Many years ago a friend made one of the most perceptive comments I have ever heard about Russian writers. “Yeah,” he said, “they’re profound and all that. But they’re also incredibly hard. I mean, there’s Pushkin: died in a duel. Lermontov: died in a duel. Tolstoy: fought in the Caucasus. Dostoevsky: sentenced to death, exiled to a Siberian prison camp. Solzhenitsyn: fought in the second world war, sent to the Gulag, survived cancer, defied the USSR …”

“Don’t forget Griboyedov,” I added. “Torn to pieces by angry Persians after he tried to save an Armenian eunuch. And Varlam Shalamov: Seventeen years in the Gulag.”

“Yeah – and what have English authors done? Dickens? Who did he fight?”

Read More – Guardian: Russians: the world’s hardest writers

(Thanks Bryce!)

The Naropa University Archive Project is preserving and providing access to over 5000 hours of recordings made at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The library was developed under the auspices of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (the university’s Department of Writing and Poetics) founded in 1974 by poets Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg. It contains readings, lectures, performances, seminars, panels and workshops conducted at Naropa by many of the leading figures of the U.S.literary avant-garde.

The collection represents several generations of artists who have contributed to aesthetic and cultural change in the postmodern era. The Naropa University Archive Project seeks to enhance appreciation and understanding of post-World War II American literature and its role in social change, cultural criticism, and the literary arts through widespread dissemination of the actual voices of the poets and writers of this period. Current interest in Oriental religions, environmentalism, political activism, ethnic studies, and women’s consciousness is directly indebted to the work of these New American Poets, writers and musicians.

Funding for this project was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Save America’s Treasures, the GRAMMY Foundation, the Internet Archive, the Collaborative Digitization Program, and private donors. If this collection is important to you please help us preserve it with your donations.

Naropa Poetics Audio Archives

(via Dangerous Minds)

Christopher Hitchens writes:

Readers of Ballard’s memoir, Miracles of Life (a book with a slightly but not entirely misleading title) will soon enough discern that he built on his wartime Shanghai traumas in three related ways. As a teenager in post-war England he came across first Freud, and second the surrealists. He describes the two encounters as devastating in that they taught him what he already knew: religion is abject nonsense, human beings positively enjoy inflicting cruelty, and our species is prone to, and can coexist with, the most grotesque absurdities. What could have been more natural, then, than that Ballard the student should devote himself to classes in anatomy, spending quality time with corpses, some of whom, in life, had been dedicated professors in the department. An astonishing number of his shorter works follow the inspiration of Crash, also filmed, this time by David Cronenberg, in morbid and almost loving accounts of “wound profiles,” gashes, fractures, and other inflictions on the flesh and bones. Fascinated by the possibility of death in traffic, and rather riveted by the murder of John Kennedy, Ballard produced a themed series titled The Atrocity Exhibition, here partially collected, where collisions and ejaculations and celebrities are brought together in a vigorously stirred mix of Eros and Thanatos. His antic use of this never-failing formula got him briefly disowned by his American publisher and was claimed by Ballard as “pornographic science fiction,” but if you can read “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As a Downhill Motor Race” or “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” in search of sexual gratification, you must be jaded by disorders undreamed-of by this reviewer. Both stories, however, succeed in being deadpan funny.

The Atlantic: The Catastrophist

(Thanks Alex Burns)

This is geared mostly to aspiring screenwriters, but I think other writers and appreciators of film would benefit from at least reading this article, if not the scripts as well.

My PDF Scripts: Mystery Man’s Seven Scripts You Gotta Read!

(via Jorn Barger)

It’s a play… no it’s a reading… no it’s… hard to tell. But on November 22, from noon to 6 pm, the New Museum in NYC is doing some sort of cool six hour Neuromancer thing that they describe thusly:

“An ambitious new work by Brody Condon, Case is a contemporary adaptation of the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson. Combining Gibson’s 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction, faux ‘virtual reality’ scenes will unfold via moving Bauhaus-inspired sculptural props accompanied by the Gamelan ensemble Dharma Swara.”

