Posts Tagged ‘Science’

Eight Less Known Websites for SF Readers and Fans

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Everyone knows a dozen author web­sites to read, and the indus­try blogs that tell you about the lat­est movies and TV shows. But what if you’re inter­ested in hear­ing about out­landish ideas you might pil­fer for a story? Or maybe you just want a quick kick of reality-​​based sen­sawunda. What web­sites to do you turn to for that? Try this list for starters.

1. Futurismic

Almost solely the hard work of Paul Graham Raven, Futurismic picks up on the near-​​future sci­ence news faster than any­one else I read at the moment. More impor­tantly, Futurismic is not afraid to con­tem­plate the ram­i­fi­ca­tions and impli­ca­tions of new tech devel­op­ments. Paul has the mind of a great sci­ence fic­tion writer in the mak­ing, I think. I some­times wish he’d spend less time on Futurismic and more time writ­ing short stories.

Futurismic also fea­tures reg­u­lar guest columns–one of which is by Brenda Cooper on trends in futur­ism. Those are well worth a read as well.

2. Curious Expeditions

For a lapsed world trav­eler such as myself, Curious Expeditions is a real treat. Written by Michelle Enemark and Dylan Thuras , the site doc­u­ments weird and obscure loca­tions around the globe. Their fix­a­tion on cab­i­nets of curiosi­ties have given me many ideas for the Dr. Roundbottom project.

Their pho­tos are always visu­ally rich and unlike any­thing else you will find else­where. It’s a source of his­tor­i­cal sensawunda.

3. Post Secret

Post Secret is a project in which peo­ple mail anony­mous post cards with secrets in to the project cre­ator. Each week, he posts a new batch of cards.

This one has almost noth­ing to do with spec­u­la­tive fic­tion exactly, but for a writer, it’s an amaz­ing insight into the inner lives of other human beings. I always come away from the Sunday posts of secrets feel­ing a lit­tle more wise and a lit­tle changed by the expe­ri­ence. I can’t say that I’ve used any of the secrets directly in my work, but read­ing the site is def­i­nitely fur­ther­ing my under­stand­ing of how peo­ple work in a more gen­eral sense.

4. Sentient Developments

The project of Canadian futur­ist George Dvorsky, this site brings me buck­ets of news about robot­ics and research in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. It does take a bit of a cred­i­bil­ity hit by pay­ing lip-​​service to the dis­cred­ited “aquatic ape” the­ory in my opin­ion, but I can under­stand the appeal of such wacky the­o­ries. Regardless, it’s a great source of sci­ence news.

5. Douglas Rushkoff

Here’s another blog by an eclec­tic and inter­est­ing thinker. Douglas leans left polit­i­cally, so you may not be inter­ested in his cur­rent fix­a­tion about tak­ing the world back from cor­po­ra­tions, but he’s been a great source for me of off-​​the-​​beaten-​​path eco­nomic news. About every­thing else, Ruskoff is inter­ested, it seems to me, in the future of human­ity. This can be a lit­tle pub­lic­ity heavy at times, as he is sell­ing a book, but when he shares an arti­cle, it’s almost always worth a read.

6. Strange Maps

There have been a lot of very, very strange maps drawn through­out his­tory. This blog brings you scans of the some of the stranger ones. Not much else to it, and that’s why I love it.

7. Street Use

This is another sim­ple site. It doc­u­ments with pho­tographs the unusual inven­tions and mod­i­fi­ca­tions of off-​​the-​​shelf tech in 3rd world coun­tries. They quote William Gibson in their expla­na­tion: “The street finds its own use for things.”

Possibly a great web­site if you’re writ­ing post-​​apocalyptic SF.

8. Centauri Dreams

Interested in space explo­ration? This blog by the Tau Zero Foundation is all about that, and tan­gen­tially often about the notion of alien life. I some­times find it an odd read, but it’s def­i­nitely rich with SF mate­r­ial for the writer and afficionado.

So, what are some sites that you think are good brain fod­der for the SF type?

Virophage

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Damn it, while I’m out immers­ing myself in the sci­ence fic­tion world all week at Denvention 3, sci­ence goes and spits out some­thing truly amaz­ing and I’m only just now read­ing about it. Check this out:

There is a large virus that gets sick by becom­ing infected by a smaller virus.

