AMAZING NEWS: August 25, 2024

AMAZING PEOPLE NEWS

Tom Eastman’s Simulation Hacks was published in Black Cat Weekly #155.

Moshe Feder highlights The Greatest Books website, which attempts to create a list of lists of the greatest books

Scott Edelman wishes Neil Clarke a Happy Birthday.  (Neil recently won a Best Editor Hugo Award)

Bob Eggleton shared photos from his visit to Necronomicon (FB Friends only).  Necronomicon website

Al Sirois shares a Wil Wheaton post about Elon Musk

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki shares a photo of a meetup of SFF & African Speculative Fiction at Worldcon

Joseph Zitt highlighted this blog on Opera and Science Fiction

David Brin has high hopes for the Large Synoptic Survey telescope (now named Vera Rubin) when it begins operations next year

Al Sirois shares some political commentary riffing on a well-loved movie

Moshe Feder reminds us that Susan Wood would have been celebrating her 76th birthday a few days ago

Fandom

Kevin J. Anderson shares a pic of Robert Silverberg at Worldcon

This year’s Pulpfest was a huge success!

Space

Monday is the earliest scheduled launch of the Polaris Dawn mission, which is privately funded, will send four citizen-astronauts to space and is intended to test space suits, EVA technologies and more.

The ESA’s JUICE Mission successfully used the Earth and the Moon for the first “double gravity assist” manuever this past Monday and Tuesday, on its way to Jupiter’s icy moons.

The first launch from a Shetland Islands spaceport explodes on liftoff

Science

Citizen scientists helped identify an object – likely a faint red star – that is traveling so fast it may leave the galaxy entirely

A digitally animated depiction of black holes merging, based on recent data from gravity wave research

Astronomers have been able to obtain images of Polaris, the North Star, that reveal new details about its size and appearance

I had no idea!  The vacuum of space will eventually decay.  This paper calculates when.

A new species of invasive ants has been identified – in Manhattan

Industry

Mr. Softee, iconic ice cream truck company, experiencing hard times.  (What’s the SF connection?  Mr. Softee handed out premiums to kids like me, including a set of The Adventures of Captain Chapel, charting early space exploration.)

Literature

Rich Horton takes a look at Cordwainer Smith’s Norstrilia

A librarian saved nearly four hundred thousand ancient manuscripts from the Taliban, some dating back to the 11th centur

Award winning SF author Maurice Broaddus is working to restore an historic library for black residents of Indianapolis

Aurealis #173 has been published.  (The forth-coming Aurealis #174 will have another of my articles on A. Bertram Chandler) 

Nnedi Okorafor shares the cover of one of her latest – One Way Witch

 Art

Kirbytropes visually examines repeated images and themes appearing in Jack Kirby’s comic art

Social Commentary

A same-sex flamingo couple are raising a flamingo chick.  (But same-sex bonding isn’t “natural”…)

This author and his kids played D&D with an AI as Dungeon Master.  The experience  “blew” their minds

Levar Burton shares the meaning of a display of film props in his home to Laurence Fishburne (pretty intense)

Mini-Editorial

We are anticipating the imminent public release of our new line of Convention Wear shirts.  Be on the look out!

In the Future

Monday’s Free Fiction – Stranger by Daniel Burnbridge
Tuesday – The Big Idea: K.X. Song
Wednesday – Unexpected Questions with Jesse Ellyson
Thursday – The Big Idea: M V Melcer
Friday – Matt’s Reviews: Homegoing by Frederik Pohl