Watch this concept video for a robotic pet and never ever sleep again:

You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com

Stefan Ulrich, who hates us all enough to design and build that Creeping Grub of Despair, "envisions that [in the future] people will turn to robots for the illusion of a living presence to satisfy their emotional needs." Over at Futurismic, Paul Raven has some doubts:

It seems ( Read more... )

Go, now, and read Ekaterina Sedia's totally gripping "Fungal Gardens" at Apex. Fungus and loneliness. You can't go wrong.

Bart Leib reports on Flash Fiction Online's rejection of an LGBTQ-themed ad bid from Crossed Genres. Which is FFO's loss in every sense of the word, really.

Jason Henninger says indie film Ink is like "a Whedonesque Wings of ( Read more... )

Matt Cheney posts an alternative list of "Mindblowing SF" stories that, if collected, I'd buy in an instant.

Paul Krugman with the only useful commentary I've seen on health care in months. Much more worthwhile than the play-by-play John Madden shit that even NPR can't resist. Note this choice bit of Republican anger: "Get your government hands off my Medicare!"

The Trimble Yuma "Rugged Tablet Computer." The print ads make much hay over the fact that it " ( Read more... )

The Chronicle of Higher Education on why PowerPoint is a debilitating crutch for both teachers and students. The argument's not just limited to PowerPoint, either -- they make the presumably-obvious-but-apparently-not point that sitting your students in front of computers without a pretty dynamic plan of action is a recipe for pedagogical disaster ( Read more... )

It always sucks to have a story rejected, but these rejection slips from the 1930s remind us that today's editors are, at very least, mercifully straightforward. I usually take editorial comments in stride, but I think "This is a fantastic story which we are not going to buy for no stated reason" would sort of piss me off.

Speaking of going to Mars, Buzz Aldrin on why we should:

Our next generation must think boldly in terms of a goal for the space program: Mars for America's future. I am not suggesting a few visits to plant flags and do photo ops but a journey to make the first homestead in space: an American colony on a new world.
Robotic exploration of Mars has ( Read more... )

A blog both "inevitable" and absolutely "necessary." (via Jay Lake)


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I love a good serialized story. Hell, I love the format so much, I'll put up with some pretty awful stories. (Heroes, say.) At their best, serials give you all the fast pace and efficiency of short stories plus the protracted character development of novels, which is awesome. But the print serial's been on life support for a while now (the ( Read more... )

In one of the stories I've been working on for the past couple months (Untitled SF-noir novella), two people encrypt sensitive transmissions with quantum keys which, if intercepted or "observed" by outside parties, collapse into unrecognizable noise--this according to the principle of quantum uncertainty. The tech's meant to be rare and valuable in ( Read more... )