across the computing world. Eve is what is known in the information sciences as an intelligent or affective tutoring system that can adapt its response to the emotional state of people by interaction through a computer system. he ability of virtual Eve to alter her presentation according to the reaction of the child facing her at the keyboard has been hailed as an exciting development. Although Eve was developed for one-to-one maths teaching with eight-year-olds, she is a significant new character in the future of human computer interaction and could be a personalised virtual tutor by any name. (of course Shaun would say that it will make intelligent billboard or his "infopanels" that closer to reality. Yep, dead on Shau ...

Beowulf - just a minor bitch 2007-11-20 22:43:00 Ok, not having seen the film yet, and not even sure we can even really classify this one AS science fiction, though in truth it does seem to resemble what we have come to accept as a space opera...oh I know already....there ain't in Beowulf... but all you have to do is look at the promos and you will see the similarities. No, my bitch is just an observation on the script writers who are doing the trailer scripts. I know you have seen this one... its where you see non-stop carnage and the announcer is saying "Beowulf, you'll leave the theater screaming for more!" Now this precious line caught my interest right off the bat. My first reaction was..."what idiot wrote that line?!" I mean, think about it for a second.....at the end of a satisfying meal, you don't kick back and scream "I want more!" No! you might say..."Damn, I can't wait until I have that meal again!" Or "I will be back to eat here again!" Nope, coming out of a theater screaming for more, came across as...wha ...

Actor Dick Wilson, "the Charmin man," Dies 2007-11-20 22:24:00 British-born actor Dick Wilson, who will forever be known as the "Please, don't squeeze the Charmin" man, died 19 November 2007 at the Motion Picture & Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. From 1964 to 1985, he played the grocer, Mr. Whipple, who always found himself squeezing the product. His few genre film roles included parts in The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) and Diary of a Madman (1963). But he was far more a television actor, and his genre appearances on the small screen were much more numerous, including: Fantasy Island (1978), Tabitha (1977), the two-part Disneyland episode "The Whiz Kid and the Mystery at Riverton" (1974), 18 episodes of Bewitched (1965-1972), two episodes of I Dream of Jeannie (1969), two episodes of Get Smart! (1966 and 1968), The Flying Nun (1967), My Mother the Car (1966), The Munsters (1965), three episodes of My Favorite Martian (1963 and 1964), My Living Doll (1964), and two episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959 and 1963). ...

The Best Science Fiction Books of the Year 2007-11-19 12:25:00 Michael Berry at the San Francisco Chronicle has put together a list of what he considers the best Science Fiction books of the year. It's a very interesting list with a great mix of authors. Here is the list, for Michael's reviews click here or on the article title to go to the complete story in the ChronicleMichael BerryThe Sons of Heaven By Kage BakerOne for Sorrow By Christopher BarzakTerritory By Emma Bull20th Century Ghosts By Joe HillUn Lun Dun By China MievilleEmpire of Ivory By Naomi NovikThe Name of the Wind By Patrick RothfussBad Monkeys By Matt RuffThe Terror By Dan SimmonsHalting State By Charles Strosspost from SFSignals.com ...

Bionic Woman, other shows "suspended" 2007-11-17 12:45:00 From SF Scope online Variety reported this morning that "Universal Media Studios on Thursday began notifying the regulars on NBC's Bionic Woman, The Office, and 30 Rock that the studio is suspending them, citing the force majeure provisions in their SAG contracts." Force majeure essentially equates to "act of God," meaning the studios are pretending that they had no control over these circumstances. By throwing everyone out of work, they are hoping to make the actors and directors angry at the writers, hopefully splitting the solidarity of the strike. We'll see how that works out in that notoriously incestuous town. I tell you, it's like watching the Medicis at work. ...

Surf's Up! and it's bringing in an new GUT! 2007-11-16 16:16:00 Shaun Saunders sends in this article from the Uk's Telegraph onlineThe headline reads:Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything!An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists. Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder. Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics. Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, descr ...

