Science Fiction News
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Editorial Comment & Staff Stuff
EDITORIAL COMMENT In Britain, vaccine rollout is going well. The consequence for us is that hopefully this rollout sees a return to near normality as our news and reviews editor has been in digital lockdown. This means that the autumnal edition should see the return of a full seasonal news page of science and SF. There will also be the return of the Best of Nature 'Futures' short stories once we get the copyrights sorted.
STAFF STUFF A new book is out by one of our book review team. Duncan Lunan has The Other Side of the Interface out from Other Side Books at £14.99, ISBN 978-8-696-81972-3. It is a further collection of space travel and related stories that is in addition to From the Moon to the Stars which came out last year (2020). This collection, adding to previous collections, nearly completes the bringing together in collections all of his short fiction. Do check it out. A new anthology is out by another of our book review team. Mark Bilsborough has a werewolf anthology of shorts out from the new Wyldblood Press. Though only £7.99, nonetheless it will make you appreciate the family silver…
Elsewhere this issue… Plus over twenty (20!) SF/F/H standalone fiction book reviews as well as an additional couple of non-fiction SF and popular science book reviews. Hopefully something here for every science type who is into SF in this our 34th year. For full details of the latest contents see our What's New page.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Key SF News & SF Awards
The Hugo Award shortlists will be announced after we post this seasonal news page. Normally we post the Hugo shortlist principal categories with the seasonal news page covering the (northern hemisphere) academic year summer. However this year has been trying for our news editor in digital lockdown (UK cybercafés are not fully open yet). So this year when it can be done the short-lists for 'Best Novel' and 'Dramatic Presentation Long Form' will be posted on our home page and then in the New Year (2022) the Spring news page will cover both the principal category (usually we treat as those categories with over 1,000 people nominating): the Spring because this year's Worldcon has been postponed to December due to the SARS-CoV2 / CoVID-19 pandemic. We'll only cover 'Best Novel' and 'Dramatic Presentation Long Form' in the interim on the home page as those are the only categories that those members of our local SF group who are not into Worldcon fandom ever express any interest. Having said all that, no doubt most of our Hugo-interested regulars will pick up the news elsewhere, and not least from www.thehugoawards.org. The British Fantasy Society Awards have been presented. The winners were:- The 2021 Nebula Award nomination shortlists have been announced for 2020 works. The Nebula Awards are run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). The Awards themselves will be presented at the Nebula Weekend in May. The principal category (novel, novella, novelette, short story and dramatic presentation) nominations are:- The Philip K. Dick Award shortlist and winners have been announced The Award is given for distinguished original science fiction paperback fiction published for the first time during 2020 in the US. The shortlisted titles were:- The 2021 British SF Association (BSFA) Awards have been presented at the 2021 virtual Eastercon. In the 'Best Novel' category there was a six-way tie for fifth place and so the BSFA decided to include all and have ten in the shortlist. A six-way tie suggests a low level of nomination, so increasing the short-list was a wise move. The shortlist for Best Novel consists of:- The Bram Stoker Awards short-lists have been announced. These are overseen by the Horror Writers Association and winners will be announced at the World Horror Convention, StokerCon (which this year will be virtual due to the CoVID-19 pandemic).The principal category short-lists are:- C. J. Cherryh wins the 2021 Robert A. Heinlein Award. The award is bestowed for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space. The online SF Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction is to become independent of Gollancz/Orion. The SF-Enyclopedia.com is the up-to-date online expansion of the Hugo Award winning, print edition SF Encyclopaedia (1979). That first edition itself was a fairly weighty tome with over 700,000 words. The follow-up second edition in 1993 contained over 1.3 million words. The decision was taken to go on-line and this happened in 2011 with www.sf-encyclopedia.com that, in around 3 million words, covered some 12,000 entries. The venture was sponsored by Gollancz the SF imprint of Orion and Britain's oldest specialist genre imprint. Gollancz linked the online SF Encyclopaedia to its simultaneously launched SF e-book imprint SF Gateway at www.sfgateway.com. The SF Encyclopaedia's online launch garnered it a Eurocon Award (coincidentally the same year as one for SF² Concatenation). In 2013 the SF Encyclopaedia added book covers. By 2016 and the Encyclopaedia's and Gateway's 5th anniversary the Encyclopaedia had passed the 5.2 million words mark. Interzone may soon be no more. The British SF short story magazine had been edited by Andy Cox for a number of years. It was due to be transferred from TTA Press to PS Publishing. Ian Whates, who is best known for running NewCon Press, was to take over as editor. It was also due to change from being bimonthly to quarterly and go solely electronic. However, apparently, there were not the resources to honour existing subscriptions and the transfer seems to have fallen through. It now seems that PS Publishing will launch a new, digital magazine, Par Sec with Ian Whates as editor. Meanwhile Interzone will continue for a little while with three double issues a year of just fiction: the non-fiction film and news columns are being dropped. That the magazine apparently is not accepting new subscribers suggests that it will fold. Terry Pratchett's former home is on the market for £800,000. The Discworld author Terry Pratchett's four bed-roomed cottage was where he lived between 1970 and 1994 before he moved to what would be his final home for a little over two decades until his passing in 2015. The cottage is located in Rowberrow in Somerset. Its owners apparently still get letters addressed to Terry and 'The Hogfather'. The Man Who Fell to Earth hat fetches £18,500 (US$25,000). The hat was worn by David Bowie, the 1976 film's protagonist, and the film itself was based on Walter Tevis' 1963 novel of the same title. The hat is a borsalino and features a band with the initials DB. It was auctioned by Omega Auctions in Merseyside, Great Britain. Addams family artwork sells for £24,000 (US$33,000). Three water colours that had been considered fake Charles Addams' Addams Family artwork were declared authentic. The pieces were originally bought buy a builder and given to his granddaughter in Falmouth, Cornwall. They date from the 1940s when the Addams Family cartoons appeared in The New Yorker magazine. Only in the 1960s did the spook horror fantasy family achieve broader fame with a television series. Hugo Award nominees to be restricted. Oh, no they are not! In January the 2021 Worldcon announced the nomination period for the Hugo Awards open. However they also formalised the practice that any teams (such as fanzine editorial team or multi-editor teams for anthologies) would be limited to four to go on the ballot (but not on the website or archive): after all, the ballot sheet only has so much room. This had the presumption that only four awards would be given for works created by larger teams. The resulting online outcry soon saw the Worldcon organisers backtrack removing this restriction. The US National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F)opens to far right-wing fanatics. They have opened their membership to recruit from Parler and Gab. Parler and Gab are reportedly known for being a home to some far-right folk such as those behind the January march on the US Congress. The resulting outcry saw N3F fanzine announcements dropped from the Hugo Award winning e-Fanzines. Also Andrew Speakman, who had recently been honoured with an N3F life membership, decided to leave N3F after 40 years.
Other SF news includes:- The Co-Chair of the forthcoming 2021 Worldcon, DisCon III, resigns. Colette Fozard has resigned. This is a sad moment due to both her understandable reasons and the loss of con-running experience from the Worldcon community as she has over a quarter of a century of Worldcon experience under her belt. Over the years, she has become increasingly alarmed, and upset, at the level of abuse and vitriol spewed at the all-volunteer staff. She cites the example of the abuse CoNZealand staff received over Hugo Award finalists accessing the programme and also with the abuse Discon III received over the number of Hugo finalists per short-listed nomination on the ballot reported above. That there is a (we like to thank small, albeit significant) minority of folk, some of whom really should know better, who are shrill and vent vitriol, sometimes claiming to speak for us all, is a sad fact. (Over here in Brit-Cit back in 2014 there was shameful abuse targeted at that year's proposed Hugo Awards' master of ceremonies. Colette Fozard's concerns are, sadly, all too real.) This year's SF Worldcon, DisCon III, has been postponed from August to 15th - 19th December (2021). The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is not over and it will be touch and go whether the US will see its adult population largely vaccinated by August. The DisCon III organisers therefore conducted a poll on Facebook (on the presumption that over half its members are on Facebook and so a poll there would be representative). Given the choice of a virtual Worldcon in August or the high probability of an in-person, physical real one in December, two-thirds of respondents chose the latter. Consequently, the Worldcon has shifted dates to December. Of course, it may be that a physical event will still not be possible and so a virtual, on-line version will still take place and, even if a physical version does go ahead, there will still be the virtual on-line dimension. The 2022 Worldcon will be held in Chicago, USA. It will be the 80th SF Worldcon. Its Guests of Honour will be: Charles de Lint (author), Floyd Norman (artist), Eddie Stern & Joe Siclari (fan), and Erle Korshak (first fandom). The Toastmaters will be Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders. And finally…. Future SF Worldcon bids currently running include for:-
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Film News
Sadly no cinema releases due to CoVID-19 lockdown. So not much news this season. Cineworld shares have quadrupled in value (mid-March 2021) as investors see the long-term picture. The cinema theatre closures last October (2020) subsequently saw the chain lose £720 million and a fall in its share price. Since then they have quadrupled. The chain runs 536 theatres in the US and its 127 cinemas in the UK. Globally, the chain lost £2.2 billion (US$3 billion). However, investors seem to feel that the prospect of vaccine success combined with a backlog of blockbuster releases, together with a hankering for folk to get out of lockdown augers well. Zack Snyder's Justice League is a darker take than Joss Whedon's and is now out. Only partly due to creative differences with the studio (more to do with a personal familial tragedy) Snyder left the film before it was released. It was then re-worked by Joss Whedon with much of the original material unused. When the Whedon version of the film was released in 2017 it was panned by the critics and, though in the weekly box office top ten, did not make the substantive profit that Hollywood hoped – it was though still very profitable. Yet fans hankered after Snyder's take. This has now been released on TV. At four hours long it is almost twice the length of Whedon's 2017 film. Fortunately, Snyder still had several hours worth of film on his server and only needed what ended up as six minutes of new material from a re-shoot. The result is a very different film. See the trailer here Not long to the Black Widow release in May (2021). This is the first film in Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is directed by Cate Shortland and produced by Kevin Feige. See also this teaser here. The Suicide Squad trailer #2 now out. You can see it here. The US release date is provisionally 6th August 2021. Alien comic mini-series to be based on the first two (1979 & 1986) films . Issue 1 of the new series is now out. The series comes from Marvel and so marks a switch from Dark Horse that had previously produced the Alien comics but this new series will not further, or reference, the Dark Horse Alien universe. Instead, as reported last season this series features a Weyland-Yutani mercenary named Gabriel Cruz. He is disturbed by some of the things he has had to do in the past and is being encouraged to take early retirement. However, just as he is leaving, he takes on a final mission… Joe Hill's Black Phone is to be a film. The horror writer's novella is being adapted by Scott Derrickson with Ethan Hawke tipped to star. George R. R. Martin's short story to be a film, In the Lost Lands. The film will follow a queen, desperate to obtain the gift of shape shifting, who makes a daring play: She hires the sorceress Gray Alys (Jovovich), a woman as feared as she is powerful. Sent to the ghostly wilderness of the “Lost Lands,” Alys and her guide, the drifter Boyce (Bautista), must outwit and outfight man and demon in a fable that explores the nature of good and evil, debt and fulfilment, love and loss… Director and the film's script-writer Paul W.S. Anderson is joining Resident Evil lead Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) in the venture… having said that, the venture has been in development hell for six years but perhaps a director and lead cast augers well? Court decides that The Shape of Water was created by Guillermo del Toro! The Shape of Water has had much SF and critical acclaim including being short-listed for a Hugo 'Best Drama Long Form'. Then in 2018, the family of a playwright cried plagiarism. The news now is that the court has dismissed the case and the plaintiff has accepted this. More delayed film releases due to SARS-CoV-2. Further delays to this year's releases include:- And finally… Short video clips (short films, other vids and trailers) that might tickle your fancy…. Film clip download tip!: Is the film Titanic about time travel? Titanic is a film that has stood the test of time… and has one of the BIGGEST unanswered questions of any movie. No, not could they both fit on the door if Rose had just moved over a little? The question is Jack a time traveller sent to make sure the Titanic sinks? Yes, that age old question. Well Theorists, today we are going to answer that once and for all! You can see the musing here. Film clip download tip!: How Wonder Woman 1984 should have ended! See the short video here. Want more? See last year's video clip recommendations here. For a reminder of the top films in 2019/20 (and earlier years) then check out our top Science Fiction Films annual chart. This page is based on the weekly UK box office ratings over the past year up to Easter. You can use this page if you are stuck for ideas hiring a DVD for the weekend. For a forward look as to film releases of the year see our film release diary.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Television News
A new television series is a modern take inspired by The War of the Worlds. H. G. Wells' 1898 novel has been twice adapted to a Hollywood film, made into two poor straight-to-video films, as well as having a television series that was meant to be a sequel to the first Hollywood production, and finally 2019's three-part BBC mini-series that was a huge disappointment. This new series is not called The War of the Worlds but honestly states that it is 'inspired' by Wells' novel. Titled Invasion it seems similar to the recent French mini-series: Aliens invade Earth with chemical weapons in a bid to take the planet's resources. It will stream on Apple TV next year. With filming taking place in London New York, Jordan and Japan, this will be Apple's most expensive production to date. How does The Falcon and the Winter Soldier fit in to the MCU? Most people do not have Disney+ than do and so may miss out on how the new Disney+ six-part series fits in with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This, in essence, is what you need to know. At the end of Avengers: End Game, Captain America (Steve Rogers) decides that he is going to retire. He asks Falcon (Sam Wilson) to take up the vibranium shield. However Sam is reluctant as he does not feel he is up to it but agrees to take care of the shield for now. Sam then teams up with the Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes). This mini-series walks the line as to who will become Captain America if Steve Rogers does properly retire. Given that Steve Rogers was bio-engineered to be super strong to become Captain America but Sam Wilson (Falcon) was not, and that Bucky Barnes was re-engineered to become the Winter Soldier, there are no prizes for guessing who is going to become the new Captain America. In the The Falcon and the Winter Soldier mini-series, both Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan reprise their respective roles as Falcon and Winter Soldier from the films Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War. The series became available to stream from Disney+ from late last month. You can see the trailer here. Tribes of Europa new series now streaming on Netflix. It is the year 2074. In the wake of a mysterious global disaster, war rages between the Tribes that have emerged from the wreckage of Europe. Three siblings from the peaceful Origines tribe – Kiano (Emilio Sakraya), Liv (Henriette Confurius) and Elja (David Ali Rashed) – are separated and forced to forge their own paths in an action-packed fight for the future of this new Europa. You can see the trailer here. Outlander's season six of the time travel fantasy is now being shot? The season will see life for the Frasers continue on the ridge. After the fallout from the end of season 5 is dealt with, the War of Independence looms. Debris is a new series out in the US and soon to come to Britain. Orbital, is a coalition between the CIA and MI6 charged with collecting debris from a destroyed alien ship: debris which has fallen across the Earth and strangely contaminating humans. The series seems to be shaping up as a standard format with a debris piece of the weekly episode contaminating differently being explored. However, apparently the season will eventually give bigger answers as to what was the alien ship doing, how did it get destroyed and why was it coming to Earth? Let's hope we get them. The last thing we want is another Lost. For All Mankind season 2 sees a Cuban missile-type crisis in space. If you have not seen season 1, the premise is Stephen Baxter-ish with an alternate history of the 1960s in which Russia led the space race so ensuring that the Americans had a long-term, well funded space programme. Season 2 not only has the aforementioned missile crisis in space, but it is set in the 1980s with Nixon getting a second term. On the Moon the two moon-bases (one US, one Soviet) are expanding. See a special behind-the-scenes featurette here and the trailer for season 2 here. The Irregulars is a new series that sees a Holmes and Watson supernatural spin-off. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, the Irregulars were street urchins who were his eyes on the street. This series focuses on a gang of five of these, though Holmes and Watson are there in the background. It has recently launched on Netflix. See the trailer here. The Handmaid's Tale season 4 launches later this month (April 2021). It airs in the US on Hulu and no doubt will come to Channel 4(?) sometime in the UK. See the trailer here. The Walking Dead is seeing an extension to series 10. Season 11 will be the last. The final episode to season 10 was to be episode 16 but six new episodes have been added. Season 10 started to air in March (2021). Meanwhile Fear the Walking Dead and Walking Dead: The World Beyond are continuing. Plus there is an anthology series in the works. There is also a Walking Dead film being made that will see Andrew Lincoln reprise the role of Rick. Meanwhile you can see the trailer for season 11 here. Babylon 5 has been re-mastered! Nearly thirty years after its first broadcast and close to twenty since its DVD release, Babylon 5 has been re-mastered. It has been scanned from the original camera negative. The film sequences were scanned in 4K and then 'finished', or downscaled, back to HD, with a dirt and scratch clean-up, as well as colour correction. The show’s CGI and composite sequences, meanwhile, have been digitally up-scaled to HD with only some minor tweaks where absolutely necessary. In order to maintain visual quality and fidelity between the show’s filmed and effects-heavy sequences, the new version is only available in 4:3. That’s the same format that the show was originally broadcast in, rather than the widescreen DVD releases. Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Trailer 2 now out From Disney+, you can see it here. The prospective Wonder Girl series has been cancelled. news broke of the proposed series was only released last season. CW have decided not to green light it. Had it gone forward it would have been the first superhero series with a Latina lead.