R.U. Sirius: Neuromancer… with Porn Star Sasha Grey as Molly

Plagiarism-detection software was created with lazy, sneaky college students in mind – not the likes of William Shakespeare. Yet the software may have settled a centuries-old mystery over the authorship of an unattributed play from the late 1500s called The Reign of Edward III. Literature scholars have long debated whether the play was written by Shakespeare – some bits are incredibly Bard-like, but others don’t resemble his style at all. The verdict, according to one expert: the play is likely a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd, another popular playwright of his time.

Sir Brian Vickers, a literature professor at the University of London, came to his conclusion after using plagiarism-detection software – as well as his own expertise – to compare writing patterns between Edward III and Shakespeare’s body of work. Plagiarism software isn’t new; college professors have been using it to catch cheats for more than a decade. It is, however, growing increasingly sophisticated, enabling a scholar like Vickers to investigate the provenance of unattributed works of literature. With a program called Pl@giarism, Vickers detected 200 strings of three or more words in Edward III that matched phrases in Shakespeare’s other works. Usually, works by two different authors will only have about 20 matching strings. “With this method we see the way authors use and reuse the same phrases and metaphors, like chunks of fabric in a weave,” says Vickers. “If you have enough of them, you can identify one fabric as Scottish tweed and another as plain gray cloth.” (No insult intended to Kyd.)

Time: How Plagiarism Software Found a New Shakespeare Play

(via Jorn Barger)

The software used, Pl@giarism, is free (as in beer, not open source).

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civil award, and is given to individuals who have contributed to: 1) the security or national interests of the United States, 2) world peace, or 3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

In his new book, Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor, former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer reveals how politicized the revered Presidential Medal of Freedom became during the Bush administration.

Latimer writes that administration officials objected to giving author J.K. Rowling the Presidential Medal of Freedom because her writing “encouraged witchcraft”

Think Progress: Bush Officials Objected To Awarding Medal To J.K. Rowling Because Harry Potter Books Promote Witchcraft

(via Disinfo)

Vidal now believes, as he did originally, Clinton would be the better president. “Hillary knows more about the world and what to do with the generals. History has proven when the girls get involved, they’re good at it. Elizabeth I knew Raleigh would be a good man to give a ship to.”The Republicans will win the next election, Vidal believes; though for him there is little difference between the parties. “Remember the coup d’etat of 2000 when the Supreme Court fixed the selection, not election, of the stupidest man in the country, Mr Bush.”

Vidal originally became pro-Obama because he grew up in “a black city” (meaning Washington), as well as being impressed by Obama’s intelligence. “But he believes the generals. Even Bush knew the way to win a general was to give him another star. Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred — religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word ‘conservative’ you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They’re not, they’re fascists.”

Another notable Obama mis-step has been on healthcare reform. “He f***ed it up. I don’t know how because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.” As for his wider vision: “Maybe he doesn’t have one, not to imply he is a fraud. He loves quoting Lincoln and there’s a great Lincoln quote from a letter he wrote to one of his generals in the South after the Civil War. ‘I am President of the United States. I have full overall power and never forget it, because I will exercise it’. That’s what Obama needs — a bit of Lincoln’s chill.” Has he met Obama? “No,” he says quietly, “I’ve had my time with presidents.” Vidal raises his fingers to signify a gun and mutters: “Bang bang.” He is referring to the possibility of Obama being assassinated. “Just a mysterious lone gunman lurking in the shadows of the capital,” he says in a wry, dreamy way.

Vidal now believes, as he did originally, Clinton would be the better president. “Hillary knows more about the world and what to do with the generals. History has proven when the girls get involved, they’re good at it. Elizabeth I knew Raleigh would be a good man to give a ship to.”The Republicans will win the next election, Vidal believes; though for him there is little difference between the parties. “Remember the coup d’etat of 2000 when the Supreme Court fixed the selection, not election, of the stupidest man in the country, Mr Bush.”