By their irises, ye shall know them. 2007-11-16 14:33:00 Is it the real Gordon Cooper? Anything could have happened during those 3.3 million miles he traveled aboard Gemini 5. But ...the Scanner knows...Returning space stationeers and the rest of the off-planet crowd will likely have to do the eye scan before being set loose on Terra. Ditto for Terrans boarding the coming orbital mini-earths?Could be soon...In the ongoing slouch towards Dystopia, England is taking the Great Leap Forward: all UK-ers re-entering their kingdom from elsewhere shall shortly have to pass biometric screens before disembarking on Albion's shore; with universal biometry of all Britons but a few years off, and offplanet eye-dee-ing before we know it. Image(s) courtesy us govt ...

Incredible Comet Bigger than the Sun 2007-11-16 13:43:00 The Nov. 1 photo at left, by an amateur astronomer, shows Comet Holmes' coma consists of concentric shells of dust and a faint tail. The Hubble image at right, made Nov. 4 and enhanced to reveal details, reveals the bow-tie appearance created by twice as much dust existing along the horizontal direction. Credit: NASA,ESA, and H. Weaver (The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory); Alan DyerThanks to Cathy for the post ...

Spaceflights now for sale; scary part is price 2007-11-15 22:43:00 Considering space travel on one of Virgin Galactic's new ships? The sales pitch goes like this: The first hour will be relatively painless, a graceful ascent in a spaceship attached to a mother ship. Once the vessels reach 50,000 feet, the ship containing you, five more tourists and two pilots will detach and fall for a moment. Then, the thrusters will propel it up for 90 seconds, traveling three times the speed of sound. All of the spacecraft's fuel will burn away, leaving its tanks empty. The G-forces on your body will push your blood toward your feet. It is hoped that you won't black out, but if you do, you'll come to when you're at zero gravity. Once above the undefined line that delineates Earth from space, your craft will arch to a height of 360,000 feet for about four minutes. You will be weightless and have stunning views of Earth's curvature, 1,000 miles in any direction. And then gravity will beckon the vessel down to Earth, the human bodies within it feeling pressur ...

Antipodean #114 is online! 2007-11-15 22:02:00 I have been informed that the newest issue of Antipodean online flash fiction magazine is now available online.This is AntipodeanSF Issue 114 for November-December 2007 Here is the table of contents of issue 114"Conversations At A Garden Party" by Andrea Gawthorne"For The Love Of Mike" by Bren MacDibble"The Death Of A Man" by Peter Tennant"Things That Make You Go MMMMM" by Barbara J. Holten"I Spy" by Shaun A. Saunders"Love Your Pet" by Carl Palmer"Wishes" by Amanda Pillar"Selling The Plan" by Robin Hillard"Heaven, As Built By Tackleby Ames", by Bart Meehan"Apocalypse...Now?" by Matt TigheClick the title or here to go to Antipodean's newest issue ...

The 22 Most Awful Moments in Science Fiction 2007-11-15 01:35:00 From the online oft hilarious magazine Something Awful is the 22 most awful moments in science fiction. These series of rants are often extremely funny and often you can't help but agree...Like calling the original Battlestar Galatica creatively bankrupt! OMG can you say letter bomb?!or calling Kubrick's 2001 self-indulgent ugly psychedelic BS (I swear, I am not making this up!How about when Marc Okrand wrote the dictionary of Klingon? the writer said "Klingon may not be a true language, but it's close enough to ensure that 50 fat guys with lumpy headpieces aren't getting laid anytime soon"And it goes on and on! Be warned the language is rough and the opinions will often make you consider mass murder or something close to it. But it goes away fast, because you will be laughing so hard that you will need to change your skivies.... Have fun ...

Crater From 1908 Russian Space Impact Found 2007-11-13 18:20:00 Almost a century after a mysterious explosion in Russia flattened a huge swath of Siberian forest, scientists have found what they believe is a crater made by the cosmic object that made the blast.The crater was discovered under a lake near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in western Siberia, where the cataclysm, known as the Tunguska event, took place. In their new study, a team of Italian scientists used acoustic imagery to investigate the bottom of Lake Cheko. The basin of Lake Cheko is not circular, deep, and steep like a typical impact crater. nstead it's elongated and shallow, about 1,640 feet (500 meters) long with a maximum depth of only 165 feet. "We suggest that a 10-meter-wide [33-foot-wide] fragment of the object escaped the explosion and kept going in the same direction. It was relatively slow, about 1 kilometer a second [0.6 mile a second]," said Luca Gasperini, a geologist with the Marine Science Institute in Bologna .Click here for complete article ...