And finally, some TV related vids… Picard, season 2 trailer out. And it looks like Q will be making an appearance. You can see the trailer here. Superman & Lois began last season. In case you missed it (on CW in the US), and want to check it out, the trailer is here. Loki series trailer out. The series will be available on Disney+ in June (2021). You can see the trailer here and also second trailer here.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Publishing & Book Trade News
Penguin Random House teams with Rebellion to publish 2000AD audio books. The first off the block is an adaptation of the classic Judge Dredd story America with Dredd voiced by Joseph Fiennes. Other audio books will include that based on Judge Dredd: The Pit, a Slaine audio book and an adaptation of The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson. New Scientist magazine has been bought by the Daily Mail and General Trust's (DMGT) Daily Mail Group Media. The weekly New Scientist has a circulation around 120,000 with about half of it outside of the UK. It was bought for £70 million (US$91m). The DMGT owns the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers which is somewhat ironic given the standard of science coverage those papers afford. Bloomsbury continues to do very well. Further to last season's news, the spring saw the publisher twice raise it annual profit forecast. Its big new genre successes include Sarah J. Maas consistently popular novels with the latest being A Court of Silver Flames. It concerns Nesta Archeron who has always been prickly, proud, swift to anger, and slow to forgive. And ever since being forced into the Cauldron and becoming High Fae against her will, she’s struggled to find a place for herself within the strange, deadly world she inhabits. Worse, she can’t seem to move past the horrors of the war with Hybern and all she lost in it… Bloomsbury have been pushing this title with a major trade advertising promotion that has included a Publishers Weekly cover and a six-figure consumer advertising campaign. (However, not so major as to send us a review copy… and so it goes…) An imposter of His Dark Materials author Phillip Pullman has been answering readers' questions on Good Reads. Readers asking how he felt his characters were portrayed by the HVO series, and how did he name his characters, had these and other questions answered by an imposter posing as the author. Phillip Pullman complained about Good Reads on his Twitter account. The imposter's replies have since vanished from Good Reads. Tintin book cover artwork goes for £2.3 million. Back in 1936 it was given to Hergé's editor's, then seven year old, son – Jean-Paul Casterman – was given it by Hergé as it could not be used because it had too many colours. First issue of Batman sells for US$2,220,00 (£1,600,000)! The near-mint edition of the 1940 comic sees the first appearance of the Joker and Catwoman. The price beats the the previous Batman record holder, a copy of 1939’s Detective Comics #27, which introduced the character to the world and sold for US$1.5 million (£1.1.m). First edition Harry Potter fails to fetch anticipated US$50,000 (£38,500). Not only did it fail to attract the anticipated US$50,000 (£38,500) at a Los Angeles, USA, auction but it failed to get a single bid over the reserve price of US$42,500 (£32,700). The failure to reach the minimum bid price has been put down to author J. K. Rowling's social media comments some view as transphobic. However, over here in Great Britain first editions of have exceeded these prices. Just last season saw one first edition fetch £75,000 (US$94,000) while another went for £50,000 (US$66,000). It would therefore seem to be well worthwhile for those North Americans who in the future wish to sell their Potter first editions to spend US$1,000 for a couple of days holiday in the United Kingdom and auction their copies over here. First edition Harry Potters, yours for a five-figure sum! The bookshop, St Mary's Books, in Britain has just one of the 1997 first edition hardbacks of The Philosopher's Stone for sale: only 500 were ever printed. The asking price is £95,000 (US$123,000) despite the copy have being passed around schools. There is also a first edition paperback which is going for £12,000 (US$15,500). The shop advises that the copies are not kept on the premises for security reasons. Ursula K. LeGuin is being honoured with a US postal stamp. The stamp will picture the late author Ursula K. Le Guin together with the depiction of a scene from her Hugo Award-wining The Left Hand of Darkness. J. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis' pub to close. One casualty of the SARS-CoV-2/CoVID-19 pandemic is that lockdowns have increased pub closures. Alas one such victim is the Lamb & Flag in Oxford that used to be the watering hole of authors J. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The pub had been serving beer for over 450 years. And finally, some of the spring's short SF book related videos… The late Robert E. Howard's (the creator of Conan the Barbarian) home video tour. The YouTube tour of his home in Cross Plains, Texas is conducted by Howard scholar Rusty Burke. You can see it here. SF grandmaster author, Frederik Pohl has an archive interview now on YouTube.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Forthcoming SF Books
Jack Four by Neal Asher, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-04997-8. The Steel Claw by Ken Bulmer & Jesus Blasco, Rebellion, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-781-089064. Artifact Space by Miles Cameron, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23260-0. Widowland by C. J. Carey, Quercus, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41198-0. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, St Martin's Press, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-250-23621-0. Billion-Dollar Brain by Len Deighton, Penguin Modern Classics, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-241-50516-8. Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow, Ad Astra, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-838-93999-1. Star Wars: Shadow Fall by Alexander Freed, Del Rey, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-10144-7. Star Wars: Victory’s Price by Alexander Freed, Del Rey, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-10138-6. This Virtual Night by C.S. Friedman, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-800-24539-6. Outbreak by Frank Gardner, Transworld, £12.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-787-63238-7. The Library of the Dead by T. L. Huchu, Tor, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-03945-0. The Trigan Empire: vol. 2 by Don Laurence, Rebellion, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-781-08775-6. Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu, Ad Astra, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-838-93762-1. Resistance: A graphic novel by Val McDermid & Kathryn Briggs, Profile, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-788-16355-2. A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine, Tor, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-00162-4. The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray, Arrow, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-787-46361-5. This Eden by Ed O’Loughlin, Riverrun, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41285-7. Nineteen Eighty-Four: The graphic novel by George Orwell & Fido Nesti, Penguin, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-241-43649-3. Perhaps The Stars by Ada Palmer, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-786-69960-2. The Ninth Metal: The Comet Cycle Book 1 by Benjamin Percy, Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-69007-3. We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-800-24388-8. Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds, Gollancz, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-575-09071-2. Kingdoms of Death by Christopher Ruocchio, Gollancz, £18.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-21835-2. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, Flame Tree Press, £10.99 / Can$19.99 . US$14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-839-64477-1. Phase Six by Jim Shepard, Quercus, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41507-0. Star Wars High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule, Century, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-12464-4. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Other Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson, Flame Tree Press, £10.99 / Can$19.99 . US$14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-839-64476-4. Blindspace by Jeremy Szal, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-22747-7. Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-800-24154-1. The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Macmillan, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-509-86591-8. Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-05188-9. The Best of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-838-93764-5. Osama by Lavie Tidhar, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-800-24510-5. Andrea Víctrix by Llorenç Villalonga, Fum d'Estampa Press, £13.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-916-29394-6. Body of Stars by Laura Maylene Walter, Hodder Studio, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-529-34920-7. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, Del Rey, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-10061-7. The War of the Worlds & Other Tales by H. G. Wells, Flame Tree Press, £10.99 / Can$19.99 . US$14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-839-64479-5. This Fragile Earth by Susannah Wise, Gollancz, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23232-7.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Forthcoming Fantasy Books
Queen’s Assassin by James Barclay, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-20246-7. Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett, Quercus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-786-48790-2. The Call of the Wyld edited by Mark Bilsborough, Wyldblood, £7.99, pbk, ISBN: 978-1-838-15299-4. The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, Gollancz, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23115-3. The Splinter King by Mike Brooks, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51392-8. The Searching Dead by Ramsey Campbell, Flame Tree Press, £20 / Can$32.95 / US$24.95, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-787-58558-4. Somebody’s Voice by Ramsey Campbell, Flame Tree Press, £20 / Can$32.95 / US$24.95, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-787-58558-4. The Fall of Koli by Mike Carey, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51349-2. The Trials of Koli by Mike Carey, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51349-2. Nostalgia by Mircea Cartarescu, Penguin Modern Classics, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-241-44891-5. The Keymaker by Beth Cartwright, Del Rey, £12.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-10069-3. The Unbroken by C. L. Clark, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51623-3. Illusionary by Zoraida Córdova Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-67762-3. The Wood Bee Queen by Edward Cox, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-22686-9. Play of Shadows by Sebastien De Castell, Jo Fletcher Books, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-787-47147-4. The Hollow Ones by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan, Del Rey, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-10096-9. The Tyrant by Seth Dickinson, Tor, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-00327-7. Paris By Starlight by Robert Dinsdale, Del Rey, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-10047-1. Terrifying Ghosts Short Stories edited by Clare Frances Elliott, Flame Tree Press, £20 / Can$40 / US$30, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-839-64481-8. Blackheart Knights by Laure Eve, Jo Fletcher Books, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41191-1. Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan, William Heinemann, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-434-02331-8. The Stitcher and the Mute by D. K. Fields, Ad Astra, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-789-54254-7. Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51466-6. The Coven by Lizzie Fry, Sphere, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-751-57759-2. The Children of D’Hara by Terry Goodkind, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-789-54133-5. The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne, Orbit, £18.99, hrdbk, 978-0-356-51418-5. The Broken God by Gareth Hanrahan, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51436-9. Honeycomb by Joanne Harris, Gollancz, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-21399-9. Paper & Blood by Kevin Hearne, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, 978-0-356-51524-3. Bleeding Hearts by Ry Herman, Jo Fletcher Books, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-40631-3. Sistersong by Lucy Holland, Macmillan, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-03903-0. The House of Always by Jenn Lyons, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-509-87968-7. The Memory of Souls by Jenn Lyons, Tor, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-509-87960-1. Priest of Gallows by Peter McLean, Jo Fletcher Books, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41131-7. We Cry for Blood by Devin Madson, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51411-6. The Children God Forgot by Graham Masterton, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-800-24020-9. Elric: The Eternal Champion Collection by Michael Moorcock, James Cawthorn & Philippe Druillet, Titan Comics, £17.99 / US$19.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-785-86955-6. Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jo Fletcher Books, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41560-5. Occulta by Maya Motayne, Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-67603-9. Shadowed Steel by Chloe Neill, Gollancz, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23060-6. The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni, Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-36038-7. Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, 978-0-356-51582-3. Holes in the Veil by Beth Overmyer, Flame Tree Press, £20 / Can$32.95 / US$24.95, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-787-58583-6. The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid, Del Rey, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-10073-0. The Light of Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner, Orbit, £14.99 hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51146-7. Meant to be Immortal by Lynsay Sands, Gollancz, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23054-5. The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox, Gollancz, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23074-3. The Queen of Izmoroz by Jon Skovron, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51486-4. The Sword Falls by A. J. Smith, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-786-69692-2. Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, #Merky, £12.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-11873-5. Dracula, A Mystery Story by Bram Stoker, Flame Tree Press, £10.99 / Can$19.99 . US$14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-839-64478-6. The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex, Picador, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-04731-8. The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, 978-0-356-51564-9. Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura, Transworld, £12.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-0-857-52728-8. Night of Demons & Saints by Menna van Praag, Transworld, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-787-63168-7. The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng by K. S. Villoso, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51450-5. Ashes of the Sun by Django Wexler, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-788-54316-3. The Shadow of Things to Come by Tad Williams, Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99 trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-64669-8.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Forthcoming Non-Fiction SF &
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 General Science News
The 2021 Abel prize celebrates computer science with a joint win. Laslo Lovasz (Hungarian mathematician) and Avi Wigderson (Israeli computer scientist) will share the 7.5 million Norwegian kroner (£650,000 / US$886,000) prize considered the Nobel of the mathematics community. Lovasz developed the LLL algorithm that breaks down a large vector of integer numbers into a sum of the shortest possible vectors. Wigderson showed that if an algorithm using randomness runs efficiently, then a non-random algorithm must exist that runs almost (but not a quite as) as efficiently. +++ Last year's Abel Prize win here. Computing pioneer and mathematician, Alan Turing is to appear on the new £50 note. The design includes 12 mathematical puzzles set by the UK GCHQ intelligence monitoring agency and based on Alan Turing's work as part of a treasure hunt. The note goes into circulation on the 23rd June (2021). Turing designed the computer a Bletchley Park that deciphered the German Enigma ciphers in World War II. In 2009 Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologised for the 'appalling' way Alan Turing was treated for being gay. A few years later Alan Turing was posthumously pardoned. Alan become the first gay person to appear on a British banknote. A graphene analogue made of stable boron (brophane) has been created. Graphene is a single atomic, hexagonal layer of carbon that has useful electrical conducting properties. Brophene is similar but made from boron that forms a single layer of hexagons and triangles. However, it has a drawback in that it readily oxidises in the air. A team at the Northwestern University (US) has now created a stable form of brophene that is covered with an inert layer preventing oxidation. This stable version of brophene is called brophane. Brophane may well have uses in electrical components and display-screen technology. (See (2021) Science, vol. 371, p1143-1148.) Greenhouse gas emissions in much of the latter half of the 20th century were constant but subsequently soared by over 23%. An analysis by a team of US researchers have gone through nations agricultural records covering 1961 to 2017. They found that increases in productivity and efficiency kept global emissions constant to 2001 despite population increase (144%) and agricultural production per person in the population (58%). However between 2001 and 2017 emissions increased by nearly a quarter. The increase was largely driven by agriculture in Africa, S. America and SE. Asia. They conclude that the trends make current climate change targets difficult to achieve. ( See Hong, C. et al (2021) Global and regional drivers of land-use emissions in 1961-2017. Nature, vol. 589, p554-561.) China seems to have clamped down on it illegal emissions of CFC-11. In 2020 the Antarctic ozone hole returned with a vengeance. That same year scientists also called out China as the likely culprit responsible for the slowing of decline of CFC-11 between 2008 and 2012. By continuing to monitor atmospheric concentrations of CFC-11 in South Korea and Japan, and relate these to weather patterns at the time, scientists have shown that emissions from an eastern China peninsula greatly reduced in 2019. (Park, S. et al (2021) A decline in emissions of CFC-11 and related chemicals from eastern China. Nature, vol. 590, p433-7 and a news piece Tollefson, J. (2021) Illegal CFC emissions fall after scientists raise alarm. Nature, vol. 590, p373-4.) A new plastic is easily recyclable. Currently we produce around 380 million tonnes of plastic a year and this is set to top 900 million tonnes by 2050. By then an estimated 12 billion tonnes of plastic could be in landfill or polluting the natural environment, little is recycled. Now, Stefan Mecking and colleagues from the University of Konstanz in Germany have developed a new type of polyethylene. Polyethylene is one of the most common types of single-use plastic. This new polyethylene-like plastic is made from natural oils from plants or algae. Its key feature is that the polymer has regularly interspersed 'break points'. These make it easy to turn the plastic back into monomers which can then make new plastic. This new plastic can be moulded and used in 3D printing. (See Hauβler, M., Eck, M., Rothaur, D. & Mecking, S. (2021) Closed-loop recycling of polythene-like materials. Nature, vol. 590, p423-7 and the review piece Williams, C. K. & Gregory G. L. (2021) Closing the loop on recycling bioplastics. Nature, vol. 590, p391-2.) Development in potentially detecting dark matter. Axions (A°) are theoretical particles thought to exist under quantum chromodynamics(QCD). The thing is that if they exist then according to QCD very many of them should have been produced by the Big Bang. They are very light, have no charge and would be difficult to detect. This makes them a good candidate for being dark matter. Dark matter is the name given to the missing mass of galaxies whose rotation indicates that they are heavier than the number of stars and interstellar gas (matter) makes them. Dark matter constitutes 27% of the Universe's energy density. (Just 4% is normal matter and the rest is dark energy.) All well and good, but how to detect Axions? US physicists have now developed a detector they think should sense dark matter if they are axions. It is a metal container with a magnetic field that can be set to match the resonant frequency of the container. Any axion entering it might interact with a virtual photon and in the process produce a real photon which can be detected. The search has now begun. No results so far but there are plenty of resonant frequencies yet to explore. (See Backes, K. M. et al (2021) A quantum enhanced search for dark matter axions. Nature, vol. 590, p238-242 and a news review item Irastorza, I. G. (2021) Shedding squeezed light on dark matter. Nature, vol. 590, p226-7.) Antimatter in the proton is asymmetric. Physicists are at a loss for an explanation. Protons and neutrons (nucleons) make up the nuclei of atoms and in turn account for 99% of the visible mass of the Universe. If you look inside a proton then you will find that there quarks. There are also gluons and quark-antiquark pairs transiently appearing and disappearing. (Antiquarks are antimatter versions of quarks.) Research at Fermilab in the US has unambiguously confirmed (what had previously been debatable) that there are more of 'down' type antiquark than the 'up'. The physicists do not know why there is this asymmetry and as such this represents a distinct gap in quantum chromodynamic theory. (See Dove, J., Kerns, B., McCellan, R. E. et al (2021) The asymmetry of antimatter in the proton. Nature, vol. 590, p561-5 and the review piece Gao, H. (2021) Antimatter in the proton is more down than up. Nature, vol. 590, p559-560.) The helium nucleus has been measured with record precision. Normally this measurement is done with laser spectroscopy and with this new measurement the same way was used but with a trick. Julian Krauth and colleagues injected heavy, negatively charged muons into a cloud of helium. Some of the muons replaced one of helium's electrons. Because muons are 200 times the mass of an electron, their orbital about the helium nucleus is 200 times closer. As the light given off comes from the electron's, or in this case the replacement muon's, change in energy level which is reflected by how close it is to the nucleus, so the spectroscopy is about 8 million times more accurate enabling size estimates to be calculated within a thousandth the size of a proton. The root mean square of the alpha particle was found to be 1.67824 femtometres (10-15 metres). (See Krauth, J. et al (2021) Measuring the α-particle charge radius with muonic helium-4 ions. Nature, vol. 589, p527-531 and the review Norterschauser, W. (2021) Helium nucleus measured with record precision. Nature, vol. 589, p516-7.) Three new types of atomic clock have been developed. These have unprecedented accuracy. