Gorillas

This Android game mashes up geolocation and science fiction From the Washington Post:  This Android game mashes up geolocation and science fiction In a million places around the globe, a strange form of energy is coming through from what seems like another dimension. We don�t know anything about it � only that it appears to make some people more creative and intelligent. Those people are called The Enlightened, and their goal is to blow those portals wide open. But working against them are the members of The Resistance, people who believe this new energy can�t be trusted. That�s the lore behind Ingress, an emerging augmented-reality game from Niantic Labs, a startup within Google. The portals are real-world landmarks and points of interest that fall under the control of either in-game faction when nearby players power them up. The idea is to get people out and exploring parts of their own city they may never have been to before, said John Hanke, who oversees the game�s develo...

The Worst Science Fiction Novel of the 19th Century From I09.com: The Worst Science Fiction Novel of the 19th Century A number of science fiction novels were published in the 19th century which hold up today and can genuinely be considered as good literature: Walter Besants The Inner House, Joseph Nicholsons Thoth, and H.G. Wells Time Machine. But the good novels are far outnumbered by the bad ones. The borders and matter of the science fiction genre were not consolidated during the 19th century, nor was a standard of professionalism in the genre set, and a number of bad writers produced wretched science fiction during that century. Nonetheless, there is one novel which outstrips all others in its combination of unreadability, clich�, and thematic foulness: An Entirely New Feature of a Thrilling Novel! Entitled the Social War of the Year 1900, or Conspirators and Lovers. A Lesson for Saints and Sinners. The Guilty Party The Social Wars author, Simon Mohler Landis (?-1902) , certainly h...

Titans Great Dune Seas Rival Science Fiction Worlds From Discovery News: Titans Great Dune Seas Rival Science Fiction Worlds The desert planets Arrakis in Frank Herbert�s 1965 novel Dune, and the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars trilogy are legendary arid worlds covered in sand dune "seas." And a mere one billion miles away orbiting Saturn the planet-sized moon Titan has all the trimmings of the real deal. However, with surface temperatures of minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit its hard to imagine Titan as a sun-parched desert world. Radar imaging from the NASA/ESA Cassini mission reveals that there is nothing in the solar system quite like Titans immense dune fields. The dunes make the moon look like God took a giant rake to it. The parallel linear features stretch hundreds of miles across the equatorial regions of Titan, covering a surface area the size of the United States. The photo at the top compares radar images of Titans dunes to those found in the Namibian desert in southe...

Putting South African science fiction on the map Guardian.co.uk Books Blog: Putting South African science fiction on the map Last month, Lauren Beukes scooped one of the science fiction worlds major literary awards - and in doing so, heralded something of a coming of age for South African speculative fiction. Beukes - who describes herself as "an author, scriptwriter and recovering journalist" - won the prestigious Arthur C Clarke award for her second novel, Zoo City . The previous weekend the novel was on the five-strong shortlist for the British Science Fiction Association awards, missing out to Ian McDonalds The Dervish House at the major genre gathering Eastercon in Birmingham. But the Arthur C Clarke award � which saw Beukes beat McDonald � will be more than compensation, as will the news at the weekend that she has been shortlisted in the John W Campbell award for best new writer, to be revealed alongside the Hugo nominations in the US in August. Beukess novel is publi...

Riverside CA RIVERSIDE Science fiction lecture set for Feb 23 From The Press Enterprise: RIVERSIDE: Science fiction lecture set for Feb. 23 George Slusser, curator emeritus of the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at UC Riverside, will lecture on Belgian science fiction writer J.H. Rosny a�n� from 3:15 to 4:30 p.m. Thursday in Special Collections & Archives on the fourth floor of Rivera Library at UCR. The presentation, �J.H. Rosny: Science Fiction�s Unknown Precursor,� is part of the �Afternoons in Special Collections & Archives� series. It is free and open to the public. Parking costs $6. Slusser, professor emeritus of comparative literature at UCR, and Dani�le Ch�telain-Slusser, an associate professor of French at the University of Redlands, have written �Three Science Fiction Novellas: From Prehistory to the End of Mankind� (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), a translation of three Rosny novellas with an introductory essay that explains the writer�s place in th...