A word on AI-generated content.Reader's Room: The Pioneers
Reader's Room ponders the best speculative fiction and and science for the week. This week we talk about why they brought a pistol along when going on the first spacewalk, and The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
Show links:
- Two Sides of the Moon by Astronaut Dave Scott and Cosmonaut Alexi Leonov
- (Excerpt about the first spacewalk at Air & Space Magazine)
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- Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
- Podcast: Big Picture Science on Science Fiction.
- Linkdump:
Reader's Room: The Right Moment
Reader's Room ponders the best speculative fiction and and science for the week. This week we talk about those books that you found (or maybe they found you) at just the right time and place.
Show links:
- Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat
- ... and Make Room! Make Room!
- Curtis Chen's Waypoint Kangaroo
- ... and it's sequel Kangroo Two
- Some reading on the Bag of Holding trope
- Linkdump:
- Clarkesworld Magazine's My Dear, Like the Sky and Stars and Sun by Julia K. Patt (Audio version)
- (If you like Clarkesworld's stuff, Subscribe or join their Pateron.
- The motorcycle NASA wanted to send to the moon.
- Bad news for the Flatwork Space Program.
Reader's Room: Gift from the Gods
Reader's Room ponders the week's most thought-provoking speculative fiction and nonfiction. This week we talk about the transformative power of stories, Neil Gaiman's ability to use stories to evoke gods, and how great it is to pass a book forward.
Show links:
- Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology (and American Gods)
- Linkdump:
- Tang Fei's The Person Who Saw Cestus (text and podcast at link.)
- Radical Ocean Futures
- The X-Prize Foundation's advisory council of science fiction authors
Reader's Room: The Rules
Reader's Room ponders the week's most thought-provoking speculative fiction and nonfiction. This week we talk about the so-called rules of writing, when to break them, and Sylvain Neuvel's novel Sleeping Giants.
Show links:
- Regarding Your Future With The Futures Planning Consortium Short fiction over at Fireside
- Sylvain Neuvel's Sleeping Giants
- Podcast:
- The Heart’s Cartography by Susan Jane Bigelow
- Linkdump:
- Arms you can wear under your regular arms
- Octavia Bulter's Patternist Books super cheap this week.
- Rocket Mail Exactly what it sounds like.
Reader's Room: River of Teeth
Reader's Room features the week's most thought-provoking speculative fiction and nonfiction. This week I talk about alternate histories, snappy pitches, and what Sarah Gailey's new novel, River of Teeth has to do with them both. Oh, and that one time when America almost started wide-scale hippo ranching.
Show links:
- Sarah Gailey's River of Teeth
- American Hippopotamus, read or listen. (A much shorter summary at Wired.)
- Links
- NASA's Personal Rescue Enclosure
- The MOOSE (Man Out Of Space Easiest) personal reentry device
- 3D printed ovaries restore reproductive functions. (In mice.) (Scientific paper.)
- Google's AI/Artist collaboration. (Video)