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, USA, have developed three new types of atomic clock. Atomic clocks work by light being emitted or absorbed by atoms at a specific, exact frequency. Currently, the standard atomic clocks use Caesium- 133 and have an accuracy of up to one part in 1016. The researchers have now developed three new clocks based on Aluminium-27, Strontium-87 and Ytterbium-171. However, there are unexplained variations for some unknown reason. The researchers get around this by connecting them together in a network. This network of the three clocks has an accuracy so great that they have an uncertainty of just two parts in 10 18 or better. In other words, this means it would gain or lose no more than a second over the age of the Universe! Such a clock could, for example, test Einstein relativity predictions to an even greater level. (See Boulder Atomic Clock Optical Network (BACON) Collaboration (2021) Frequency ratio measurement at 18-digit accuracy using an optical clock network. Nature Gravity from just 180 milligrams detected bringing gravity measurements closer to quantum levels. Tobias Westphal and fellow Austrian colleagues have detected the gravitational attraction of two small bodies of roughly only 91 milligrams in mass. They used a torsion pendulum with a Faraday shield between the masses to suppress and small electrostatic attraction that might exist. They then bounced a laser off a mirror on the pendulum's suspension fibre to detect deflection. It looks like Newton's laws of gravity (determined in 1687) still holds with such small masses. However, if similar experiments with even smaller masses, possibly down to a Planck mass, are conducted then this brings us into quantum realms. The thing is that the attraction of two 91 milligram masses is about the same as just 9 picograms (10-12 grams) in the Earth's gravitational field. 9 picograms is already less than 0.01 milligrams, the Planck mass. So if we could measure the attraction between two 0.005 milligrams masses then that would be an illuminating test: would it tally with the equivalent in an Earth field? The Holocene climatic maximum 8 thousand years ago may be an illusion! We are currently in an ice age composed of a series of cold glacials roughly 100,000 years long and shorter, warm interglacials (like the one we are in now) roughly 10,000 to 15,000 years or so long. Our current interglacial (the Holocene) began 11,700 years ago. It is viewed as a time of comparable climate stability (that is compared to glacial-interglacial transitions) and the Holocene temperature the past 10,000 years is thought to have stayed within a half-degree centigrade with there being a peak in Holocene temperature. This peak was of half a degree warmer than pre-industrial 19th century (or roughly a quarter of a degree warmer than today) some 8,000 years ago. This time is known as the Holocene thermal maximum. However, it may never have existed! The reason it is thought to have existed is based on two climate proxies: a marine species (a foraminifera) that takes up magnesium and calcium ions in a proportion that is temperature dependent and also what is known as alkenone analysis of plankton. However, computer climate models do not reflect the existence of a Holocene thermal maximum. For years the problem was thought to be with the models not with the foram climate or alkenone proxies. However Samantha Bova and colleagues have shown that the climate proxy species have a seasonal bias and do not reflect average annual temperatures. Taking this into account and the proxies and climate models agree suggesting instead a more gradual warming throughout the Holocene. And, before we move on to a round-up of recent natural science research in the next section below, here is a short science video… Does time cause gravity? For those into physics and who have a good school-level understanding of science (sorry if you are an arts only person), this is a fascinating question. Check out the interesting, and sometimes challenging, PBS Space-Time channel on YouTube and this ten-minute episode on how time causes gravity.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Natural Science News
Two permafrost frozen mammoths have pushed back the oldest DNA to have been sequenced. The previous oldest DNA sequence was from a 560,000 to 780,000 year old horse leg bone. Swedish researchers have now sequenced the genomes of two frozen mammoths that date from 1 million to 1.3 million and 1.1 million and 1.65 million respectively. The reason such old DNA was able to be sequenced was because it was frozen. Without freezing, over time DNA fragments into smaller and smaller sequences making it impossible with current technology to assemble. Consequently, the oldest DNA we can expect with current technology will be 2.6 million years as before then the Earth was too warm for permafrosts. The oldest human DNA sequenced is from a Neanderthal dating some 430,000 years ago. Knowing the Neanderthal genome and comparing it to humans we know that Neanderthals and humans interbred. However researchers are not hopeful that they will sequence an archaic human species over 2 million years old as it is unlikely any will have died and become buried in permafrost. Sharks and rays have declined by 71% since 1970! This is the conclusion of researchers who looked at ray and shark data as an indicator of the state of the oceans. They attribute much of this decline due to and 18 fold increase in fishing pressure over this period. They also note that in 1980 some two-thirds of ray and shark species were considered as being of least conservation concern but by 2018 over half the species were classified as either 'endangered' or 'critically endangered'. Further, while wildlife species have become increasingly threatened over recent decades, the decline in shark and ray species and their increase in vulnerability is greater than that for birds, mammals as well as amphibians. The researchers say that it is now urgent for governments to enforce sustainable catching quotas and that this is imperative. (See Pacoureau, N., Rigny, C. L., Kyne, P. M. et al (2021) Half a century of global decline in oceanic sharks and rays. Nature, vol. 589, p567-571.) Grass leaf size is determined by climate. A new study of grass species worldwide has shown that their leaf sizes are dependent on the temperature of their climate. (See Baird, B. et al (2021) Developmental and biophysical determinants of grass leaf size worldwide. Nature, vol. 592, p242-7.) Now, previously (for some 2,300 years no less) it had been known that some plants (eudicotyledonous species) leaf sizes are determined by the climate in which they live. Hence, palm tree leaves are big compared to oak tree leaves: the former live in the tropics and sub tropics but the latter in temperate zones. This phenomena is useful in determining from fossil leaves the temperature of past climates. Now that we know that this also applies to grasses gives us another tool to determine past climates and this in turn helps us check climate change science theories. Nearly a fifth of the World's food is wasted say UNEP and WRAP. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEO) and the UK-basted Waste and Resources Action programme (WRAP) report that some 931 million tonnes of food are wasted annually. Based on data from 54 countries, the organisations say that households contribute the most waste equating to 11% of global food supply. Take-aways and restaurants throw out 5% and shops 2%. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be caused by DNA repeats. Roughly half the human genome consists of repeating sections of DNA, the repeatome. The repeatome includes over a million tandem repeats: many of the same repeats repeating one after the other. Some of these tandem repeats have been associated with diseases such as Huntingdon's and Fragile X syndrome. Now researchers at the University of California, using an informatics tool that reads genomes, have found that ASD – which affects 1–2% of children in the US – is associated with a mutation in a tandem repeat found in the child but not their parents. The mutation is located in a region of the genome involved with the expression of a gene associated with fetal brain development. (See Mitra, I., Huang, B., Mousavi, N. et al (2021) Patterns of de novo tandem repeat mutations and their role in autism. Nature, vol589, p246-250 and a review piece Hannan, A. J. (2021) Repeat DNA expands our understanding of autism. Nature, vol. 589, p200-1.) Are facial expressions universal or do they vary with different populations and cultures? Facial expressions vary with how a person feels as well as the setting they are in (work, home, public etc). But do facial expressions relate to all these dimensions in the same way across populations and cultures? Researchers at the University of California collaborating with those at Google Research analysed 6 million YouTube videos from around the world using a neural network based machine learning. They divided the world into 12 regions and looked at 16 of people's facial expression in different social contexts (such as weddings). They found that people around the world make similar facial expressions in similar social contexts, irrespective of their culture. (See Cowen, A. S., Keltner, D., Schroff, R. et al (2021) Sixteen facial expressions occur in similar contexts around the world. Nature, vol. 589, p251-7 and the review piece Barrett, L. F. (2021) Debate about universal expressions goes big. Nature, vol. 589, p202-3.)
…And finally this section, the season's SARS-CoV-2 / CoVID-19 science primary research and news roundup. The lead scientist behind the development of the AstraZeneca Oxford U. vaccine has been awarded this year's Albert Medal by the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufacture and Commerce. Prof. Sarah Gilbert who led the research team that developed the AstraZeneca Oxford the AstraZeneca Oxford ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine has been presented with the award. Previous Albert medal recipients have included Winston Churchill, Marie Curie, Alexander Graham bell, Stephen Hawking and Tim Berners-Lee. Pros and cons of single shot vaccine strategy sparks debate. Back in January, the United Kingdom announced that it would change its SARS-CoV-2 vaccine strategy to one where the second (booster) shot would be deferred from being three weeks later to as much as three months so as to enable more people to have the first vaccine shot and so have a greater proportion of the population have partial immunity to CoVID-19 as well as greater overall protection from having serious CoVID-19. Many countries looked on as they considered which strategy was best. More is being learnt about the new SARS-CoV-2 mutations. Last season saw a new variant be detected in the SE of Britain and another emerge in South Africa the B151 variant. What makes the B.1.1.7 SARS-CoV-2 variant more transmissible? The B.1.1.7 (alternatively as 'Variant of Concern 202012/01') is thought to be roughly 50% more transmissible than the original SARS-CoV-2: why? US researchers based in Massachusetts may have found out why. They have monitored the viral load of those with CoVID-19 and have found that those with B.1.1.7 express the virus for an average of a little over 13 days compared to over 8 days for those with normal SARS-CoV-2. If one assumes that the chances of a person-to-person encounter that transmits the virus are the same per day, then the longer time for expressing the virus would explain the apparent increased transmitability of B.1.17. This result also suggests that a longer quarantining period is needed. China's Coronavac vaccine has a disappointing Brazil trial. While the vaccine's trials in Turkey and Indonesia were more favourable, a trial in Brazil showed it to be only about 50% effective at preventing serious or mild CoVID-19. This might reflect an earlier assessment that Coronavac is primarily effective for those under 35 years of age. The vaccine is made by the Beijing based firm Sinovac. It is an inactivated vaccine in which the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is killed or inactivated and this 'dead' virus used as a vaccine. However, the inactivation mechanism (in this case by exposing the virus to aluminium hydroxide) might alter the virus proteins sufficiently to undermine a human immune response to the active (or 'live') virus. The new Novavax vaccine has near 90% efficacy. It is different from the Pfiser BioNTech or BNT162b2, the Moderna mRNA-1273 and Oxford – AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccines reported on last season. This Novavax vaccine – designated NVX CoV2373 – is a solution of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and a matrix protein found in the virus's coat. Like the other vaccines with UK regulatory approval it is about 90% effective. It will be manufactured in Teeside and the UK had an initial pre-approval order of 60 million doses. UK approval for use was granted mid-March (2021). Hospital worker study of the Pfizer vaccine shows strong results. A study of UK hospital workers who were vaccinated with the Pfizer BioNTech's BNT162b2 shows it prevented serious CoVID-19 with an effectiveness of 72% following a single and with a second booster dose a few weeks later 86%. Elderly protected by Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. A study by Public Health England has found that for the elderly (the over-80s), a single shot of the Pfizer BioNTech's BNT162b2 vaccine provided protection for the need for hospitalisation for CoVID-19 of over 75%. Two doses would undoubtedly confer greater protection. Scottish phase IV trial reveals high vaccine effectiveness. Over a million (1.1m) vaccinated between 8th December 2020 and 15th February 2021 were followed having had just a single dose. The results show that after 4 weeks the Pfizer BioNTech's BNT162b2 and the AstraZeneca Oxford ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccines are respectively 85% and 94% effective against getting serious CoVID-19 (prevented the need for hospitalisation). Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is highly effective according to a US study. The study of 32,000 people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca Oxford ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 prevented 79% from getting CoVID in all age groups including the over-65s: 20% of those in the trial were over 65. It was 100% effective against the need for hospitalisation. (This is even better than the 94% effective against getting serious disease necessitating hospitalisation reported above. However, this difference may be due to different standards in determining the need for hospitalisation: the UK with its state-run NHS has a lower threshold than the US and it's predominantly private, and the world's most expensive, medical system.) ++++ See side effects below. Britain's Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine seems to reduce, and possibly prevent, transmission. One of the vaccine unknowns is whether a vaccinated person is sufficiently protected to prevent virus transmission? A picture is now beginning to emerge. February saw a preliminary study of those who have had the Oxford-AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (Changed-Adenovirus-Oxford-1 for novel CoVID-19). Viral particles in the nose and upper respiratory tract of those who still got mild CoVID were greatly lowered to the point where not only was the likelihood greatly reduced but it may be that the risk of transmission was almost eliminated. Given that the vaccine is over 90% effective, then there is only around a 10% chance of vaccine recipients getting (mild or asymptomatic) CoVID, and given that this study shows that with this cohort transmission is greatly reduced, overall it may be that transmission risks are almost zero. Good news. Pfizer vaccine may suppress transmission of SARS-CoV2. The result comes from a survey of 23,000 UK healthcare workers who had the Pfizer BioNTech's BNT162b2 vaccine. (Pre-print only available at time of this posting.) The US approves third vaccine. The US Food & Drug Administration has approved a single shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. The vaccine is similar to the AstraZeneca Oxford ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine but uses a different adenovirus. Fake Sputnik V vaccines received from Russia. Slovalia has received a shipment of 200,000 doses of the Russian vaccine except that the vials' contents do not match that approved by regulators. Hungary is the only other European country to have placed an order for the Russian vaccine. Vaccines may reduce long-CoVID-19. Some people who have been ill with CoVID-19 and partially recovered, continue to show some symptoms (lethargy, breathing difficulties, etc) for many months. These are called 'long CoVID-19' sufferers. The BBC has reported that some long-CoVID patients have found that the vaccine seems to reduce symptoms. The BBC's 2nd March (2021) reporting noted the stories were anecdotal and that no formal study had been undertaken. Indeed, it would be difficult to undertake a randomised double-blind trial as that would involve a cohort being prevented from having the vaccine to act as a control: deliberately withholding the vaccine would be unethical. The SARS-CoV-2 vaccine side effects are rare and minimal surveys of the vaccinated reveal. No one has died due to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. According to the US Vaccine Adverse Reaction Reporting System, the mRNA vaccines (such as Pfizer BNT162b2 and the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccines) see largely very minor adverse reactions in 372 individuals per million or a 0.0372% chance of an adverse reaction. In the UK, the Yellow Card Scheme data once three million had been vaccinated indicated that 4,000 doses out of every million given led to an adverse reaction (a 0.4% chance of an adverse reaction). Most side effects seem to be the injection site being sore for a day or two or there being fatigue or a headache. Far fewer had fever for a few days. Only very rarely has someone had to be hospitalised and even those very few have all recovered. There have been no deaths clearly attributed to any SARS-CoV-2 vaccine to date despite several million being vaccinated at the time of reporting. A very few have had an allergic reaction with an incidence of anaphylaxis for the Moderna vaccine of three cases per million vaccinated, for the Pfizer five cases and Oxford Astra-Zeneca ten. All were easily treatable. Over 80% of the tiny minority who did develop anaphylaxis had a prior history of allergies. (See Remmel, A. (2021) CoVID vaccines and safety: What the research says. Nature, vol. 590, p537-8. This is an open access article, so feel free to search for it.) European nations temporarily ban Oxford Astra-Zeneca vaccine over side-effect fears. France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal and Spain temporarily suspended use of the UK created Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine amid fears that it encouraged blood clots. However, while there have been some cases of vaccinated people getting blood clots, by mid-March the European Medicines Agency affirmed that some 20 million people in the UK and European Union had been vaccinated with the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine yet there were less than 25 subsequently developing blood clots. Both the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency affirmed there was no connection between having the AstraZeneca Oxford ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine and blood clots. The director general of Italy's medicines authority, Nicola Magrini, said that the decision to ban the vaccine was a 'political one'. Belgium continued to use the vaccine throughout the scare with its health minister, Frank Vandenbroucke, saying that they would by guided by the science and there was 'no reason to stop now'. Globally CoVID-19 has had one peak, but is the planet heading for a second? While the incidence of CoVID-19 cases has varied nation by nation, as a planet we are all in it together and the pandemic will not end until the virus has been controlled in all nations. So, what has the global picture been? Globally, there has been a steady rise in daily new cases up to 11th January 2021 when there was a peak of nearly 740,000. Since then, new cases dropped until 23rd February 2021 when there were 360,000 new cases each day and a global death rate of just under 9,500. Unfortunately, since then (latest figures up to mid-March 2021) have seen a rise to 438,000 new cases. Alas, while these figures are accurate as an 'official' number, accuracy is not guaranteed because some nations have not had an effective reporting regimen. The question therefore remains as to whether globally we are heading for a second peak. Vaccine roll-out is going to be a key factor: it is a race between vaccination and the virus. (See also Mallapaty, S. (2021) Has CoVID peaked? Maybe, but it's too soon to be sure. Nature, vol. 591, p512-3.) UK dexamethasone steroid treatment for CoVID-19 successful. Mid-summer last year (2020) the cheap steroid was found to be effective following a small-sized trial by Oxford based biomedical scientists. A follow-up study by NHS England now indicates that it may have saved 22,000 lives in the UK and around a million globally. Worry less about SARS-CoV2 contaminating surfaces; worry more about aerosol transmission. With the original 2003 SARS it was known that the virus could survive on surfaces for a few hours and that transmission this way was possible. Jumping forward to the current outbreak, last year there were a number of research papers reporting that the virus could 'contaminate surfaces' (fomites) for days if not weeks. Despite this there were a few that said that aerosol transmission was an important infection route. Some even opined that fomite transmission was so low that we should spend less effort on cleaning surfaces (such as in busses and at stations) but much more on ensuring social distancing and mask wearing. Recent work is now confirming this view. It appears that a number of the studies that looked at fomites were using viral RNA detection. Yes, they detected viral RNA but it was not viable viral RNA, rather RNA fragments – the dead bodies, if you will, of the virus particles. Other studies that compared the longevity of viruses on different surfaces were carried out under laboratory conditions (with more uniform temperature and humidity and protection from being rubbed). However, there are hardly any studies carried out in the real world that show the virus remaining viable on surfaces for any length of time. Yes, there is still a risk of fomite transmission, but it seems we need to be much more concerned to ensure social distancing and mask wearing. ( See Goldman J. (2020) Lancet Infectious Diseases, vol. 20, p892-3, Ben-Shmuel, A. et al (2020) Clinical Microbiology and Infection, vol. 26, p1658-1662 and Lewis, D. (2021) CoVID-19 Rarely infects through surfaces: so why are we still deep cleaning? Nature, vol. 590, p26-8.) Related SARS-CoV-2 / CoVID-19 news, previously covered elsewhere on this site, includes:-
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Astronomy & Space Science News
The first part of what will be the Square Kilometre Array becomes operational. Initially in Australia and South Africa, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will eventually comprise 2,000 parabolic dishes and up to one million antennas. It will have a receiving area of over a square kilometre (hence its name). Once complete it will be added to with other nations joining in. When fully operational at the one square kilometre level it is hoped it will provide insights on: dark matter, how galaxies form, and whether we are alone in the galaxy. Though phase I of the SKA will not be completed until the end of the 2020s or early 2030s and will comprise 10% of one square kilometre, South Africa's MeerKAT 64 dish precursor array has just come into operation and taken one of the most detailed pictures of the centre of our galaxy. Meanwhile Australia's AKA pathfinder telescope has already mapped the Universe charting three million galaxies in just 300 hours. Gamma ray flare hints at nature of magnetars (magnetostars). Gamma ray flares have been detected before in our galaxy, but they are so bright that they temporally blind orbiting gamma ray and x-ray telescopes. Three teams have now published papers (two in Nature and one in Nature Astronomy (Svinkin et al, and Roberts et al(2021) Nature, vol. 589 and The Fermi LAT Collaboration (2021) Nature Astronomy.) that record the spectrum and change with time of a gamma ray burst that took place on 15th April last year (2020). It was triangulated to be seen to origin in a nearby (in astronomical terms) galaxy some 10 million light years away: the Sculptor galaxy, NGC253. The energy released was tremendous, but still one thousandth that of colliding neutron stars that generate detectable gravity waves. A hot Jupiter's atmosphere reveals cooler origins. Hot Jupiters are giant planets, like Jupiter, that orbit close to their parent star. Many of theses oddities have been detected in recent years. One such hot Jupiter, HD 209458b, has a temperature of over 1,200°C. Ammonia had been detected but since refuted. Hydrogen cyanide, water vapour and carbon monoxide have previously been detected there. However, a new observation, using infra-red spectroscopy as the planet passes in front of its sun allowing light to pass through the planet's atmosphere, reveals all these molecules as well as methane and acetylene. As these molecules would have condensed in cooler conditions further out in the star's system, it suggests that the giant planet formed further out from its star and then migrated inwards, possibly due to interactions with other planets in the system. (See Glacobbe, P. et al (2021) Five carbon- and nitrogen-bearing species in a hot giant planet's atmosphere. Nature, vol. 592, p205-208.) Hopes for planet nine begin to fade. Early in 2016 astronomers thought the orbits of some Oort Cloud bodies hinted at the presence of a ninth planet in the Solar System some five times the mass of the Earth. Hopes