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 12 5642

Articles from Beam Me Up

Ben Bova speaks on space exploration 2007-07-23 16:10:00 Author and editor - Ben Bova talks about space exploration, and he sums up justification for manned spaceflight in just two words: Human survival. Here’s his two minutes of reasoning on why NASA is worth the money, and why it still isn’t enough. ...

Chips: High tech aids or tracking tools? 2007-07-23 14:44:00 I just had to put this up. The article goes on a bit longer with a bit more informaton, however the point here is that just because it was in a science fiction novel a couple of years ago, don't mean it's still fiction. If you thought it was distressing to read about it then, think of how it should frighten now that it is being used now as you read this! (The book I speak of is in fact Shaun Saunders book Mallcity 14)CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little notice itself -- until a year ago, when two of its employees had glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their forearms. The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs -- radio frequency identification tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick -- was merely a way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance codes, the company said. News that Americans had, for ...

REVIEW Too Far From Home - Chris Jones 2007-07-23 11:46:00 Too Far From Home Chris Jones 288 hc pp DoubleDay 2007 Front cover reads On February 1 2003 10 astronauts were orbiting the planet. Seven were headed back to Earth on the Space Shuttle Columbia. They never made it. The 3 men left behind found themselves.... Well you get it. Chris Jones has given us an in depth description of what life was like aboard the International Space Station in the weeks and months after the shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry. At times the story is poignant . At times it's extremely interesting. And at other times it is frightfully boring. Now your saying, how can any telling of the drama of being marooned in space be, well, boring. Jones has managed that feat....and done it well. Now am I saying that the book is a complete snooze fest? Oh hardly. The book is written in such a way that you feel like there is another seat in the cramped Soyuz tma -1 during a malfunctioning reentry module fires too long, or just beside astronaut Bowersox d ...

Navigating in the New World by Shaun A. Saunders is out! 2007-07-21 19:34:00 Navigating In The New World Review QuotesThe Illustrated Man for the 21st century.Paul Cole, ‘Beam Me Up’ Science and SF radio show (WRFR 93.3 Maine) and Podcast.An eminently readable and often hilarious collection of cautionary tales.Jack McDevitt Not since reading (and rereading, and rereading) Arthur C. Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God" as a kid have I come across a short story (Curtain Call) with this power.Sara Bordowitz, Israel. Saunders' singular style evokes Ray Bradbury and George Orwell, with a generous dash of O. Henry.Sunni Maravillosa, creator of the pro-freedom culture 'zine Sunni's Salon (http://www.endervidualism.com/salon/) . Saunders picks targets that matter and hits them with frightening accuracy.David Southwell Author of a number of best-selling books on conspiracy theories and the nature of organized crime in the twenty-first century. Another brilliant, funny, satirical, succinct and realistic-while-imaginative work by this con ...

Remote control brains: a neuroscience revolution 2007-07-19 19:35:00 In a laboratory in Germany, a tiny worm dances to flashes of colored light. The worm is not a toy or a robot but a living creature. It has been engineered so that its nerves and muscles can be controlled with light. With each flash of blue its neurons fire electric pulses, causing the muscles they control to clench. A flash of yellow stops the nerves firing, relaxing the worm's muscles and lengthening its body once again. The worm is in the vanguard of a revolution in brain science - the most spectacular application yet of a technology that allows scientists to turn individual brain cells on and off at will. One possibility is that the technology, coupled with a method of getting light into the human skull, could create a Brave New World of neuro-modification in which conditions such as depression or Parkinson's disease are treated not with sledgehammer drugs or electrodes, but with delicate pinpricks of light.Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the submission ...

'Heroes' Grabs Eight Emmy Nominations 2007-07-19 15:53:00 PLUS: 'Lost' earns six nods, 'Battlestar Galactica' four - Thanks to SyFy Portal Masi Oka was the only member of the "Heroes" cast to get nominated for his role as Hiro Nakamura. Some of the other nominations were for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor. Other "Heroes" nominations were for Outstanding Art Direction for a Single-Camera Series, Oustanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series, Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series, and Oustanding Stunt Coordination, all for "Genesis," while the episode "Five Years Later ..." earned an Outstanding Visual Effects for a Series nod. ...

RoboSnot 2007-07-19 15:45:00 Yes, those brilliant minds at The University of Warwick in the UK have developed synthetic polymers that eerily imitate snot, and aid with machine scent detection like nobody’s business. The mucus improved the sensitivity of a conventional electronic sniffer five-fold, helped deliver results more quickly, and allowed the nose to distinguish between scents, such as milk and vanilla, that it never could before. ...