Times Online: Gore Vidal: ‘We’ll have a dictatorship soon in the US’

(via Disinfo)

Tolkien, one of his generation’s most respected linguists, was ”earmarked” to crack Nazi codes in the event that Germany declared war.

Intelligence chiefs singled him and a ‘cadre’ of other intellectuals to work at Bletchley Park, the codebreaking centre in Buckinghamshire.

Its staff – which included Alan Turing, the gay codebreaker – would later decipher the ‘impenetrable’ Enigma machines.

This saved Britain from German conquest by allowing the Navy to intercept and destroy Hitler’s U-Boats.

According to previously unseen records, Tolkien trained with the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS).

He spent three days at their London HQ in March 1939 – six months before the outbreak of the Second World War and just 18 months after the publication of his first book, The Hobbit.

But although he was ”keen”, Tolkien – a professor of English literature at Oxford University – declined a £500-a-year offer to become a full-time recruit.

Telegraph: JRR Tolkien trained as British spy

(via Disinfo)

This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.

No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.

The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot

Dent goes on to explain point by point, chunk by chunk, what must go into a marketable pulp story. I don’t know if this formula would still be effective today, but I suspect it could still be of some use to genre writers.

Thanks to Trevor for telling me about this a couple years ago, at one of the very first PDX0 meetups. I only just decided to find it today.

The short story, “Professor Bommsenn’s Germs” by Ernest George Harmer first appeared in the November 1887 edition of Belgravia Magazine.

Harmer describes a bald, large headed creature with a small body and “mesmeric” powers. It is perhaps the earliest piece of fiction to feature the mutant motif. Following is the Google Books digitization of the story.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three years have passed since the collapse of the Tower of Pisa, but only now can I accept the crucial role that I played in the destruction of this unique landmark. Over twenty tourists died as the thousands of tons of marble lost their grasp on the air and collapsed to the ground. Among them was my wife Elaine, who had climbed to the topmost tier and was looking down at me when the first visible crack appeared in the tower’s base. Never were tragedy and triumph so intimately joined, as if Elaine’s pride in braving the worn and slippery stairs had been punished by the unseen forces that had sustained this unbalanced mass of masonry for so many centuries.

The Guardian: “The Dying Fall” by JG Ballard

(via Bruce Sterling)

The novelist JG Ballard, who conjured up a bleak vision of modern life in a series of powerful novels and short stories published over more than 50 years, died today after a long battle with cancer.

His agent, Margaret Hanbury, said tonight that it was “with great sadness” that the 78-year-old author passed away yesterday morning after years of ill health.

Hanbury, who worked with Ballard for more than 25 years, said he was a “brilliant, powerful” novelist. “JG Ballard has been a giant on the world literary scene for more than 50 years. Following his early novels of the 60s and 70s, his work then reached a wider audience with the publication of Empire of the Sun in 1984 which won several prizes and was made in to a film by Steven Spielberg.

Guardian: Crash author JG Ballard, ‘a giant on the world literary scene’, dies aged 78

Shanda Literature, which controls over 90% of China’s online-reading market, rakes in an estimated revenue of 100 million yuan ($15 million) per year. Running three popular online-novel websites, Shanda boasts a total readership of 25 million and is growing at 10 million per year, according the company. “The Chinese people need a platform to express their creativity,” said Hou Xiaoqiang, founding CEO of Shanda Literature. “I think our online-literature sites can partly cater to that need.”

Full Story: Time

(via Tomorrow Museum

Missed this, it was originally posted on Lovecraft’s birthday:

“Race prejudice is a gift of nature, intended to preserve in purity the various divisions of mankind which the ages have evolved.”
- H. P. Lovecraft, Letters

“Now the trickiest catch in the Negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The Black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists… But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the Negro were the White man’s equal.”
- H. P. Lovecraft, Letters

“Of course they can’t let Niggers use the beach at a Southern resort – can you imagine sensitive persons bathing near a pack of greasy chimpanzees? The only thing that makes life endurable where Blacks abound is the Jim Crow principle, and I wish they’d apply it in New York both to Niggers and to the more Asiatic types of puffy, rat-faced Jews!”
- H. P. Lovecraft, Letters

[...]

