m. c. de marco

Via SFScope: Night Shade Books has published Walter Jon Williams’ Implied Spaces, with bonus downloads. Also new in their catalog is Greg Egan’s Incandescence.

SFScope reports that Pyr Books is expanding its line to about 30 books a year.

Not every movie can star Natan Sharansky, but The Andromeda Strain was an exceptional disappointment. Blogcritics Magazine has a negative review that touches briefly on the movie’s major weakness: poor technobabble.

Since the scientists actually do very little science, the script pads out the running time with plenty of pseudo-science, giving every actor a chance to graft on some ludicrous exposition without actually explaining a thing.

I keep remembering, googling, and recommending this story, but I don’t seem to have ever blogged the link. So, for the record, “I don’t know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility” by Sam Hughes is a great story about simulism.

This entry was intended to be a sequel to a previous entry about genetically engineered vampires, but I forgot to finish my thought and all that remains of it is a cool quote from the extended notes to Blindsight by Peter Watts:

In fact, the nonconscious mind usually works so well on its own that it actually employs a gatekeeper in the anterious cingulate cortex to do nothing but prevent the conscious self from interfering in daily operations. (If the rest of your brain were conscious, it would probably regard you as the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert.)

I’ve finally gotten around to reading Blindsight by Peter Watts. More on the book itself will follow, but first I have to link his flash presentation on the creation of Homo sapiens whedonum. Not only is it educational for those of us genetically engineering our own fantasy creatures at home, but it’s also filled with dark corporate humor.

Steve Sailer blogs “The Thing”, a once and future creature feature with roots in the Golden Age of science fiction:

[…] John Carpenter’s classic 1982 horror film “The Thing” is being remade by Battlestar Galactica screenwriter Ronald D. Moore.

All the movie versions, including the 1951 rendition, are based on the great 1938 sci-fi story “Who Goes There?” Written by John W. Campbell at age 28, it was his last major piece of fiction.