Sad news, as yesterday we lost Philip Jose Farmer, one of the giants of science fiction. He started his career as an author with The Lovers, which treated sexuality in a frank and honest manor, and went on to create some excellent series, including Riverworld and the World of Tiers. He also wrote as a number of other authors, and created some of his best works doing it, including Venus on the Half Shell, which he wrote as Vonnegut’s fictional author Kilgore Trout, or his Tarzan books, including Lord of the Trees and Tarzan Alive. Those are just the tip of the iceberg; if you haven’t read Farmer yet, go get some and start reading. You will thank me for it, I promise. The SciFi Channel had commissioned a miniseries of Riverworld, but they only made and aired the pilot episode. The good news is they start filming in April to do the rest of the series. So there is still some Philip Farmer to look forward to.
Terrestrial Human
Instructables has a good how-to for building a Tardis model from cerial boxes and other found objects. For the less physically inclined, the Second Life metaverse has all the Alliance Sims (like Info Island) setting up a Sci-Fi theme for March. If you want to help create it, contact any Alliance Sims group, like Sci Fi & Fantasy Portal, and volunteer your virtual time and skills.
SF Signal has posted a huge list of things you can read online for free. It includes stories by Neil Ayres, Ben Bova, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Michael A. Burstein, Greg Egan, and that’s only the first few letters of the alphabet. In another entry they have links to the 3 Novelettes and 4 short stories posted on Asimov’s nominated for the Nebula Award this year, also free reading. In a third, an announcement about Will F Jenkins Day in Virginia, but they included links to several of Murray Leinster’s stories which are again (surprise) free to read online.
Everyone online is pointing to the same place for a sneak-peek of Watchmen, and that is Wil Wheaten’s Review. The conclusion? I must see this movie on opening day! I came across a Blog today I found mighty impressive and worth lots of re-visits; Why Science Is Important! If you have a brain, you will love this site!
JPL has a searchable database of exoplanets that currently lists the 340 known planets around other stars. None of them is Earth-like, most being gas giants, several orbiting pulsars, and a handful being on the border between planets and stars (the so-called Hot Jupiter model). That may change in the next few weeks with the launch of Kepler, an orbital telescope designed specifically to find habitable planets. It’s about time we get a realistic idea how common potentially life-bearing worlds are, and either meet the neighbors or get ready to move.
That is the accusation; the nation of Zimbabwe may be hoarding the entire run of William Hartnell episodes. If so, that would include a bunch of episodes lost since the early sixties, including The Tenth Planet, the first time a Doctor regenerated (Hartnell into Troughton), as well as the first story ever to feature the Cybermen. The story originally came from the Sun in the UK. Of course, this is the same magazine that took a recent entry from Google Oceans and gave it the headline Is This Atlantis?, but in their defense they also broke the news that the Doctor Who Stage Show will be going on tour soon. Already on stage is Who, Knows, the new Tasmanian play about (and tribute to) Doctor Who. The John Barrowman comic strip of a Torchwood story I mentioned the other day is going to be released soon, but while you wait you can read another Torchwood comic now online at Watch. And a brief flash of the original Cybermen: