Is this Greg Benford the same as the science fiction author Greg Benford? Putting sf authors to work seems like a good way to get "out of the box" thinking.
I had a two-line LCD on a robot I built at Cal Poly. It was very useful to have print statements in my code so the robot could tell me what it thought it was doing. In real time I could observe the behavior and the screen output. When the screen says "turning left" and the robot is turning right, it's time to take another look at that stepper motor drive sequence!
I recently read China Meiville's The Scar. It is one of the best "science fantasy" books I have read in a long time. I can't wait to read his Perdido Street Station now.
Also if you haven't read Gene Wolfe, you really should. Both Meiville and Wolfe write "adult" science fantasy. Adult in the sense that the writing is dense and the stories and characters are deep. It takes time and thought to get through these books, but they are a welcome break from the rest of recent scifi.
They could easily make the Forever War without battlesuits. The point of the war was that it was dehumanizing, utterly violent, depressing, futile and unnecessary. That could be conveyed without the battle suit, although they do need something better than the Starship Troopers movie. Also, the aliens need to be reflexively repulsive. Like a spider on your desk, they have to be something you would shoot on sight without thinking...
The part I'm interested in seeing is the changes in earth's culture each time the time-displaced soldiers return home. Particularly: How are they going to handle the homosexuality aspects? That plays a large part in the book.
Finally, it wasn't clear to me at the end of the book, did the humans and aliens merge into one race, or had the aliens actually won the war and taken over humanity? I'd like to see thier take on that.
I'm just about finished with the second book in this trilogy. The thing I liked most about the first book was the exploration of Lyra's alternate earth. I absolutely loved the idea of the armored bears, bears with opposable thumbs who's metalcraft is far beyond the humans of her world. Also fascinating was the concept of daemons, physical representations of people's souls. A cool "alternate world" moment came when a character read from the book of Genesis. The passage was exactly the same as our except that it refered to Adam and Eve's daemons. Making something alien appear commonplace helps put the reader firmly "in" the world of the book. Like C.J.Cherryh, Pullman has that gift. A lot of the second book takes place in our world, which is relatively boring by comparison. I hope things pick up more in the third. I wouldn't characterize this a children's book. It assumes a fair knowledge of science, religion and world history. Also, bad things happen to children which are quite unsettling. I would place it in "young adult".
I don't know the power requirements off the top of my head, but it might be a good idea to take the power generated from tidal motion and use it to extract hydrogen from seawater. The hydrogen could then be stored, unlike electricity, and used in hydrogen fuel-cells.
If it can be make efficient enough, it would be a lot cleaner than extracting hydrogen from natural gas...
David Drake wrote some great, gritty sf warfare stories about a mercenary troop. They have all the nasty weaponry and collateral damage you could want without ignoring the devastating effects on soldiers and non-combatants alike. They would make some great movies, but knowing the Slammer's luck their movie would get screwed over like Starship Troopers...
Please, if you are going to use the bible as an example, at least read the book first!
Pilate was washing his hands of the whole affair. It was a symbolic guesture, there was no blood involved.
Solomon commanded the baby should be cut in half to get a reaction from the mothers. The baby was never harmed.
For some REAL biblical violence, try Judges 4:21, where Jael uses a hammer to drive a tent stake through the head of a sleeping Sisera, pinning it to the ground! That's good reading there.
When I was at Cal Poly in the mid 90's, a group of computer science students developed a game that resembled a "Star Trek" bridge. Four or five computers were linked together to form the bridge of a ship, with individual players running engineering, weapons, etc. Computer labs could play against each other in team competition.
After witnessing the game in action, I really thought that would be the future of arcades. You could go to an arcade with your buds and crew a starship fighting teams from other arcades around the world. It would be something people could do together, when almost all other arcade games are individual.
Does anyone who was associated with the project know what happened to it?
For a great book on the history of bridge building as a history of engineering in general, check out Henry Petroski's Engineers of Dreams. You will never look at a bridge the same way after reading this:
One of the great things about my schedule is that I get to have the lab to myself for a couple of hours every morning. I work from 7-4 and most of my coworkers come in at 10am, so I get to use the lab conflict-free in the morning and I'm more willing to share in the afternoon.
Ergo, flex-time make better use of company resources!
Dang! Why did it have to be a zero? That totally blows my Universal Theory of Everything! Twenty years of scribbling notes in my basement, all to waste.
If only it had been a three. Then I could have at least been left with a Theory of Something...
Read a good book lately?
What is a good site for sf news?
on
Revelation Space
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· Score: 1
I'm looking for a good website that talks about new and upcoming sf (and maybe fantasy) books. I have my own sf site that talks about what I've read and liked, but I want to find out about new stuff I haven't seen yet.
Kim Stanley Robinson had the coolest, most detailed space elevator in his Red, Green, Blue Mars series. Some of the details:
They moved one of Mars' moons to geostationary orbit and built the cable down from the moon to the surface.