None of these texts are unpublished, or difficult to find, or unclear. H. P. Lovecraft was a racist. But his fame and influence is unaffected by his bigotry. This suggests that when someone is accused of bigotry this accusation may be an attack on that person, not on their ideas or behavior. Because others are given a free ride while being just as racist. Some are chosen to be branded a racist and are never forgiven. Others are forgiven. Amnesty doesn’t seem to be based on the actual ideas or behavior of the accused.

Full Story: OVO

There are several more instances at the link.

Update: I’ve been working on expanding this timeline into a book. I’m currently in the research phase, but you can read my notes here. They are generally more up-to-date and correct than this timeline.

Any corrections, additions, or additional information would be much appreciated – please add comments below. Updates and corrections will be noted in the comments. (I haven’t been keeping up with this, I’ve just been making corrections and not noting them)

1809 – Philosophie Zoologique by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck introduces the concept of transmutation of species.

1844 – Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Robert Chambers. Best seller, popularized evolutionary theory after Lamarckian theory discredited.

1853 – First volume of An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races by Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau. “One of the earliest examples of scientific racism”

1859 – Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin. Introduced the concept of evolution. Amazon link.

1871 – The Coming RaceNarrators speculates that the Vril-ya are decedents of the Aryan race that will replace humanity, but a character tells him they are actually evolved from frogs. Some suggest this is parody of Darwinism, it could also be seen as a parody of Gobineau’s writings about the Aryan race (or both). More research is needed regarding the intent. Also, some have speculated that this is non-fiction. Clearly an influence on Blavasky, but to what extent? Still, the Vril-ya can be seen as the first speculation as to a race of humanoid replacing humans and may be the first mutants.

1881 – The Great Romance by The Inhabitant. A man puts himself into a suspended state and wakes up in the year 2143 to find that humans have evolved to have telepathic powers.

1884 – “The Artificial Man. A Semi-Scientific Story” by Don Quichotte, published in The Argonaut on August 16, 1884. The anonymous narrator of the story meets a sickly old man who turns out to be an 18 year old raised in a bell jar and fed chemicals through his stomach. The Artificial Man claims to be the next evolution of being that will replace humans, and that his race will in turn be replaced by more vigorous beings. Summary 1, Summary 2 Update: I no longer see this as particularly relevant, it’s likely a response to both Frankenstein and “Darwin among the Machines)

1883-87 “The Past and Future of the Human Race,” a paper presented by H.G Wells to his college debate society. Exact date unknown, cited variously as 1883, 1885, or 1887. Lost, but thought to have been revised into the later essay “The Man of the Year 1,000,000.” [1 2 3]

1888 Ernest G. Harmer, “Professor Bommsenn’s Germs” – a scientist uses electricity to evolve a germ into an evolved human. The mutant human has no teeth or hair and possesses some sort of mesmeric ability. A “spoof of current biology.”

1889 – 10,000 Years in a Block of Ice by Louis Boussenard. A man wakes up 10,000 years in the future to find a race of people with small bodies, large heads, and telekinetic powers. Audiobook.

Boussenard was a Spiritualist and is said to have predicted his own death and composed his own obituary. [1]

1891 Meda: A Tale of the Future by Kenneth Folingsby. A novel about a future populated by evolved humans with huge heads who are nourished by atmospheric electricity instead of food, and, thanks to their abnormally large brains, can control electricity and magnetism with their minds. Note: a “private circulation” edition was published in 1891, followed by a public release in 1892. The 1891 edition has a preface claiming the book was written in 1888, and the title page of the 1892 edition says “Written in 1888, Published in 1892.” Excerpts here.

