Science, History, and Fiction in Everyday Life
I have been an avid manga reader (and anime fan) since childhood, and what I loved the most was to pick my hero and follow him (her) during the story. Or a villain, that sometimes is far more charming than any…
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This is definitively the year of bacteria in terms of scientific discovery and ground-breaking experiments. It was only a few months ago that a new strand of DNA was engineered in a lab, creating an organism with semi-synthetic (“alien”) DNA. And it’s…
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Steel Beach (1993) by John Varley, is a sci-fi novel where humans now live on the Moon after an alien invasion. Steel Beach, this is the name of the colony, is a sort of utopian, free-love society run by a…
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This November week brings us an exciting space event to follow, unique in kind. ESA’s spacecraft Rosetta, that has successfully reached Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last August, will try, for the first time ever, to land its Philae probe on the comet surface….
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The usual update about my latest published articles on other blogs/magazines – these ones on from Serious Wonder. This time I have only included the ones on space and physics, leaving science and SF for another post. WILL WE EVER WALK…
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That SF has anticipated and/or even come out in first instance with some of the most creative ideas now seriously considered for scientific research is nothing new. Just think about the Ringworld concept, or hypersleep (with or without cryogenic components). Or the amazing Dyson sphere, which is one…
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Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell is a novel that needs no introduction. Difficult to imagine a dark, dystopian book that had a stronger impact on our culture, or that got right in a surprising way many aspects of our…
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Here I am: after a lot of thoughts about it since last year, and a very persuasive writer friend of mine, I have done it! Officially enrolled in that insane, coffee-intensive, often sleepless but also widely entertaining – if I have to…
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If there is a space object I have always found incredibly beautiful is the star cluster of the Pleiades – alternatively called M45, or “The Seven Sisters”- immediately recognisable for the hot blue, luminous stars immersed in a nebula and visible…
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Ringworld (1970) by Larry Niven, is the first of a series of stories – including prequels and sequels – set in a version of the universe called the Known Space. It features as backdrop an artificial structure of 600 million miles in…
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