were further buoyed a year later. However, since then more trans-Neptunian Objects in the Oort Cloud have been found. This has enabled a fresh analysis of the data and allow for selection bias. The conclusion is that the original analysis was flawed and cannot prove the existence of a ninth planet. Frustratingly though, nor does this new analysis completely rule the possibility of a ninth planet… And so it continues. Arab Emirates' Mars mission successfully enters Martian orbit. The al-Amal (Hope) mission was launched last year (2020) from Japan. The mission will put a satellite into Mars orbit, around the 13th February 2021, to investigate the Martian atmosphere and the current and past climate. The release of the first tranche of data is expected in September (2021.) China's Mars mission successfully enters Martian orbit. The Tianwen-1 mission was launched last year (2020). It will attempt to land a lander on the Martian surface in May. NASA's Mars mission successfully lands the Perseverance rover on SF author Octavia Butler. Following a seven month journey, the Perseverance mission has arrived at Mars and made a successful landing. The mission, launched last year (2020), will look for signs of life. Its landing on Mars used specialist parachutes made in Tiverton, Devon, Great Britain, to slow the probe down. It has touched-down in Jezero crater. Much of the crater floor was billions of years ago a lake complete with a river and its delta flowing into it. Had there been hot springs there, it is a likely place for life to have emerged. The planet Mars's core is unexpectedly large. NASA's InSight lander touched at the end of 2018 with a mission to look at Mars's interior through seismography. Since then it has detected some 500 Martian-quakes and nearly 50 have been large enough – between magnitude 2 and 4 – to be used to analyse the planet's internal structure. The results are that the upper mantle that surrounds the core extends to 437 miles (700 km) to 500 miles (800 km) below the surface where it meets denser material. This indicates that the core is 1,130 miles (1,810 km) to 1160 miles (1,860 km) in diameter. This is about half that of Earth's but is large for a planet the size of Mars. Because we know Mars's mass, this means that the unusually large core must contain lighter elements than iron and heavier elements that exist in the Earth's core. Preserve the Moon's poles report urges. The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (the equivalent to Britain's Royal Society) has published a report calling for researchers to prioritise what they want to do on the Moon at its poles so as not to contaminate its water ice. There are two theories as to the water lying in permanent shadow within craters at the Moon's poles. The first is that it was delivered early in the Solar System's history, and the second is that it also may be slowly accumulating through water-bearing meteorites and possibly by Solar wind. If this last is taking place, then the ice deposits will feature a history of the Solar System. Either way, the ice in these crates is of interest. However, rocket exhaust during landing and taking off releases water vapour which gets widely dispersed and this could easily contaminate the water ice. Indeed, some researchers fear that this may already have happened. The international Committee on Space Research (CoSpaR), which provides guidelines for best practice, is considering the concerns. One possibility would be to explore and use just one pole so as to try to preserve the other. A space-junk-clearing satellite has been launched from Kazakhstan in a proof-of-concept mission. The UK led, Harwell Campus based, mission is called ELSA-d (End of Life Services by Astroscale demonstration). It will lock on to spent satellites magnetically. Since 1957 around 10,680 satellites have been placed into orbit with 6,250 still there but only 3,700 are still operational.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Science & Science Fiction InterfaceReal life news of SF-like tropes and SF impacts on society
NASA's Perseverance rover lands on SF author Octavia Butler. Perseverance's landing site on Mars has been named 'Octavia Butler Landing'. The late, Hugo and Nebula awards-winning Octavia Butler is of course the author of Kindred (1979), Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) among other novels. Her novel Wild Seed (1980) is currently being adapted by Amazon for TV. News of the Perseverance mission so far is covered above. Biologist and science writer, Richard Dawkins, is trying to write science fiction. The biologist is best known for The Selfish Gene (1976) and its sequel (2016) as well as his rant against religion, The God Delusion (2006). He has now decided to pen SF with a novel concerning the reconstruction of a three million year old genome with the aim of de-extincting an archaic human species. Apparently, he is finding the going hard and so has turned to re-read classic writers to see how prose is done. Regarding the writing of SF author Aldous Huxley's "characters go on and on for page after page like fellows of All Souls". Conversely, Dawkins' characters talk science with each other rather than philosophy. SF convention organisers may want to note that scientists want a virtual dimension to events to continue after the pandemic ends. A poll of over 900 Nature readers has revealed that scientists want virtual dimensions to events to continue once the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic ends. SF fandom successfully managed to go virtual during the 2020/1 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and scientists found their events more popular and environmentally friendly with a virtual dimension. This prompted the journal Nature to conduct a poll of its readers: 925 responded. 74% thought that events should continue to have a virtual component or for wholly-virtual events to continue. This despite 69% feeling that the biggest drawback of wholly virtual events was their poor networking opportunities and 12% time-zone problems. Taking the results in the round suggests that the way forward is to ensure physical events have a virtual component. Even prior to the pandemic, some SF conventions have been experimenting with YouTube. These include the 2016 Eurocon in Barcelona (links to some of their programme vids here) and the 2017 Worldcon in Helsinki (links to some of the programme vids within coverage here). In future, SF convention organisers might wish to make a point that their event has a virtual component. Perhaps some auspice bodies – such as WSFS for Worldcon or ESFS for Eurocons – might establish a YouTube channel to archive videos of some conventions' programme items? In addition to increasing a convention's reach as well as enabling those at overcrowded conventions who could not get into an item to see it, creating an archive of programme item videos provides added heritage value to an event for future generations. (See Remmel, A. (2021) Scientists want virtual meetings to stay after CoVID pandemic. Nature, vol. 591, p185-6.) AI can verbally debate with humans. An new artificial intelligence (AI) developed by IBM can verbally debate an argument with humans. Called Project Debater, it can directly engage with humans drawing on four million newspaper article, taking text from them and re-syntax (syntax repair) the words. Of course, it has its limits and can only debate on a hundred topics and the word flow is still not as good as a human. Nonetheless, two-thirds of people who saw it in action to evaluate it reckoned it exemplified a 'decent performance'. The system creates a four-minute opening speech to which a human responds with a speech of his or her own. It then reacts to this with a second four-minute speech. The human opponent then gets a chance to do a rebuttal. Finally, both The Debater and the human each get to give a two-minute closing statement. This form of AI, the researchers argue, scores over game-playing (chess, go etc.) AIs as games have unambiguous rules and what is meant by winning and losing is clear. This is not so with verbal debates. Though not perfect, this project provides a tantalising glimpse into a future in which web users might use such a system that monitors the vast database of the internet to discern the validity of news and warning of fake news. (Slonim, N. et al (2021) An autonomous debating system. Nature, vol. 591, p379-384 and the review piece Reed, C., (2021) Argument technology for debating with humans. Nature, vol. 591, p373-4.) SF film inspires Britain's vaccine strategy! Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed that the 2011 film Contagion helped inspire him when he was developing the UK's vaccine strategy. One problem the film's protagonists faced was ensuring an adequate supply of vaccine. No sh*t Sherlock. This is what a degree on Politics, Philosophy and Economics gets you! The Earth is on the edge of safety from exploding stars an astronomical survey has revealed. Apocalypses are a trope of science fiction and you cannot get more apocalyptic than the entire destruction of the Earth! One real threat is that of a gamma ray burst from a nearby exploding supernova as close as 30 light years could destroy the Earth's ozone layer. A very close supernova could see the radiation strip the Earth's atmosphere. Italian astronomers have surveyed the Galaxy for this threat. It reveals that before 6 billion years ago the safest place to be an Earthlike planet was in the Galaxy's outer reaches. However, about 4 billion years ago (the Earth is over 4.5 billion years old) this safe zone shifted to a band 6,500 – 26,000 light years (2,000 – 8,000 parsecs) from the Galaxy's centre. As the Earth is some 28,000 light years (8,600 parsecs) from the Galactic centre we are on the outer edge of this safe zone. The astronomers calculate that there could have been one or two nearby supernovas the past 500 million years, with a gamma burst that could have affected life. This might explain the Ordovician–Silurian extinction 455 – 430 million years ago in which wiped out nearly 85% of marine species. (450 million years or so the land was dominated by plants; most animals resided in the sea.) One of the four most common explanations for this extinction is a gamma ray burst from a nearby supernova but, it should be noted, that some think that some of the other explanations are more plausible. (See (2021) Astronomy & Astrophysics, vol. 647, article A41.) The Earth's planetary defence warning system has gotton into swing with record number of near-Earth asteroids detected in 2020. Nearly 3,000 near-Earth asteroids were detected in 2020, up from less than a hundred in 1998 when NASA conducted the first large search. Since then, annual detections have steadily increased to 2,958 last year. One of the 2020 asteroids was Apophis which is 340 metres across. It's trajectory has been plotted and it will return in 2029 to come within 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometres), just beyond the region of the outermost satellites' orbits, though NASA calculates that it will again miss the Earth itself and also again in 2068. Of last year's near-Earth asteroids 107 of them were closer to the Earth than the Moon. One of the smallest, 2020VT4 came in to below 250 miles (400 kilometres) but was not spotted until 15 hours after it had passed. Ooops! The Dyatlov Pass mystery solved. Back in 1959, nine students on a 220 mile trek were found dead, badly mutilated in the Dyatlov Pass in Ural mountains, Siberia. Their deaths were a mystery and spawned many theories from secret military testing to their being victims of yetis. There was even a horror film about the incident. Now Swiss researchers think they have the answer with a computer model of the terrain and avalanche software. They think that they camped on a slope and that compact icy snow overlaid softer snow so allowing a slab of effectively ice to come crashing through the students' camp leaving horrendous injuries from which they died in the cold. Geeks use crowd forum to outwit hedge fund managers of US$50 billion (£36 billion) . They encouraged users of the chat forum Reddit to make small investments in firms such as the video game shop chain GameStop. The many small investments ended up as a big investment of US$1 billion (£730 million) and this caused the stock of these companies to increase: GameStop's increased by more than 1,000% (over ten-fold). Meanwhile, professional hedge fund managers had betted on these firms' stocks decreasing in value. It is estimated that these hedge funds lost around US$50 billion (£36 billion). Wall street sought to protect the hedge fund managers by curbing small dealer trading on platforms such as Robinhood and Interactive Brokers.