If that does not blow your mind, then noth­ing will.

It def­i­nitely set­tles the debate for me as to whether or not viruses are life. Maybe one of the def­i­n­i­tions of life should boil down to “some­thing that can be infected by a virus.”

On Terraforming

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

On Terraforming

I wrote the below for a mail­ing list the other day in response to a ques­tion about whether we’re ter­raform­ing our envi­ron­ments for good. I liked it, so I thought I would share it with you all:

I think Americans ter­raform quite a bit, but they do so in a not-​​environmentally concious/​protective ways. Grass lawns and farm fields are two good exam­ples. Grass species that are planted on your aver­age lawn are in no way native to America (last I checked any­way). They are for­eign species, and by plant­ing them, we have cre­ated mas­sive arti­fi­cial habi­tats for no rea­son that I can discern–what, because we think grass is pretty and it’s easy on the feet?

Farms are also a form of ter­raform­ing. We took the world’s largest con­ti­nous long-​​grass prairie and turned it into a mas­sive food pro­duc­ing ecosys­tem (with 1/​1000th of the bio­di­ver­sity, but that’s a digres­sion) (Actually, there’s some belief that many of the grass species that we found in the mid­west when whites set­tled had actu­ally been semi-​​cultivated by native amer­i­cans for a few thou­sand years, and some anthro­pol­o­gists argue that it wasn’t really a native ecosys­tem at that point either. This brings up lots of debates in habi­tat restora­tion that I bet Melinda knows a hell of a lot more about than I do).

As part of this, we straight­ened the HELL out of every river we could, which had pro­found effects on flood­ing and river ecosys­tems. Did you know that if it wasn’t for the Army Core of Engineers, the Mississippi would enter the Gulf of Mexico some­where dozens (hun­dreds?) of miles east of where it does now? I think I read that some­where in a book about giant engi­neer­ing projects “gone wrong.”

The Army Core of Engineers almost spe­cial­izes in refor­mat­ting the land­scape for human pur­poses. However, they don’t quite do it on the scale that you are talk­ing about, and I think the main rea­son is, these buffer zones that were pop­u­lar to dis­cuss after Katrina are not “cost effec­tive” sim­ply because they would eat up valu­able real estate that MUST BE DEVELOPED, THERE’S GOLD IN THEM THERE SWAMPS! In my opin­ion, noth­ing should ever be built on a flood plain, but flood plains are real estate, the most valu­able “invest­ment” you can make in America. Damn the future, build build BUILD!

I have been col­lect­ing a lot of links regard­ing archi­tec­ture plans for build­ing homes that are envi­ron­men­tally sus­tain­able and that become a part of the land­scape instead of paving it. There may very well be a move­ment afoot here, but it’s in Europe, not in the land of out­sourc­ing and ser­vice indus­try (here).

The big projects you see of this sort in the future are almost all going to have to do with stealing/​moving fresh water around to places where we shouldn’t have built really big, water-​​guzzling cities (IE: any­thing west of the rock­ies, minus the Pacific Northwest). I think it’s a race over whether a mas­sive war is going to be fought over remain­ing oil or remain­ing fresh water. Our use of it far out­strips its avail­abil­ity and there is seri­ous con­flict ahead (assum­ing some­one doesn’t invent some cheap and low-​​energy way of desalin­iza­tion or something).

Finally, I recently read a short arti­cle on Deep Sea News about how huge chunks of the ocean have effec­tively been aquaformed by the process of deep sea trawl­ing. Trawling may very well be THE most eco­log­i­cally dam­ag­ing prac­tice we humans con­tinue today. It destroys thou­sand year old deep sea corals and other habitat-​​necessary organ­isms in a mat­ter of min­utes. Imagine a giant hand com­ing out of the sky and scrap­ing your city away, and you’re close to what this does. However, in the after­math, the process seems to make a bet­ter home for some pop­u­lar and tasty fishes, and the process is prob­a­bly irre­versable, so there’s an argu­ment that once a nation has destroyed their waters this way, they should just keep doing it because we won’t see a recov­ery in cen­turies, per­haps millenia.

Oh, we’re shap­ing the world alright, is my basic opin­ion. We’re just doing it in search of a short term buck and damn the future. Damn it straight to the biggest god­damn mass extinc­tion the world has seen yet.