In 1950, a U.S. Army psyops officer named Paul Linebarger used a pseudonym to publish a science-fiction story titled “Scanners Live in Vain” in a pulp magazine. It was about a man named Martel who works for the “deep state” in the far future as a mysterious “scanner,” or starship pilot, and whose mind is manipulated...
Hollywood must be afraid of Einstein considering how few movies seriously address the theory of relativity. Here are the ones who actually face the cold truth about space travel.
Just finished “Record of a Spaceborn Few,” by Becky Chambers
Set in the same universe as (and with some references to) her “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet,” and “A Closed and Common Orbit,” this is a another lovely, humane look at community, belonging, history and intentionality.
Godzilla Minus One, the highly anticipated kaiju film from director Takashi Yamazaki, has finally arrived, and it's a monster hit. Premiering on December 1,
I read a #scifi#book about an ice hauler that gets suddenly sent out of the solar system at relativistic speeds on the back of something that apparently isn't a comet, it starts as a survival story and then turns really interesting and weird.
Zugegeben, die woke Geschwätzigkeit in #BeckyChambers Erstlingsroman ist nervig, auch das lineare Erzählen und der oberlehrerinnenhafte Erklärmodus. Sind wir jetzt weichgeklopft und gehören wir auch zu den Guten? Das widerstrebt wohl jedem kritischen Geist. Richtige Pronomen machen noch keine Literatur. Muss #Hopepunk immer so naiv daherkommen?
Dennoch, einige Ideen sind spannend, also lese ich weiter im Buch #DerLangeWegZuEinemKleinen ZornigenPlaneten (2014)
Frank Kelly Freas' art illustrating William Rotsler's "The Raven and the Hawk" in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, ed. Ben Bova (September 1974) #scifi#sciencefiction#art#artist
One of the weird premises of Dune is the notion of scientific secrets. It’s really hard to keep scientific secrets. Once you know something is possible, if you have the resources of numerous planets for centuries, you can absolutely recreate anything ever invented.
Usually the limiting factor is resources.
Okay, now that I think about it’s one of the least weird assumptions. Just a dumb one.
But that’s just it, in the context of the Cold War there wasn’t much that either side invented that the other side couldn’t duplicate in a few years. Maybe not the exact same way, but we figured things out.
@deinol@durrandon But again: it's been common throughout history. I abandoned Dune after Children of, but it never struck me as an attempt at predictive futurism. 😅
Plus, imaginary tech secrets can be a metaphor for things that aren't tech and aren't secrets. 🤷
Anyway, I should mute this. Literalism hurts my soul. 😆
@SFRuminations I’ve always wanted a good rendering of what it would be like to stand on #LarryNiven’s #ringworld’s surface. No artist’s impression or 3D #render I have been able to find has given me the experience I want; the ones that try to be physically accurate always seem to be rendered from a few thousand k’s above the surface. I want ground level, both in a lower flat-ish area and from a normal mountain. I want to see the horizon tilting up in the spinward and, er, widdershins directions, and the wall mountains to the sides. I want to see this from near the middle and nearer an edge. Surely these days this is possible!
@whybird@SFRuminations I read somewhere that an accurate rendition would be unimpressive because of the sheer scale. Your landscape would appear flat as far as you could see, and the “arch” in the sky would be a dim, pencil-thin line.