Claudia Black interview 2007-07-18 13:37:00 Thanks to the blog SF Signals for the heads upFor you Claudia Black fans (I know your out there and you know who you are!) Farpoint Media's Slice of SciFi has an excellent interview the the raven bombshell.Claudia Black has been an actress on great SF television series’ such as the highly acclaimed “Farscape” where she portrayed Aeryn Sun and also in the tele-film “Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.” From there she assumed the role Vala Mal Doran on “Stargate-SG-1,”. Claudia is currently shooting two made-for-DVD Stargate films which will continue the series in that format.Her talents have not been confined to the small screen at all. Black has appeared in the Anne Rice feature film “Queen of the Damned” as Pandora and and in the SF hit movie “Pitch Black” with Vin Diesel. ...

Sci Fi Mondays on NBC this fall 2007-07-18 13:27:00 NBC announces Sci Fi Mondays. NBC will air Chuck, Heroes and Journeyman. Expect the premieres of most of these series in September. "Chuck" is about a tech support guy for a Best Buy-like store who unwittingly becomes the holder of important government information and a pawn for the CIA and the National Security Agency. "Journeyman," about a time-traveling newspaper reporter. ...

Shatner sign on for new show! 2007-07-17 18:52:00 according to Bob Sassone over at TVSquad:Shatner has signed up for a new show titled Shatner's Raw Nerve. It will air on the Biography Channel. Shatner will interview celebrity and political guests. The show will run for 13 episodes to start.Is this science fiction? No Is it science fiction related....? huh? MaybeYou know, after all these years, I like to think of it as my 'semi-sometime' blog entry titledWhat the F*bleep* is Will Shatner up to now! ...

Antipodean issure 110 is now available 2007-07-16 22:23:00 Just got a note that Antipodean #110 is up. Here is the note they sent me:... This month's issue we celebrate the publication of the fiftieth piece of flash fiction to grace our pages from the pen of Shaun A. Saunders. Please also visit to find out more about Shaun's upcoming anthology "Navigating In The New World" which is already receiving rave reviews. As for the magazine, this month's stories are:"Fine Tuning" by J. Alan Brown"Little Green Apples" by Angela Slatter"Assassin's Sorrow" by Chris Pavey"Lie Back And Think Of Efficiency" by Meika Loofs Samorzewski"A Fine Madness" by Shaun A. Saunders"Egg Sharing" by Julie Bailue"All For An Orchidaceae" by Andrew Leadbeatter"Framework" by Rodney J. Smith"Sweat" by Deven Kivioja"Yum Yum" by Charles Richard LaingAlso, this month, we bring you more reviews than ever of recent fantasy and SF in "Vide", where Nuke dreams of Electric Sheep & ascend's Elliott's Spirit Gate, while Craig Miles gets into a little Shadowplay. Sue Clennell ...

SciFi Channel Brings Back 'Farscape' 2007-07-16 22:12:00 interesting news from the SyFyPortal blog!Fans who still have dart boards with SciFi Channel executives on it might be ready to take those pictures down as the network has announced it is bringing back its cult favorite "Farscape" as a new Web series. No word has been announced on when such a project would be released, or how long each episode would be (or who will star), but SciFi Channel officials said they have ordered a 10-part series based on "Farscape" that will be executive produced by Brian Henson and Robert Halmi Jr. Just like the original series, this Web series will be produced by the Jim Henson Co. and RHI Entertainment. Well, I am not taking down my pictures yet....but I will stop throwing darts... ...

Sleek new spacesuit design 2007-07-16 18:51:00 In the 40 years that humans have been traveling into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility.Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, wants to change that.Newman is working on a sleek, advanced suit designed to allow superior mobility when humans eventually reach Mars or return to the moon. Her spandex and nylon BioSuit is not your grandfather's spacesuit--think more Spiderman, less John Glenn. Photo / Donna Coveney ... Design

MIT IDs mechanism behind fear 2007-07-16 11:51:00 Ron Huber came across some information concerning research on behavior modification. Well, augmentation? Here are his comments and the link to the story. Very very interenting.Mc-Soma?Mushroom-champing berserkers, hashish-puffing Assassins, the drunkard's hazy courage, Popeye the sailor man after downing a can of spinach, the cowardly lion with his medal; humankind has, for better or worse, sought biological or at least mechanistic ways to instill bravery on the unbrave.And, just as importantly, ways to RESTORE courage and peace of mind to the war-traumatized and the tortured.Now, in the July 15 online edition of Nature Neuroscience. A team of MIT scientists report that they may have discovered how to do both of those things. How? In their report A hippocampal Cdk5 pathway regulates extinction of contextual fear (abstract), researchers Farahnaz Sananbenesi, Andre Fischer, Xinyu Wang, Christina Schrick, Rachael Neve, Jelena Radulovic & Li-Huei Tsai explain that redu ...

Gardner Dozois has Major Surgery 2007-07-15 18:55:00 From SFScopeEditor and author Gardner Dozois had quintuple bypass heart surgery last weekend. His close friend Michael Swanwick told SFScope that Gardner came through the surgery fine, but later in the week, he had a minor setback. He again appears to be on the road to recovery. ...