1892 or 1893 – HG Wells publishes the essay “The Man of the Year 1,000,000,” in which he speculates humans will evolve to use their brains more than their bodies and would look something like the above illustration from the December 23 1893 edition of the Ottawa Journal.

1893 – Camille Flammarion, La fin du Monde (published in English as Omega: The Last Days of the World in 1897). Predicts a future in which humans have evolved to have smaller bodies and larger heads.

1895 – The Time Machine by H.G. Wells – features humanoids that have presumably evolved from humans. Full text with audio or Amazon link.

1896 – Henri Becquerel discovers radiation.

1899 – Marie Curie develops theory of radioactivity.

The Hampdenshire Wonder by J. D. Beresford

1911 – The Hampdenshire Wonder by J. D. Beresford. Features a child prodigy with a deformed head to make room for an over sized brain. Amazon link.

1912 – The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson

1924 – The Last of My Race: A Dream of the Future by John Lionel Tayler. Coins the term “Homo ignorans” – proto-Stapledon.

1927 – “The Machine Man of Ardathia” by Francis Flagg. “A modern American is unexpectedly visited by a creature encased in a glass cylinder and sustained by an intricate system of tubes. It arrived from a distant future in which artificial systems have taken over all physiological functions. The evolutionary link that connected such fully ‘mechanical’ Ardathians with still ‘natural’ humans were the Bi-Chanics.” Strong echoes of “The Artificial Man” here.

1928 – “The Metal Man” by Jack Williamson.Perhaps the first sci-fi story to deal with radiation creating a mutant race. Synopsis. The Metal Man and Others, The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume One on Amazon.

gladiator by philip wylie

1930 – Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. Stapledon speculates as to human evolution of a span of 2 billion years. Includes genetic engineering, and a telepathic hive mind.

1930 – Gladiator by Philip Gordon Wylie. In this novel, a mutant is deliberately engineered by a scientist who injects a serum into his wife, creating a super human offspring. Full text. Site dedicated to the novel, including covers. Kindle book.

1931 – “The Man Who Evolved” by Edmond Hamilton. First story portraying the use of “cosmic rays” in creating super human mutants? Story appears in Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930s (Book 1).

odd john by olaf stapledon

1935 – Odd John by Olaf Stapledon. First use of the term “homo superior”? First story about mutants born in disparate locations banding together? Amazon link.

1940 Slan by A. E. van Vogt. Early (first?) series of stories (later collected as a novel) dealing with a mutant race who appear human and hide to avoid persecution.

1945 – First atomic bomb detonated.

1945 – “The Piper’s Son” by Henry Kuttner, first of the “Baldie” series later collected as as Mutant in 1953. Mutant on Wowio. Amazon link.

1948 Children of the Atom by Wilmar H. Shiras. Amazon. (Serialization began in 1948, it was collected as a book in 1951)

strange adventures

1951 – Strange Adventures # 9 by writer John Broome and artist Carmine Infantino. First appearance of Captain Comet, the first (?) mutant super hero in comic books. May also be the first time a mutant appears as a hero rather than antihero.

weird woman mutant

1952 “The Weird Woman” – By artist Joe Sinnott (writer unknown). First known Marvel (known as Atlas at the time) comic book appearance of mutants. Tells the story of a mutant woman who has heard rumors of the existence of a male mutant, whom she seeks to find. At the end, a super powered male appears, presumably the mutant she sought. The mutants in this story appear to be amoral.

1953 More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. Amazon link.

1954 “The Golden Man” by Philip K. Dick. The Father-thing short story collection contains this story.

1955 The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. Amazon link.

the midwich cuckoos

1957 The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. Amazon link.

men_atomic_brains

1959 “The Man With The Atomic Brain!” by artist Steve Ditko (writer unknown). First appearance in Marvel Universe of a mutant organization, which is located on an island (reminds me of the colony in Odd John)

1959 “The Mutants and Me!” Hints at the existence of an underground network of mutants in the Marvel Universe.

