Robert Holdstock 1948-2009

A generous and convivial friend, a wonderful author whose novels are vivid and deeply felt evocations of the myths and quotidian reality of the ancient world, and all-round good bloke. Gone too soon and greatly missed.

UPDATE: for those interested, tributes and messages of condolence can be found at his website.

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Science Fiction That Isn't Science Fiction (6)

Another Science Fiction: An Intersection of Art and Technology in the Early Space Race

On industrial trade magazine covers and ads from the days when science was the Way Forward, and the law of unintended consequences had yet to be invented.

(via Big Dumb Object)

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Dunes In Winter

The HiRise camera package on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter continues to send back stunningly beautiful images of complex and unexpected textures on the Martian surface. The image above, looking like nothing so much as a finely sculptured high-end chocolate dessert, is of dunes inside a crater in the Southern hemisphere. It's currently winter, in the Southern hemisphere of Mars, and the sheen on the smooth east-facing slopes, sheltered from the sun, is either water or carbon dioxide frost. The intricate scrolls and furls of the west-facing slopes is due to modification by southerly and northerly winds of ridges sculpted by prevailing westerly winds.

You can find a high-resolution image, a close-up of the latticed dunes, and more information here; Boston Globe's the Big Picture has a great gallery here. In the past decade, HiRise's vast catalogue of images and images and data from Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Express, the MRO, the two rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the Phoenix Lander, have rendered every novel and non-fiction book about Mars out-of-date to some degree or other. Time for a new wave, perhaps...

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Random Linkage 28/11/09

First Black Holes May Have Incubated in Giant, Starlike Cocoons
'The first large black holes in the universe likely formed and grew deep inside gigantic, starlike cocoons that smothered their powerful x-ray radiation and prevented surrounding gases from being blown away, says a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.'

Dark power: Grand designs for interstellar travel
'No one disputes that building a ship powered by black holes or dark matter would be a formidable task. Yet remarkably there seems to be nothing in our present understanding of physics to prevent us from making either of them. What's more, Crane believes that feasibility studies like his touch on questions in cosmology that other research hasn't considered.'

Splitting Time from Space—New Quantum Theory Topples Einstein's Spacetime
'Was Newton right and Einstein wrong? It seems that unzipping the fabric of spacetime and harking back to 19th-century notions of time could lead to a theory of quantum gravity.'

NASA to develop haptic air-typing spacesuit gloves
'NASA is considering plans to integrate haptic vibro feedback and Halting State style
air-writing accelerometer capability into spacesuit gloves.'
(Why not just use chip-enhanced mindpower?)

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Recommendations Wanted

Amazon have given me three GBP credit to spend on MP3 downloads. Gosh. What should I buy?

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Comfortably Numb

I find myself becoming mildly obsessed with this Pink Floyd song. It's extremely well known - probably their best-known song in fact, up there in best plank-spanking polls and so on - but flew way under my radar when it was first released in 1979; although the hippy living in the flat beneath mine back in Bristol had it on constant replay I was so not into the whole concept album thing back then, and I've never seen the film. But I was boxset-streaming The Sopranos from start to finish recently , and a snippet of 'Comfortably Numb' (the live version with Van Morrison, from The Departed soundtrack) was playing in Christopher Moltisanti's SUV just before he crashed. Since then, I've been listening to various versions, and finding that the dialogue between a doctor and a pop star who needs chemical enhancement to get going has been helping me find my way inside a character who had previously been frustratingly opaque. Underneath the bombast, there's a fragile wistfulness, a longing for things lost, a revelation half-glimpsed and barely understood. Perfect for the posthuman condition I'm trying to evoke.

So far I like this version best. If only for the flowering-medusa-spaceship thing, and the crowd's transcendent rapture.

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Random Linkage 21/11/09

'Hobbits' Are a New Human Species, According to Statistical Analysis of Fossils
'Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans.'

Fossil hunters unearth galloping, dinosaur-eating crocodiles in Sahara
'Fossil hunters have uncovered the remains of primitive crocodiles that "galloped" on land and patrolled the broad rivers that coursed through north Africa one hundred million years ago.'

Nanotechnology Team Discover How to Capture Tumor Cells in Bloodstream
'A team led by University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) researchers on the cutting edge of nanotechnology has found a way to capture tumor cells in the bloodstream that could dramatically improve earlier cancer diagnosis and prevent deadly metastasis.'

'Vampire Star': Ticking Stellar Time Bomb Identified
'Using ESO's Very Large Telescope and its ability to obtain images as sharp as if taken from space, astronomers have made the first time-lapse movie of a rather unusual shell ejected by a "vampire star," which in November 2000 underwent an outburst after gulping down part of its companion's matter. This enabled astronomers to determine the distance and intrinsic brightness of the outbursting object.'

'Frankenstein' fix lets asteroid mission cheat death
'The beleaguered Hayabusa asteroid probe is back on track to return to Earth after a clever workaround coaxed one of its ion engines back to life.
'The recovery is yet another reversal of fortune for the Japanese spacecraft, which has been plagued with problems since its visit to asteroid Itokawa in 2005.'

Second Extrication Drive Yields Slight Progress
'Spirit successfully completed the first step of its planned two-step motion on Sol 2090 (Nov.19).
'After spinning the wheels for the equivalent of 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) in the forward direction, the center of the rover moved approximately 12 millimeters (0.5 inch) forward, 7 millimeters (0.3 inch) to the left and about 4 millimeters (0.2 inch) down. The rover tilt changed by about 0.1 degree. Small forward motion was observed with the non-operable right front wheel, and the left front wheel showed indications of climbing, despite the center of the rover moving downward. These motions are too small to establish any trends at this time.'

Give Me More: Augmented Reality from EPFL+ECAL Lab
'Artistic animations float across the pages of a timeless book about the Swiss countryside. Banknotes prove strangely seductive. Your head is suddenly engulfed in clouds and your clothes ooze bubbles. This is the world of Give Me More, an Augmented Reality (AR) exhibit by Switzerland’s EPFL+ECAL Lab, premiering in the U.S. at swissnex San Francisco.'

The Illustrated Man: How LED Tattoos Could Make Your Skin a Screen
'The title character of Ray Bradbury’s book The Illustrated Man is covered with moving, shifting tattoos. If you look at them, they will tell you a story.
'New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course). Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen.'

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