Sable Aradia's Blog, page 49
January 16, 2018
Erosion on Mars Reveals Water Ice: LOTS of It!
By Nicole Mortillaro
When we think of Mars, we think of a dry, desolate planet. But beneath the dust of Mars lies frozen water, and a new study has found that erosion is exposing that water ice.
Researchers using several satellites, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), have revealed eight locations of steep slopes, or scarps, all at mid-latitudes on the Red Planet. And that ice could be used as a potential resource by future visitors.
“What they show is slices through ice, in some places the ice is 100 metres thick and starts within a metre or two of the surface,” Colin Dundas, a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Centre, told CBC News.
Read the full article at CBC.ca.
January 15, 2018
Reading Level Analysis Will Change the Way You Write
By Shane Snow
The other day, a friend and I were talking about becoming better writers by doing a “reading level analysis” of our work. Scholars have formulas for automatically estimating reading level using syllables, sentence length, and other proxies for vocabulary and concept complexity. After the chat, just for fun, I ran a chapter from my book through the most common one, the Flesch-Kincaid index:
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I learned, to my dismay, that I’ve been writing for eighth graders.
Curiosity piqued, I decided to see how I compared to the first famous writer that popped in my head: Ernest Hemingway. So I ran a reading level calculation on The Old Man and the Sea. That’s when I was really surprised:
Read the full article at The Content Strategist .
December 30, 2017
Octavia’s Daughters: Meet the New Queens of Spec Fic
By Susan Defreitas
The Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz, highfalutin’ literary author though he may be, has famously mourned the fact that there will be no more Octavia Butler books. The iconic Black author, who won both a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur “Genius” grant—not to mention the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Locus—died in 2006, leaving behind her nearly twenty of the most enduring science fiction and fantasy books of all time, which explore themes related to race, class, gender, and the environment in ways few of even her most prescient peers could imagine.
But to mourn for Butler is to overlook the fact that the Black speculative tradition in the U.S. is alive and well, and women are leading the charge. From Afrofuturism to vampire epics, Caribbean ghost stories to alternate histories, their books are equal parts escapism and engagement, shining light on the politics of the present moment even as they open doorways to other worlds.
Meet five of the reigning queens of spec fic.
Read the full article at LitReactor.
December 29, 2017
Book Review: The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King
The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Read for the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge, the High Fantasy Reading Challenge, and the Read the Sequel Reading Challenge.
Stephen King describes this as “Dark Tower 4.5,” so this is the sequence I chose to read it in for my re-read. I thought this was just the right time. This is the most lighthearted, high fantasy-esque installment of the Dark Tower series, and so reading it between the grave tragedy of Wizard and Glass and the high tension of Wolves of the Calla was a welcome breath of fresh air.
We spend most of the narrative in the past. The Gunslingers take refuge during a major storm on their way to the Calla, and Roland tells a tale of his past, interwoven with a twisted sort of fairy tale from his boyhood. I love the way it’s written almost more than I love the tale itself. It’s adventure fiction, apocalyptica, fairy tale fantasy and a good old-fashioned Weird Western all in one. It has the added effect of tying up some loose ends that matter to fans of the series that aren’t dealt with in the other books because they would have distracted from the main storyline.
Can you enjoy it on its own? Maybe, but I’m pretty sure it has the most utility to someone who’s been following the series. It has greater richness that way.
Now, on to the Calla!
December 28, 2017
3D Printed Live Bacteria Creates World’s First “Living Tattoo”
By Rich Haridy
A team at MIT has genetically modified bacteria cells and developed a new 3D printing technique to create a “living tattoo” that can respond to a variety of stimuli.
Electronic tattoos and smart ink technologies are showing exciting potential for reframing how we think of wearable sensor devices. While many engineers are experimenting with a variety of responsive materials the MIT team wondered if live cells could be co-opted into a functional use.
Read the full article at New Atlas.
December 27, 2017
Don’t Romanticize Science Fiction: An Interview with Samuel Delany
By Adam Fitzgerald
Encountering Samuel R. Delany’s work, for me at least, can be described in two phases (more like paroxysms): the first is being so overcome by the true presence of a genius or polymath writer, the endless fertility and ease through which he has made each genre indelibly his own (science fiction, literary criticism, the short personal essay, the queer memoir, the travelogue, journal writing)—in short, Nobel be damned, we are living in the age of Delany’s life-changing, out-of-this-world work and the kind of reader/critic his writing calls into being, well, she may not exist quite yet. The second phase, no less intense than the first, is to refuse trying to categorize his black queer art because what he has done is, in fact, so much more interesting, diffuse and multifaceted than the rhetoric of genius, the confines of genre. Delany isn’t simply, or at all, a master of this or that form so much as he refuses everything straight white literary culture has been trying to niche and market all along.
Read the full article at Literary Hub.
December 26, 2017
History of the SFWA
Cat is writing a series of articles about the SFWA and the relationship of indie writers to the organization. I am reblogging it here because I know that other SFF indie authors will want to know!
By Cat Rambo, current President of the SFWA
As part of a Twitter conversation, one of my favorite gamewriters, Ken St. Andre, suggested I write up something about SFWA and independent writers that goes into enough detail that people can understand why — or why not — they might want to join. This is part one of a multi-part series that will talk about some of the history behind the decision, and in this first part I want to talk about the organization prior to admitting independent writers. Part two will discuss how SFWA came to change membership criteria in order to make it possible for people to qualify for membership with indie sales in 2016, and some of the changes made as part of planning for that expansion. Part three will focus on how SFWA has changed in the intervening time, while part four will look at what I see as the changes that will continue as we move forward over the next decade. In all of this, I’m trying to provide something of an insider’s look that may or may not be useful, but certainly will be full of many words.
Read the full article at Cat Rambo’s blog, Kittywumpus.
December 25, 2017
Happy Holidays!
I hope this holiday season brings you food, friends and family (in that order; sometimes family is a mixed blessing!) However you choose to celebrate, Happy Holidays!
Enjoy this awesome playlist I found of geekish holiday songs and videos! And may you and yours find all the best in the New Year!
(And by the way, if you want some awesome space holiday cards like the ones in the blog image, you can get them here! No, I didn’t make them, just found them online and thought I would share!)
December 24, 2017
The Importance of Diversity in Libraries
By Karen Jensen
On posts, in tweets, and in my mailbox, one of the questions we – TLT – get asked a lot is “What about the conservatives?” Because we post regularly about GLBTQAI+ literature, talk about advocacy, etc., some are left with the impression that we do not care about meeting the needs of the more conservative parts of our population, which is in no way true. This question came up multiple times regarding my recent series of posts on doing a collection diversity audit.
Read the full article at Teen Librarian Toolbox.
December 23, 2017
The Genesis Project Plans to Use Robots to Seed the Galaxy With Life
By Universe Today
In the past decade, the rate at which extra-solar planets have been discovered and characterized has increased prodigiously. Because of this, the question of when we might explore these distant planets directly has repeatedly come up. In addition, the age-old question of what we might find once we get there – i.e. is humanity alone in the Universe or not? – has also come up with renewed vigor.
These questions have led to a number of interesting and ambitious proposals. These include Project Blue, a space telescope which would directly observe any planets orbiting Alpha Centauri, and Breakthrough Starshot – which aims to send a laser-driven nanocraft to Alpha Centauri in just 20 years. But perhaps the most daring proposal comes in the form of Project Genesis, which would attempt to seed distant planets with life.
Read the full article at Futurism.com.