The whole cable was in orbit. The bottom of the cable actually floated above the base on Mars!
The cable rotated (like a jumprope) so it would pass AROUND the other moon as it came near the elevator.
SPOILER! - When terrorists cut the cable at the top, it wrapped around the equator of Mars as it fell at an amazing velocity and created one of the coolest disasters in sf.
Can anyone recommend a good website for info on sf for people who read?
I have a small site that lists my favorite authors, and some kind soul recommended Vinge to me last year, but I want to find a site that talks about new and upcoming sf, as well as old stuff I might have missed.
but it will require a device roughly the size
of your couch to access it at any reasonable
speed! Can you imagine searching that puppy?
Read a good book lately?
Other ?Massive Engineering? Stories
on
Orbitsville
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· Score: 2
Dyson spheres and ring worlds, oh my! ?p? I just love stories involving these MASSIVE engineering projects. They evoke a sense of awe and an optimism in our technological future even when they are impractical and/or physically impossible. Niven's ?I?Ringworld?/I? and Clarke's ?i?Renedezvous with Rama?/i? are the most well known examples, but here are a couple of others: ?p? ?i?The Time Ships?/i? by Stephen Baxter - Nobody does engineering like the Morlocks! ?br? ?i?Anvil of the Stars?/i? by Greg Bear - This sequel to ?i?The Forge of God?/i? features manufactured planets, gas giant mining and electro-magnetic fields around a star to control and mine it's energy.
The thought of creating some self-reproducing artificial lifeform and releasing it into the environment to see how it survives is just cool. Make it self-modifying and see if it can adapt and expand to fill it's ecological niche before the predators devour it. It's the temptation to play god on a grand scale.
Of course you can get the same thrill with genetic algorithms and a-life, which is why I've never succumed to the temptation of the Dark Side myself, but the draw is still there...
I wonder how many other people thought of "Childhood's End" when they first saw the movie Independence Day? ID4 had an almost perfect visualization of the image in my mind of the huge alien starship appearing over New York City. I got shivers during the trailer.
For the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland fans, have you read Jeff Noon's Automated Alice? Alice travels through a clock to a future where termite mounds make comutations (computermites) and wild and silly things abound (civil serpents?). It's a cyberpunk Alice for the 90's. Read about it at Amazon.
It sounds like these may have been repackaged and released due to thier similarity (in theme) to the very successful Harry Potter books. Has anyone read them both?
Slashdot Mirror
Is this Greg Benford the same as the science fiction author Greg Benford? Putting sf authors to work seems like a good way to get "out of the box" thinking.
I had a two-line LCD on a robot I built at Cal Poly. It was very useful to have print statements in my code so the robot could tell me what it thought it was doing. In real time I could observe the behavior and the screen output. When the screen says "turning left" and the robot is turning right, it's time to take another look at that stepper motor drive sequence!
I read Neal Stephenson's Zodiac. I wouldn't be suprised if the answer to cold fusion couldn't be found in that muck at the bottom of Boston Harbor!
I recently read China Meiville's The Scar. It is one of the best "science fantasy" books I have read in a long time. I can't wait to read his Perdido Street Station now.
Also if you haven't read Gene Wolfe, you really should. Both Meiville and Wolfe write "adult" science fantasy. Adult in the sense that the writing is dense and the stories and characters are deep. It takes time and thought to get through these books, but they are a welcome break from the rest of recent scifi.
See my web page below for more ideas...
San Diego also experienced massive flooding after an attempt at rain-making in the early 1900s.
Story
Hatfield was apparently quite the rain-maker, but El Nino probably had something to do with it too...
I found this review more helpful. I haven't had a chance to read this book yet, but it's on my list!
I found this book review through Locus Magazine , which is the best online source of sf and fantasy news that I've found.
They could easily make the Forever War without battlesuits. The point of the war was that it was dehumanizing, utterly violent, depressing, futile and unnecessary. That could be conveyed without the battle suit, although they do need something better than the Starship Troopers movie.
Also, the aliens need to be reflexively repulsive. Like a spider on your desk, they have to be something you would shoot on sight without thinking...
The part I'm interested in seeing is the changes in earth's culture each time the time-displaced soldiers return home. Particularly: How are they going to handle the homosexuality aspects? That plays a large part in the book.
Finally, it wasn't clear to me at the end of the book, did the humans and aliens merge into one race, or had the aliens actually won the war and taken over humanity? I'd like to see thier take on that.
I'm just about finished with the second book in this trilogy. The thing I liked most about the first book was the exploration of Lyra's alternate earth. I absolutely loved the idea of the armored bears, bears with opposable thumbs who's metalcraft is far beyond the humans of her world. Also fascinating was the concept of daemons, physical representations of people's souls. A cool "alternate world" moment came when a character read from the book of Genesis. The passage was exactly the same as our except that it refered to Adam and Eve's daemons. Making something alien appear commonplace helps put the reader firmly "in" the world of the book. Like C.J.Cherryh, Pullman has that gift.
