Scientists successfully reset human pluripotent stem cells to the earliest development state.
DARPA wants to test satellite repair droids in orbit.
Paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim painted the most complete picture of the Cretaceous ecosystem from the Sahara.
World's first 3-D printed car built in Chicago.
David Barr Kirtley moderates a panel discussion of extreme weather in genre fiction with Paolo Bacigalupi, Ramez Naam, and Tobias Buckell.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
What interests me in DH December solicits
Dark Horse Comics December 2014 solicits.
Just doing a quick look over the Dark Horse solicits for December and noting the things that interest me.
Horror has never worked for me as horror. The Hellboy and Mignola titles always make good dark urban fantasy, though: Abe Sapien, BPRD: Hell on Earth, and Hellboy & the BPRD.
Chris Roberson always entertains. Looking forward to his Aliens: Fire & Stone. Now will someone get the rights for and hire Chris to write a Thundarr comic? Please?
Steve Niles' Criminal Macabre is dark urban fantasy noir. Same for Eric Powell's The Goon if you add the qualifier "weird."
Dark Horse Presents #5 has a Joe Casey and an Alex de Campi story. SOLD! Alex de Campi also does Grindhouse: Drive In, Bleed Out.
I'm looking forward to reading Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle by J. Michael Straczynski & Pete Woods as a piece. Gail Simone and Rhianna Pratchett co-write Tomb Raider, and Pratchett is another writer who needs to write more comics.
My heart thrills and cries. Stan Sakai closes on the end of his Usagi Yojimbo epic.
Just doing a quick look over the Dark Horse solicits for December and noting the things that interest me.
Horror has never worked for me as horror. The Hellboy and Mignola titles always make good dark urban fantasy, though: Abe Sapien, BPRD: Hell on Earth, and Hellboy & the BPRD.
Chris Roberson always entertains. Looking forward to his Aliens: Fire & Stone. Now will someone get the rights for and hire Chris to write a Thundarr comic? Please?
Steve Niles' Criminal Macabre is dark urban fantasy noir. Same for Eric Powell's The Goon if you add the qualifier "weird."
Dark Horse Presents #5 has a Joe Casey and an Alex de Campi story. SOLD! Alex de Campi also does Grindhouse: Drive In, Bleed Out.
I'm looking forward to reading Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle by J. Michael Straczynski & Pete Woods as a piece. Gail Simone and Rhianna Pratchett co-write Tomb Raider, and Pratchett is another writer who needs to write more comics.
My heart thrills and cries. Stan Sakai closes on the end of his Usagi Yojimbo epic.
Science and Tech Links 9/11
Spinosaurus was fifty feet long and ate sharks.
A robot has captured the first images of the Great Pyramid of Giza's secret chamber.
First space vessel designed for tourists.
New fossil analysis places the origin of mammals back to the Triassic. Haramiyids lived in what would later be China some 200 million years ago, the same time that the first dinosaurs appeared.
New pterosaur fossil found in China appears to have a throat designed for scooping fish. much like a pelican.
Mars Curiosity Rover has reached Aeolis Mons, its primary target.
NSA threatened Yahoo with $250,000-a-day fine unless it turned over user data.
In a discussion of design going back to prehistoric roots, Roman Mars and 99% Invisible talk about the Acheulean hand axe, an object that hominids taught other hominids to make for a million years.
A robot has captured the first images of the Great Pyramid of Giza's secret chamber.
First space vessel designed for tourists.
New fossil analysis places the origin of mammals back to the Triassic. Haramiyids lived in what would later be China some 200 million years ago, the same time that the first dinosaurs appeared.
New pterosaur fossil found in China appears to have a throat designed for scooping fish. much like a pelican.
Mars Curiosity Rover has reached Aeolis Mons, its primary target.
NSA threatened Yahoo with $250,000-a-day fine unless it turned over user data.
In a discussion of design going back to prehistoric roots, Roman Mars and 99% Invisible talk about the Acheulean hand axe, an object that hominids taught other hominids to make for a million years.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Late Links
3,900 year old suit of bone armor found in Siberia.
More super-large dinosaurs discovered this week. The Rukwatitan bisepultus was discovered in Tanzania,
Egypt's mammal extinctions tracked over 6,000 years of art.
The legends of the No Man's Land between the trenches of the Great War/World War One.
New fortress on Zealand in Denmark looks to have been the launch point for viking attacks on England.
Digital mapping uncovers 17 newly discovered monuments and one 1.5 kilometer "superhenge."
More super-large dinosaurs discovered this week. The Rukwatitan bisepultus was discovered in Tanzania,
Egypt's mammal extinctions tracked over 6,000 years of art.
The legends of the No Man's Land between the trenches of the Great War/World War One.
New fortress on Zealand in Denmark looks to have been the launch point for viking attacks on England.
Digital mapping uncovers 17 newly discovered monuments and one 1.5 kilometer "superhenge."
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Run for the Border
Twenty-eight years ago, Borderland, edited by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold, was first published. This was a shared universe anthology using an urban fantasy setting.The premise was simple: Something had happened to open the border between our world and Faerie. Some decent sized city was near the border when it happened, though no place is ever named, It can found anywhere in the world if one follows certain rules. Or not. Teens ran away to the Border to escape something, to find something, or to just experience magic.