1960 Village of the Damned film debuts – an adaptation of Midwich Cuckoos, important early (first?) cinematic of mutants.

tad_carter_mutant

1961 – “The Man in the Sky!” by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, in Amazing Adult Fantasy # 14. Similar to “The Man With The Atomic Brain!” The character Tad Carter appeared much later in X-Men: Hidden Years

1961 Fantastic Four # 1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The FF are not generally considered mutants, since they were not born with their powers. They apparently mutated by radiation, however, like “The Man Who Evolved” and, later, the Ninja Turtles. reprints the first 10 issues of FF.

1963 Outer Limits episode “The Sixth Finger.” Clearly based on “The Man Who Evolved.” Early (first?) appearance of a mutant on television.

1963 X-Men # 1. First appearance of the X-Men. Amazon link. Can be seen as a re-envisioning of the The Man With The Atomic Brain!” and “The Man in the Sky!” – with a bald telepath bringing mutants together. This series made a deliberate effort to explore social issues through the metaphore of the mutant.

1964 Outer Limits episode “The Mutant” – At least one mutant had been seen on Outer Limits by this point, but this episode specifically uses the term “mutant.”

1971 “Oh! You Pretty Things” by David Bowie appears on the album Hunky Dory. Includes the line “better make way for the homo superior.” Amazon link.

1975 Giant Sized X-Men # 1 by . Introduces new version of the X-Men, including the existing character Wolverine. This version would prove to be much more popular. Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 1 reprints Giant Sized X-Men # 1 plus Unccany X-Men #94-100.

1981 Scanners. Popular cinematic treatment of the concept of a mutant race simultaneously banding together and trying to avoid detection by normal humans. Scanners on DVD.

1981 Spiderman and His Amazing Friends debuts, which features Iceman (from the X-Men) and original character Firestar, who are both mutants and said to have been X-Men members. The X-Men occasionally appear in the series.

1984 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles # 1 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. First of the Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles. TPB collecting first 3 issues.

1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series begins.

Questions

What was the first use of the term “mutant” in a science fiction context?

What was the first deliberate use of the concept of the mutant to explore the issue of racism?

Where does the bald headed mutant archetype come from? Kuttner? Update: I’m now guessing this came from Folingsby and Wells, via various “alien” fiction. See: Media History of Grey Aliens.

Notes

Namor is considered to be the Marvel’s first mutant, but he was not identified as such until X-Men # 6 in July 1964.

Works referenced but not linked above

Science Fact and Science Fiction By Brian Stableford

Sci-Fi to Comics blog comments

Superhuman on Wikipedia

Mutant (Marvel Comics) on Wikipedia

A media history of greys

Science Fiction studies

New Atlantis Revisited

“Taking a hint from the text comparison methods used to detect plagiarism in books, college papers and computer programs, University of California, Berkeley, researchers have developed an improved method for comparing whole genome sequences. With nearly a thousand genomes partly or fully sequenced, scientists are jumping on comparative genomics as a way to construct evolutionary trees, trace disease susceptibility in populations, and even track down people’s ancestry.

To date, the most common techniques have relied on comparing a limited number of highly conserved genes – no more than a couple dozen – in organisms that have all these genes in common. The new method can be used to compare even distantly related organisms or organisms with genomes of vastly different sizes and diversity, and can compare the entire genome, not just a selected small fraction of the gene-containing portion known to code for proteins, which in the human genome is only 1 percent of the DNA.

The technique produces groupings of organisms largely consistent with current groupings, but with some interesting discrepancies, according to Sung-Hou Kim, professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley and faculty researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. However, the relative positions of the groups in the family tree – that is, how recently these groups evolved – are quite different from those based on conventional gene alignment methods.The computational results have surprised scientists in being able to classify some bacteria and viruses that until now were enigmatic. The technique, which employs feature frequency profiles (FFP), is described in a paper to appear this week in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

(via UC Berkley News. Thanks Josh!)