And to finally round off the Science & SF Interface subsection, here is a short video… What would an Artificial Intelligence (AI) run government be like? Iain Banks' 'Culture' series of books features a highly advanced, post-scarcity, interstellar civilisation of humanoids co-existing with artificial intelligence who quietly control things for the benefit of all… Last year we linked to Isaac Arthur's consideration of humans co-existing with AI. This year he looks at the question of AI run government… and its not the usual take. You can see the half hour video here.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 Rest In PeaceThe last season saw the science and science fiction communities sadly lose…
Wanda Alexander, the US editor, has died. She was a freelance editor for Tor (US) for 22 years (1984-2006). Michael Apted, the British film director, has died aged 79. His genre films included Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) and the Bond technothriller The World is not Enough (1999). Akito Arima, the Japanese physicist, has died aged 90. His work, especially with the Italian Francesco Iachello, on the atomic nucleus. They co-authored The Interacting Boson Model in 1987. He lobbeyed the Japanese government for a law for five-year science plans for the country. He then had a five-year stint as a governmental science advisor. He was also a haiku poetry enthusiast. David G. Barnett, the US publisher and editor, has died. He worked on Necro Publications and edited Into darkness magazine between 1994 and 1996. Allan Burns, the television producer and screenwriter, has died aged 85. In genre terms he was perhaps best known for co-creating (with Chris Hayward) and co-writing for the television sitcoms The Munsters (1964). He also co-edited (with Chris Hayward) the scripts for Get Smart. Trisha Captain, the British fan, has died aged 64. She was a regular Star trek con-goer since the early Leeds Trek cons of the 1970s. George Carruthers, the US astronomer and engineer, has died aged 81. Having been an avid devourer of science fiction and astronomy books when young, he went on to have a career building telescopes and making astronomical observations. He is especially noted for having built the first telescope observatory on the Moon with the remote controlled telescope deployed by the Apollo 16 mission. Seeing in the far ultraviolet (which can't be done beneath the Earth's atmosphere) he was able to obtain images of the Earth's upper atmosphere and its interactions with space. This work paved the way for space weather forecasting. He is also noted for confirming in 1970 the presence of molecular hydrogen in the interstellar medium. In addition to Apollo, he contributed to Skylab's science in 1973-4. As an African American, he was acutely aware of the need for role models. There were black astronomers when he was young but they never attempted much of a public profile. Consequently, he relished the profile afforded him by his contributions to manned space missions so as to encourage those from ethnic minorities to become astronomers. Meloney Chadwick, the US comics editor, has died aged 66. She worked at Harris Comics on titles including Vampirella. She later worked at Dark Horse. Storm Constanine, the British author, has died aged 64. A regular at British Eastercons, she is known for the 'Wraethhu' trilogy. Her story 'Priest of Hands' was short-listed for the British SF Association Award in 1993, and -The Oracle Lips- was shortlisted for the Otherwise Award in 1998. Paul Crutzen, the Dutch civil engineer turned meteorologist and atmosphere chemist, has died aged 87. He is best known for demonstrating that nitrogen oxides could destroy ozone. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Sherwood Roland and Mario Molina (who showed that chlorofluorocarbons destroy ozone). Recently he has become famous for coining, in 2000, the term the 'Anthropocene': the proposed geological age beginning with the time humanity first made a discernable impact on the geological record. Earlier in his career, in 1982 and with John Birks, he co-authored an article in Ambio subtitled 'Twilight at Noon' on how firestorms following a nuclear war could cool the Earth. This led Carl Sagan, Richard Turco and colleagues to publish the famous TAPS paper in Science which in turn galvanised Gorbachev and Regan to come to a nuclear arms agreement in 1987. Jeffrey Dempsey, the UK publisher and editor, has died. He worked for Crimson Alter Press between 1982 and 1991 and edited Dark dreams magazine 1984 to 1992. M. A. Foster, the US author, has died aged 81. Best know for a trilogy that began with The Morphodite (1981). Penny Frierson, the US fan, has died aged 79. She joined fandom in 1968 and co-founded the Birmingham (USA) SF group. She was also a member of the Southern Fandom Press Alliance. Mira Furlan, the US actress, has died aged 65. In genre terms she is best known for playing Ambassador Delenn in Babylon 5 (1995-1998). She also starred in Lost (2004-2008). Kathleen Ann Goonan, the US author, has died aged 68. Her work has been short-listed for three Nebulas as well as a Clarke (book) Award. She won a Campbell Memorial Award for In War Times (2007). Other of her works include Light Music (2002) and Queen City Jazz (1998), both in the 'Nanotech Quartet'.. Don Harley, the UK comics artist, has died aged 93. He was part of Frank Hampson's studio drawing Dan Dare for the weekly Eagle comic (1951-1962). He then moved to TV Century 21 to work on Gerry Anderson related Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. He then drew The Mark of the Mysterons in Solo before working on Anderson related strips in the mid-1970s weekly comic Countdown. Jeffrey Hayes, the US producer, has died aged 68. he oversaw the production of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994). His other genre work includes The Lost World (1999-2002) and Time Trax (1993). Jael (Ashton), the US science fiction/fantasy artist, has died aged 83. His work has been short-listed for no less than 8 Chelsea Awards. Norton Juster, the architect but renowned as a children's author, has died aged 91. He his best known for The Phantom Tollbooth (1961). Tim Lane, the US fan, has died aged 69. He co-edited the fanzine Fosfax that was short-listed for seven Hugo Awards. Christopher Little, the British literary agent, has died aged 79. He is best known for taking on the (then) unknown author, one J. K. Rowling, and persevered through a number of rejections before getting her first 'Harry Potter' novel published with Bloomsbury. He remained her agent through to 2011 when he retired. Don Lundry, the US fan, has died. He started going to cons in 1967. He chaired two LunaCons and the 1977 Worldcon, SunCon in Miami. John Mallard, the British physicist, has died aged 94. He is best known for developing whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He also helped contribute to developing positron emission tomography (PET). Rowena Morrill, the SF and fantasy artist, has died aged 76. She won the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist in 1984, and was a four-time Hugo finalist for Best Professional Artist. Last year she garnered a Lifetime Achievement World Fantasy Award. Jeremy Newson, the British film director and actor, has died aged 73. His films include the classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and its quasi sequel Shock Treatment (1981). Lou Ottens, the Dutch engineer, has died aged 94. He is best known for inventing cassette tapes. Along with vinyl single and long-play (LP) records, for a quarter of a century cassette tapes were the most common way to listen to music and sound recordings through the 1970 to mid-1990s and still fairly commonly used in the early 2000s. Over 100 billion were made. Lou Otten also contributed to the development of compact discs (CDs). Darroll Pardoe, the British SF fan, has died aged 77. His fanzines included editing single issues of Dark Horizons and Vector. penman, the British SF fan, has died aged 70. He was active in the 1970s NE SF Group and Gannet fandom. His fanzines included Armageddon and Oracle. John Philpott, the British fan, has died aged 64. He was more into media SF and was a member of the Intrepid Star Trek group. He was also a past committee member of the Hitch-hiker Guide to the Galaxy ZZ9 Plural Alpha group. Christopher Plummer, the Canadian actor, has died aged 91. His many SF films include Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), 12 Monkeys (1995), Harrison Bergeron (1995), Dracula 2000 (2000) and Priest (2011). Yvonne Rousseau, the Australian author, editor and fan, has died aged 75. She is best known for The Murders at Hanging Rock (1980) and her work in the collective that published the Australian SF Review. Olle Sahlin, the Swedish SF fan and translator, has died aged 64. Authors he has translated have included Terry Pratchett, Phillip Pullman and Stephen Donaldson. Ina Shorrock, the British SF fan, has died aged 92. She was active in fandom since the early 1950s and a member of Liverpool SF and occasionally attended MaD and BaD (Manchester & District and Bolton & District respectively) SF meets. She was a member of the Delta SF group that made fan films. Her husband Norman, was on the committee of the 1957-9 and 1972 Eastercons and that inevitably made her a staff member. She also served a term as a Chair of the BSFA. She was inducted into the Knights of St Fantony and was one of the sponsors of its fanzine Blazon. In recent decades, since 1990, she regularly staffed the reception desk at the Festival of Fantastic Films. She, and the ladies there, always ensured that first-time Fest attendees had someone chaperone them for a while in the bar making introductions. In recognition of her fanac, she received an Eastercon Doc Weir Award. In 2003 she garnered a Nova Award for Best Fan, and at the 2005 Worldcon she accrued a Big Heart Award. Until her husband's own passing, her and Norman's room parties at the Fest were always well catered for out of a well stocked, traditional wicker picnic hamper. Good times. Si Spencer, the comics and TV script writer, has died aged 59. His genre work includes that for Judge Dredd Megazine with The Returners and Plagues of Necropolis as well as graphic novel adaptations with Neil Gaiman of Gaiman's 'Books of Magic' universe stories. He was also a TV scriptwriter for non-genre shows such as East Enders and The Bill. His final The Returners story will be published in the Judge Dredd Megazine this summer. Jack Steinberger, the German-born US physicist, has died aged 99. He is best known for a 1962 experiment which garnered him (and Melvin Schwartz and Leon Lederman) the 1988 Nobel Prize for Physics. The experiment revealed two distinct types of the neutrino and which had been predicted in the 1930s. His family left Germany following the rise of the Nazi party. At college his supervisor was the Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi who also worked on neutrino theory. Having served in WWII, he had a spell at the University of California but left for the University in Columbia in part because he refused to sign an anti-communism oath. It was at Columbia that he and his colleagues conducted their neutrino detecting experiment. In 1968 he moved to CERN where he led work that showed that there could be no more than three types of neutrino. He stayed there until the mid-1990s. In 2015, he joined other Nobel laureates in a letter urging governments to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Patrick Tilley, the UK author and SF artist, has died aged 91. His books include those in the 'Amtrak Wars' series. Bill Titcombe, the British Comics artist, has died aged 81. He drew for TV Comic, TV Century 21 and Look-In. Louis Walpert CBiol, FIBiol, FRS, CBE, the British biologist, has died aged 91. He worked on cell biology and embryo development in particular, at Kings College London before moving to University College London. The public knew him through his radio and television appearances including giving the televised Royal Institution Christmas lectures in 1986. He wrote many popular science books. Later in life he went on to discuss the problem of depression from which he suffered greatly. Norman Warren, the British film director, has died aged 78. His films include Prey (1977), Spaced Out (1979), Inseminoid (1981) and Bloody New Year (1987). Quietly spoken but sociable, he was a regular at the Manchester Festival of Fantastic Films and will be much missed. Dame Margret Weston, the mechanical engineer, has died aged 94. She was a Director of the Science Museum (Kensington, London) noted for developing two medical wings to the museum in addition to extending the idea of there being buttons to push beyond the children's exhibits in the basement. She also took exhibitions outside London and was instrumental in establishing the railway museum in York. Formerly she had an apprenticeship at a Clydeside shipbuilder before moving on to General Electric. She arrived at the museum and worked here way through the ranks.
|
Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Summer 2021 End Bits & Thanks
More science and SF news will be summarised in our Autumn 2021 upload in September Thanks for information, pointers and news for this seasonal page goes to: Ansible (and Dave Langford for mailing paper copies), Fancylopaedia, Pat Fernside (for File 770 info), File 770, Julie Perry (Google Scholar wizard), SF Encyclopaedia, SFX Magazine, and Peter Wyndham, not to mention information from various academic science journals or their websites cited. Additional thanks for news coverage goes not least to the very many representatives of SF conventions, groups and professional companies' PR/marketing folk who sent in news. These last have their own ventures promoted on this page. If you feel that your news, or SF news that interests you, should be here then you need to let us know (as we cannot report what we are not told). :-) News for the next seasonal upload – that covers the Autumn 2021 period – needs to be in before 15th August 2021. News is especially sought concerns SF author news as well as that relating to national SF conventions: size, number of those attending, prizes and any special happenings. To contact us see here and try to put something clearly science fictional in the subject line in case your message ends up being spam-filtered and needs rescuing. Be positive – Help spread SF news to fellow enthusiasts -- Bookmark as appropriate below:Very many thanks. Meanwhile feel free to browse the rest of the site; key links at the bottom, below.Want to be kept abreast of when we have something new?
[Up: Science Fiction News Index | Recent Site Additions | Author Index to Fiction & Non-Fiction Book Reviews | Home Page: Concatenation] [ Year's Film & Convention Diary | One Page SF Futures Short Stories | SF Convention Reviews | SF Film Charts | Articles | Whimsy with Gaia ] [Originally posted 21.4.15 | Contact | Copyright | Privacy Editorial | Site Origins/History]
|