Borderland starts with a story by Steven R. Boyett, just after a way between the Border opens. You see a town attempt to adjust after a cataclysm? An apocalypse? And the return of "elves" (but don't call them that.) Later stories jump ahead some time (but how can time be measured near Faerie?) and introduces us to Stick and Farrel Din, the Dancing Ferret and Danceland, and learn a little something about how people live, survive, and thrive in a town where neither the rules of science nor magic are reliable, where cultures, both world and fay, come together and try to build something new, something theirs, while dealing with the darker side of being human.
In five anthologies and three novels, Bordertown has introduced me to characters who are old friends, Ash Bieucannon, Wolfboy, Sparks, the Fixer and the Finder (Tick-Tick and Orient), Sunny Rico, Linn, Milo Chevrolet, the "Terrible Trio" (Strider, Sai, and Goldy), Screaming Lord Neville, Camphire, and too many more to count. I have eaten at Godmom's, the Hard Luck Cafe, Taco Hell (try the Meltdown Burrito), and Cafe Cubana for tea. I've danced at the Dancing Ferret, Danceland, and the Wheat Sheaf. I've seen Horn Dance and Lord Dunsany's Nightmare and oh so many bands who name the town home. I tell you all this to point out how real the writers made Bordertown for me.
And what writers. I've mentioned Steven Boyett, and if you haven't read his books Ariel and Elegy Beach and if you haven't read those two, are you in for a treat. In the first book he was joined by Ellen Kushner, Charles de Lint, and Bellamy Bach. In the second book, Bordertown, they were joined by Will Shetterly, Emma Bull, and Midori Snyder. I won't go over the full list of those who contributed to the Bordertown series, but a few of the other writers were Delia Sherman, Patricia McKillip, Steven Brust, Caroline, Stevermer, Jane Yolen, Cory Doctorow, Amal el-Mohtar, Tim Pratt, Nalo Hopkinson, Christopher Barzak, Holly Black, and Neil Gaiman.
This is early urban fantasy and, as such, owes as much to magic realism as to the mythic fantasy novels which is the ur-text for most heroic and epic fantasy today. Don't expect to find plot-by-the-numbers, but instead people who love and live so they must be real, which is the real magic.
This is the series that inspired the current urban fantasy trend and was read by many writers working the YA boom. The have a strong place in the history of the genre and and damn fine stories besides.
Borderland edited by Terri Windling & Mark Alan Arnold
Bordertown edited by Terri Windling & Mark Alan Arnold
Life on the Border edited by Terri Windling
The Essential Bordertown: A Traveller's Guide to the Edge of Faerie edited by Terri Windling and Delia Sherman
Welcome to Bordertown edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner
Elsewhere by Will Shetterly
Nevernever by Will Shetterly
Finder by Emma Bull
There is also an Audible.com audiobook edition of Welcome to Bordertown.
(Faun could easily be one of the myriad bands in Bordertown.)
Borderland starts with a story by Steven R. Boyett, just after a way between the Border opens. You see a town attempt to adjust after a cataclysm? An apocalypse? And the return of "elves" (but don't call them that.) Later stories jump ahead some time (but how can time be measured near Faerie?) and introduces us to Stick and Farrel Din, the Dancing Ferret and Danceland, and learn a little something about how people live, survive, and thrive in a town where neither the rules of science nor magic are reliable, where cultures, both world and fay, come together and try to build something new, something theirs, while dealing with the darker side of being human.
In five anthologies and three novels, Bordertown has introduced me to characters who are old friends, Ash Bieucannon, Wolfboy, Sparks, the Fixer and the Finder (Tick-Tick and Orient), Sunny Rico, Linn, Milo Chevrolet, the "Terrible Trio" (Strider, Sai, and Goldy), Screaming Lord Neville, Camphire, and too many more to count. I have eaten at Godmom's, the Hard Luck Cafe, Taco Hell (try the Meltdown Burrito), and Cafe Cubana for tea. I've danced at the Dancing Ferret, Danceland, and the Wheat Sheaf. I've seen Horn Dance and Lord Dunsany's Nightmare and oh so many bands who name the town home. I tell you all this to point out how real the writers made Bordertown for me.
And what writers. I've mentioned Steven Boyett, and if you haven't read his books Ariel and Elegy Beach and if you haven't read those two, are you in for a treat. In the first book he was joined by Ellen Kushner, Charles de Lint, and Bellamy Bach. In the second book, Bordertown, they were joined by Will Shetterly, Emma Bull, and Midori Snyder. I won't go over the full list of those who contributed to the Bordertown series, but a few of the other writers were Delia Sherman, Patricia McKillip, Steven Brust, Caroline, Stevermer, Jane Yolen, Cory Doctorow, Amal el-Mohtar, Tim Pratt, Nalo Hopkinson, Christopher Barzak, Holly Black, and Neil Gaiman.
This is early urban fantasy and, as such, owes as much to magic realism as to the mythic fantasy novels which is the ur-text for most heroic and epic fantasy today. Don't expect to find plot-by-the-numbers, but instead people who love and live so they must be real, which is the real magic.
This is the series that inspired the current urban fantasy trend and was read by many writers working the YA boom. The have a strong place in the history of the genre and and damn fine stories besides.
Borderland edited by Terri Windling & Mark Alan Arnold
Bordertown edited by Terri Windling & Mark Alan Arnold
Life on the Border edited by Terri Windling
The Essential Bordertown: A Traveller's Guide to the Edge of Faerie edited by Terri Windling and Delia Sherman
Welcome to Bordertown edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner
Elsewhere by Will Shetterly
Nevernever by Will Shetterly
Finder by Emma Bull
There is also an Audible.com audiobook edition of Welcome to Bordertown.
(Faun could easily be one of the myriad bands in Bordertown.)
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