“Sir Terry Pratchett has been trialling a revolutionary new device that claims to slow, and even reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s. The award-winning author, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2007, is one of the first patients in the UK to try the anti-dementia helmet. The device sends intense bursts of light at a particular wavelength the a patient’s skull.

The helmet’s designer, Dr Gordon Dougal is convinced the device could transform the lives of thousands of people with Alzheimer’s, which currently affects 700,000 people in the UK. The Discworld author, who has donated over £500,000 to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, first contacted Dr Dougal about his invention last year. The County Durham-based GP said: ‘When Sir Terry’s people contacted me I was very happy to help. We made another prototype helmet and he has had that since last August.’

A custom-built helmet was made from a cast of Mr Pratchett’s head. It was then attached to the back of an armchair at the writer’s home in order that he could use it for the recommended six minutes each day. Mr Pratchett’s progress was assessed by a computer, which showed a small, but measurable, improvement in his condition after three months. More importantly, said Dr Dougal, the computer could find no signs of further deterioration during this period.”

(via The Daily Mail)

The author Terry Pratchett – whose novels have sold millions of copies worldwide – has been made a knight in the New Year Honours list.

The writer, 60, who is best known for his hugely popular Discworld series of comic fantasy novels, received the honour for services to literature.

Sir Terry announced in December 2007 that he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

He has since campaigned to raise awareness of the condition.

Full Story: BBC

(Thanks Cap’n Marrrrk!)

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“Science fiction is all about the future, but what does the future hold for science fiction?

These days, science can be stranger than science fiction, and mainstream literature is increasingly futuristic and speculative. So are the genre’s days numbered? We asked six leading writers for their thoughts on the future of science fiction, including Margaret Atwood, William Gibson and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Plus, we review the latest sci-fi novels, highlight the writers to watch and reveal the results our poll of your all-time favourite sci-fi films and books.”

(via New Scientist. h/t: Futurismic)

“The special Halloween double issue of Rue Morgue magazine included a number of interesting features, as usual, but one which caught my eye was a description of a new documentary on titled Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (Wyrdstuff Productions, 2008). This fim was directed and produced by Frank Woodward, and after getting in touch he graciously and enthusiastically talked about this production.

TheoFantastique: Frank, thanks for making this great documentary, and for allowing me to screen it for this interview. How did you come to develop a personal fascination with Lovecraft and how did it lead to this documentary coming about?

Frank Woodward: I first became aware of Lovecraft like most people, I expect. It was the Call of Cthulhu role playing game, mainly the monsters within. I’ve always been a monster fan and who could resist the tentacled beasties in CoC. That led to my reading some of the major stories… Call of Cthulhu, Pickman’s Model, Rats In The Walls. I have to admit, though, that my Lovecraftian knowledge was basic.

The desire to make a documentary was a more recent one. I occasionally produce DVD extras for Anchor Bay. There was discussion of doing a short bio of Lovecraft for the Re-Animator special edition. It didn’t happen for various reasons. By the time that decision was made, however, I had done quite a bit of research on the man. In some way I experienced what many of the people who’ve seen the documentary experienced. I was reminded how much I enjoyed Lovecraft’s work and wanted to throw myself headlong into learning more. Making this documentary was almost like a college course. I think that’s how all documentaries should be made. They should be a journey of discovery. The desire to learn all you can is why you bother making the film in the first place.”

