Links for 31-01-2007
Graham Sleight on Alfred Bester, Orbit’s record year, Microsoft Windows in science fiction, guided tour of Titan…
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1 – Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Alfred Bester
The inestimable Graham Sleight looks back at Alfred Bester’s best.
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2 – Dig deeper to find Martian life
“Although current drills may find essential tell-tale signs that life once existed on Mars, cellular life could not survive the radiation levels for long enough any closer to the surface of Mars than a few metres deep…”
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3 – Hack Attack: Burn almost any video file to a playable DVD
Just in case you should need to, you know.
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“Orbit, a damned fine SF&F imprint, has had a record year, recording their highest sales since their inception in 1974 and taking a huge chunk of the UK SF&F books sales for 2006.” So much for the genre in decline, huh?
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Via Ian McDonald, post-apocalyptic imagery to savour: “Gukanjima is an island near the westernmost shore of Japan … built upon a reef in the early 19th century because of a coal mine in the reefs…” Awesome atmospheric photos.
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“The basic idea is that a slew of emerging technologies — RFID tags, wireless networking, portable devices hooked up to satellites, wearable computing — will make objects in the real world act like the internet currently does.”
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7 – References to Windows in Science Fiction
“In honor of today’s release of Windows Vista, the latest incarnation of the world-eating operating system, let us consider a few notable references to the future of Windows in science fiction.” Think of any they’ve missed?
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8 – If Google Gives In On Library Scanning — Will It Hurt Everyone?
“…if they do a deal, they can rest on their laurels, knowing that the competition will be limited. That may make life easier for Google, but it means the product won’t be as good.”
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9 – Hubble’s main camera permanently hobbled
“The main camera for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is out of commission again, but this time, the agency believes it can never be fully revived.” Just when they’d made a plan to fix the thing, too. Dammit.
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“The Webb telescope will be able to adjust its light mask with exquisite precision, something that previous technologies could not achieve to anywhere near this level of performance.”
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11 – Guided tour of Titan
If you don’t mind a wee bit of Flash, here’s a guided tour of Saturn’s moon Titan, and all the funky stuff that the Huygens and Cassini found out about it. Not a nice place for a holiday – especially for smokers!
