By Rustic Intel The Star Wars storyline divides neatly into two sides: good and evil. The latter possess a qualitative and quantitative edge in terms of military hardware and personnel. The former clings to intangible advantages in pluck, optimism, and desperation. It is desperation that encourages the scrappy underdogs to take chances they otherwise might […]
Read More The Force Awakens to High Risk HUMINTBy Mike McCrae Astronomers have produced a clear snapshot of a 2.3 light-year long ‘thread’ snaking around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The structure itself was discovered back in 2012, but the new image reveals the long line seems to be fairly intimate with the dark heart of our galaxy. […]
Read More There’s a Weird String at the Center of Our GalaxyTimescape by Gregory Benford My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the 12 Awards in 12 Months Reading Challenge, the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge, the Hard Core Sci-fi Reading Challenge, and the SF Masterworks Reading Challenge and the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club. Method of the world’s destruction: A major failure of chemical balance […]
Read More Book Review: Timescape by Gregory BenfordWolves of the Calla by Stephen King My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the I Just Have to Read More of That Author Reading Challenge, the Second Best Reading Challenge, the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge, the High Fantasy Reading Challenge, and the Read the Sequel Reading Challenge. This book was nominated for the […]
Read More Book Review: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen KingHappy New Year everyone! I figured this was a good time to lay out my writing plans for the year for the benefit of friends & fans. To start with, some bad news: I have decided that for 2018, I will not be producing new installments in the Wyrd West Chronicles. My reasons for this […]
Read More My Writing Plans for 2018This year I fell down on the job in completing my Goodreads reading challenge. I started with an optimistic attempt to read 75 books. I started strong, but a brutal self-imposed writing schedule kept me hopping, and I realized in about August that I was nowhere near where I wanted to be for reading challenges. […]
Read More My Year in Reading 2017By Susan Defreitas The Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz, highfalutin’ literary author though he may be, has famously mourned the fact that there will be no more Octavia Butler books. The iconic Black author, who won both a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur “Genius” grant—not to mention the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Locus—died in 2006, leaving […]
Read More Octavia’s Daughters: Meet the New Queens of Spec FicThe Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge, the High Fantasy Reading Challenge, and the Read the Sequel Reading Challenge. Stephen King describes this as “Dark Tower 4.5,” so this is the sequence I chose to read it in for my re-read. […]
Read More Book Review: The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen KingBy Rich Haridy A team at MIT has genetically modified bacteria cells and developed a new 3D printing technique to create a “living tattoo” that can respond to a variety of stimuli. Electronic tattoos and smart ink technologies are showing exciting potential for reframing how we think of wearable sensor devices. While many engineers are experimenting with a variety […]
Read More 3D Printed Live Bacteria Creates World’s First “Living Tattoo”By Adam Fitzgerald Encountering Samuel R. Delany’s work, for me at least, can be described in two phases (more like paroxysms): the first is being so overcome by the true presence of a genius or polymath writer, the endless fertility and ease through which he has made each genre indelibly his own (science fiction, literary […]
Read More Don’t Romanticize Science Fiction: An Interview with Samuel Delany
