( Read more... )

• Centauri Dreams shares a proposal for the relatively rapid industrialization of space in a few short years using smart robots with 3d printign technology.
• To what extent, as Crooked Timber speculates, the Arthurian myth complex science fictional?
• Dangerous Minds shares a lovely middle-finger-raised candle.
• The Dragon's Gaze looks at the interactions ( Read more... )

• Beyond the Beyond links to a US military science fiction contest.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly notes that journalism is meant to offer criticisms of the president.
• Crooked Timber has an open forum about the inauguration.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos from seminal 1980-era London club Billy's.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper reporting on a ( Read more... )

Wired shares excerpts from a recent interview with Bruce Sterling on what science fiction can teach its readers about fascism, and about what science fiction has to learn about itself.

“There’s a kind of rhetorical trick that goes on in science fiction, and in fascism, that kind of says, ‘Don’t really worry about what this means for the guy next ( Read more... )

Charlie Stross has completed the grimdark vision of 2017 that he had begun last week. I linked to the first two parts on New Year's Eve.

Let's try to do better, eh?

October Theresa May resigns as Prime Minister of the UK after a delegation from the 1922 Committee pay her a visit with baseball bats. Boris Johnson, one-time leader-in-waiting, ( Read more... )

• Anthropology.net looks at the genetics of how the Inuit have adapted to cold weather.
• 'Nathan Smith's Apostrophen shares the author's plans for the coming year.
• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling shares Margaret Atwood's commitment to fighting for freedom of expression.
• Crooked Timber asks its readers for recommendations in Anglophone science fiction.
• ( Read more... )

Over his blog Antipope, Charlie Stross has a future timeline--so far, up to two parts--imagining what it would be like for 2017 to turn out worse than 2016. So far, the timeline's pretty grim, giving us an idea of what perhaps we should work to avoid.

• blogTO notes that after the Berlin attack, the Toronto Christmas Market has upped its security.
• D-Brief looks at how roads divide ecosystems.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes that WD 1536+520 apparently has solar levels of rock-forming elements.
• Language Log examines central European metaphors for indecipherable languages.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money is diffident ( Read more... )

I originally posted this essay at r/daystrominstitute, drawing it from a post I made on Tumblr ( Read more... )

Journalist Kate Heartfield's essay for Article Magazine, "Decolonizing the future", provides an exciting take on how indigenous writers of science fiction are rewriting the genre, on imagining futures for their peoples and their cultures.

Wshe was in eighth grade, Darcie Little Badger read in a book at school that the Lipan Apache people - her own ( Read more... )