Tag: SF
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Alien Life and E. Coli
In what seems more the plot of a SF novel than a scientific discovery, a new strand of DNA has recently been engineered in…
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SF Classics – The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
” The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury is a 1950 science fiction short story collection that follows a future history structure and tells the…
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XXI CENTURY SCI-FI – Countdown by Mira Grant
Countdown (2011) by Mira Grant / Seanan McGuire is a novella part of the Newsflesh trilogy and the prequel of the famous novel Feed,…
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Voting for Hugo Awards 2014
There are many great things about attending Sci-Fi Worldcons, and not just when they are organised in cities like London. One of them is…
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SF Classics – Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
Written in 1961, it narrates the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human born on Mars, raised among Martians and shipped back to…
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XXI CENTURY SCI-FI – The Skinner by Neal Asher
The Skinner (2012) is one of the Neal Asher’s most famous books, and the first of the Spatterjay series. It narrates the history of…
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EXOPLANETS 101 – Learning the basics
I have already spoken a few times here about the challenges of worldbulding in SF, both in terms of designing working planetary systems –…
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SF Classics – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a not just a book, but a multi-media phenomenon started by the British comedian Douglas Adams…
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The numerology of Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams is the author of that SF masterpiece The Hitchhiker Guide of the Galaxy more people have seen in movies than actually read……
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XXI Century Sci-Fi – Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan
Altered Carbon (2002) is a novel by Richard Morgan. Set in a future four hundred years from now, on a few exoplanets in a…
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Villa Diodati – birthplace of Sci-Fi (and modern Fantasy)
That old villas are spooky places is known to everybody. All of us remember creepy stories from our childhood, and there is an entire…
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SF Classics – Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
Hyperion (1989) is a Hugo-Award winning novel by Dan Simmons. Otherwise known as “the Canterbury Tales of SF” for its narrative structure. You will…
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Hail to the (Z) Queen – The Newsflesh Universe, by Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire
It started with reading Sci-Fi Magazine’s quote on the book cover “The zombie novel Robert A. Heinlein might have written” – a suggestion I…
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XXI Century Sci-Fi – Prey by Michael Crichton
Prey (2002) is a novel by Michael Crichton, and, as others of the same author, presents unintended consequences of newly discovered technologies and scientific…
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How alien is nature?
If there is an endless debate in SF, it’s about the capability of humans to imagine an alien world, with alien species. At least…
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SF Classics – Childhood’s end, by Arthur C. Clarke
“Childhood’s End” is a 1953 science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke, and one of the most famous SF books ever. Originally a short…
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Jupiter War by Neal Asher – Book Review
Jupiter War is the third and last book of the Owner trilogy, where the adventures of the rebel Alan Saul, his sister Var, the…
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Speculative Fiction Conventions – A world of its own (Eastercon Day 2)
One of the most interesting things about conventions – Eastercon doesn’t make any exception to this rule – is the possibility given to the…
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Eastercon 2014 – Day 1 (Friday)
Well, here we are. It looks like it’s going to be a great event. Hosted in the Convention Centre, on the banks of River…
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When Foucault’s Pendulum meets Men in Black – The Descent by Ken Macleod. A book review
When a book starts like The Descent does, with the protagonist blaming himself to be a stalker, pervert, drug-addict, conspiracy theorist, and “fuck it.…
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Space, lies, and video(tape)
i.e, what else is fake in space? A funny video I watched a few days ago (that I also advise to anybody interested in…
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Eastercon 2014 – almost there!
Glasgow 18-21 April 2014, in what promises to be a great event. Puzzled? Eastercon (http://www.eastercon.org/index.php/Main_Page) is just another name for the British yearly science-fiction…
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The Crystal Crypt, by Philip K. Dick
I have read a fascinating short story last night, a classic of Philip K. Dick, The Crystal Crypt. I had some far-away memories, since…
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Sci-Fi all-time favourites
I have been asked by a friend to name 10 books – no more, no less – I will take with me should I…