(via TheoFantastique)

While I still consider myself an anarchist, over the years I’ve somewhat narrowed (or perhaps broadened) it to Reborn-Yet-Again,Taoist Dirt-Pagan, bioregionalista anarchy. I think I’ve also come to understand that freedom resides in being equal to your needs, self-determinism requires self-reliance, and that the “self”  is the worst idea of Western Civilization (or at least doesn’t excite my imagination as much as the pantheist notion of an extended, constellated identity, as suggested by genetics, ecology, and a kiss. (Besides, for a pantheist, the Messiah comes every day.)) Clever critters that we humans are, we’ve invented weapons of mass destruction to protect ourselves against mass destruction, and I don’t want anyone to have the power to unleash such powers; thus, I favor radical decentralization of power, with bioregions replacing nation-states. I’m the first and loudest to praise the vision expressed in our constitution, but I think America has become too large and complex to be governed by less than a thousand people, with one of them-the president-having inordinate power. I’d rather see the United States evolve into the United Bioregions, but united only on the basis of mutual aid and dispute resolution. I have this recurring fantasy that America realizes it’s the dominant power on earth and does something that would take boldness, imagination, and soul-announce it is unilaterally disarming its weapons of mass destruction, even its weapons of medium destruction, and limiting weapons to those for personal defense (handguns, long guns, and bazookas-just because I always wanted one).

Full Story: Arthur

I’m a little late with this one. R.I.P. Michael Crichton.

“Science Not Fiction was saddened to learn of the death of Michael Crichton yesterday. His 1969 novel, The Andromeda Strain, alone would have been enough to make him a science fiction legend, but he turned out string of taut technothrillers, even equalling The Andromeda Strain’s iconic status with 1990’s Jurassic Park.

His greatest strength was in his ability to imbue his novels with a sense of authenticity; The Andromeda Strain was littered with realistic screenshots and computer printouts and came with a detailed (and entirely fictional) bibliography. Jurassic Park has become the cultural point of reference for discussions about biotechnology, cloning and genetic engineering. If Crichton had a weakness, it was his fondness for the theme which repeats over and over in his novels: technological hubris. Some advanced technology is confidently promoted by scientists as progress toward a better world. Unexpected side effects or interactions that the scientists overlooked in their dash to the future manifest themselves, and things get pretty messy from that point on (and to be fair, usually a really fun read.) But each time, it is implied that anyone who is not an overreaching scientist or an idiot would have known to leave well enough alone.”

(via Discover Magazine. h/t: The Daily Grail)

Do you have a gruesomely macabre vision of total annihilation? Do you lose sleep over the ominous intricacies of plausible eschatologies intimated in the sub-text of evening network newscasts? Do you spend an inordinate amount of leisure time watching RoboCop on VHS cassette? Then consider entering the Apocalypse Fiction Contest sponsored by Furtive Labors Publishing.
Contest rules

(1) Submissions must be original, previously unpublished works of fiction of less than 500 words. Entries must be science fiction, fantasy or horror and incorporate the theme of apocalypse in some way.

(2) Submissions must be received by Nov. 30, 2008. E-mail submissions to editor@furtivelabors.com.

(3) Submissions will be judged by Furtive Labors editors. Winning stories will be published on our website. The author of the first-place story will receive $20 and a gift bag of Furtive Labors literature.

(4) Winners will be notified by Dec. 10, 2008.

WARNING: Writing about apocalypse may cause confusion, anxiety, paranoia, sensory distortions, “flashbacks”  and chronic recurring auditory and visual hallucinations. The writer may feel detached from his physical environment and at times stare blankly, paralyzed to the point of being unable to move or speak. A writer’s sense of identity, memory and environment may fall apart. Convulsions can occur, followed by loss of consciousness and a “flat-lined”  or near-death experience. A small number of writers have reported dreams involving sexual experiences with the devil, as well as physical symptoms such as head sores, pallor, lethargy, toothache, mouth cankers, bad breath, swollen breasts, short-windedness, flatulence, jaundice, dropsy, gout, bladder infections, kidney stones and infestation with lice or fleas. A cascade of piping hot jissom is a common side effect. This contest is intended for adults with healthy immune systems. To avoid a potentially serious complication, tell your doctor if your immune system isn’t normal because of jock itch, yeast infection, gonorrhea, chlamydia, genital warts, syphilis, herpes or a My Little Pony doll permanently lodged in your rectum.

Furtive Labors