Link Drift
- The Guardian has been running quite a bit of material on SF in recent days, partly because of the opening of an sf exhibit at the British Library. Among the pieces featured: China Mieville bringing radical sf into the mainstream, many high profile sf writers talk about their favorite sf novels, Neil Gaiman on Gene Wolfe, and spurring the most discussion: Iain M. Banks on “science fiction is no place for dabblers.” Cheryl Morgan’s response to the latter is here, and Larry Nolen’s is here.
- An SFSignal Mind Meld on challenging works of sf that are worth the read.
- Aliette de Bodard on writing fantasy from a non-European perspective.
- T. J. McIntyre has put together an eBook anthology to be sold as a fundraiser for the Red Cross after the devastating tornadoes in Alabama and other southern states: Southern Fried Weirdness: Reconstruction.
- In the final (for now) issue of Salon Futura, Alex Preston wades into the “Nihilism in Fantasy” debate, spawning many comments.
- Sam Jordison on The Art of Physical Criticism.
- Mark McGurl writes in defense of the traditional MFA program.
- Lavie Tidhar talks about the difficulty of finding art for the cover of the Apex Book of World SF 2 that features people of color.
- A round-up of Jeff VanderMeer’s coverage of Finnish sf/f and fandom.
- Data from the Galileo probe (launched in 1989) has confirmed that the Jovian moon Io has a subsurface ocean of magma.
- Longest Running Scientific Experiments. Includes a running mechanical clock that hasn’t been wound since 1864, a funnel of pitch that has produced 8 drips in 79 years, and an immortal human cell line. [Via io9.com]
- The title says it all: “Sci-Fi Ikea Manuals.”
- Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 Book about flies. [Via Jay Lake]
- And finally: Dude, robots dueling with light sabers. How cool is that? Georgia Tech is also contributing to the eventual robot conquest of humanity.