A lot of the second book takes place in our world, which is relatively boring by comparison. I hope things pick up more in the third.
I wouldn't characterize this a children's book. It assumes a fair knowledge of science, religion and world history. Also, bad things happen to children which are quite unsettling. I would place it in "young adult".
I don't know the power requirements off the top of my head, but it might be a good idea to take the power generated from tidal motion and use it to extract hydrogen from seawater. The hydrogen could then be stored, unlike electricity, and used in hydrogen fuel-cells.
If it can be make efficient enough, it would be a lot cleaner than extracting hydrogen from natural gas...
What we need is a good Hammer's Slammers movie.
David Drake wrote some great, gritty sf warfare stories about a mercenary troop. They have all the nasty weaponry and collateral damage you could want without ignoring the devastating effects on soldiers and non-combatants alike. They would make some great movies, but knowing the Slammer's luck their movie would get screwed over like Starship Troopers...
Pilate was washing his hands of the whole affair. It was a symbolic guesture, there was no blood involved.
Solomon commanded the baby should be cut in half to get a reaction from the mothers. The baby was never harmed.
For some REAL biblical violence, try Judges 4:21, where Jael uses a hammer to drive a tent stake through the head of a sleeping Sisera, pinning it to the ground! That's good reading there.
After witnessing the game in action, I really thought that would be the future of arcades. You could go to an arcade with your buds and crew a starship fighting teams from other arcades around the world. It would be something people could do together, when almost all other arcade games are individual.
Does anyone who was associated with the project know what happened to it?
Engineers of Dreams at amazon.
Ergo, flex-time make better use of company resources!
Read a good book lately?
Dang! Why did it have to be a zero? That totally blows my Universal Theory of Everything! Twenty years of scribbling notes in my basement, all to waste.
If only it had been a three. Then I could have at least been left with a Theory of Something...
Read a good book lately?
I'm looking for a good website that talks about new and upcoming sf (and maybe fantasy) books. I have my own sf site that talks about what I've read and liked, but I want to find out about new stuff I haven't seen yet.
Read a good book lately?
Kim Stanley Robinson had the coolest, most detailed space elevator in his Red, Green, Blue Mars series. Some of the details:
They moved one of Mars' moons to geostationary orbit and built the cable down from the moon to the surface.
The whole cable was in orbit. The bottom of the cable actually floated above the base on Mars!
The cable rotated (like a jumprope) so it would pass AROUND the other moon as it came near the elevator.
SPOILER! - When terrorists cut the cable at the top, it wrapped around the equator of Mars as it fell at an amazing velocity and created one of the coolest disasters in sf.
Read a good book lately?
I have a small site that lists my favorite authors, and some kind soul recommended Vinge to me last year, but I want to find a site that talks about new and upcoming sf, as well as old stuff I might have missed.
Read a good book lately?
Read a good book lately?
Dyson spheres and ring worlds, oh my! ?p? I just love stories involving these MASSIVE engineering projects. They evoke a sense of awe and an optimism in our technological future even when they are impractical and/or physically impossible. Niven's ?I?Ringworld?/I? and Clarke's ?i?Renedezvous with Rama?/i? are the most well known examples, but here are a couple of others: ?p? ?i?The Time Ships?/i? by Stephen Baxter - Nobody does engineering like the Morlocks! ?br? ?i?Anvil of the Stars?/i? by Greg Bear - This sequel to ?i?The Forge of God?/i? features manufactured planets, gas giant mining and electro-magnetic fields around a star to control and mine it's energy.
Read a good book lately?
Also, please avoid "Magna X", which recently came out in theaters here in the US. It's quite possibly the worst anime I've ever seen!
Read a good book lately?
The thought of creating some self-reproducing artificial lifeform and releasing it into the environment to see how it survives is just cool. Make it self-modifying and see if it can adapt and expand to fill it's ecological niche before the predators devour it. It's the temptation to play god on a grand scale.
Of course you can get the same thrill with genetic algorithms and a-life, which is why I've never succumed to the temptation of the Dark Side myself, but the draw is still there...
Read a good book lately?
I wonder how many other people thought of "Childhood's End" when they first saw the movie Independence Day? ID4 had an almost perfect visualization of the image in my mind of the huge alien starship appearing over New York City. I got shivers during the trailer.
Read a good book lately?
For the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland fans, have you read Jeff Noon's Automated Alice? Alice travels through a clock to a future where termite mounds make comutations (computermites) and wild and silly things abound (civil serpents?). It's a cyberpunk Alice for the 90's. Read about it at Amazon.
Read a good book lately?
It sounds like these may have been repackaged and released due to thier similarity (in theme) to the very successful Harry Potter books. Has anyone read them both?
Read a good book lately?