Update: I absolutely want to have each and every one of you inside of me. You all, within 15 minutes, provided enough Gmail invites to cover every, single entry. Just awesome, thanks! (You can stop sending invites now).

Science Fiction Inventions by
Publication Date

1980 Food Factory - fast food from outer space (from Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl)
1980 Watercouch (from Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl)
1981 Communications Implant - I think therefore I network (from Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven)
1981 Mole - Underground vehicle (from Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven)
1981 Underground MagLev Train (from Dream Park by Larry Niven (w/S. Barnes))
1981 Arcology - Soleri's dream (from Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle)

"Science Fiction Museum and Hall of
Fame"

Antique science fiction toys for sale

Science fiction novel inspires first
ever Pocket PC virus

Science Fiction Writers Discuss The
Future

Science fiction writers listed by
"religion"

"Studies in narrative: science fiction
and fantasy"

Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy
for Teens

There's an old bon mot about science fiction: "the golden age of science fiction is 12." When I was about that age, I was haunting my local science fiction bookstore and library, reading everything a could get my hands on, a book every day or sometimes more. Those formative years made me into a lifelong reader of science fiction -- and a lifelong customer for science fiction writers.

But as anyone who attends science fiction conventions knows, fandom is aging without any especially large cohort of adolescents coming in behind it. Young people are still thoroughly engaged with sf, but it's through gaming, comics, and TV/films. All worthy endeavors, but to the extent that they're crowding out novels and stories, it's bad news for those of us who write sf -- and those of us who read it, since publishers won't be able to publish to the dwindling niche of genre readers forever; eventually we'll cross over into a market too small to serve.

And that's why this anthology (and New Skies and New Magics, two anthologies of sf and fantasy for kids edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden) is so important. It's not that the field lacks work that's appropriate for young people; it positively bursts with it. And as Yolen notes in her introduction, the precocious youngsters who come to sf are not easily intimidated by the notion that they are reading books intended for adult readers. But it's not enough: for those professionals and parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and mentors looking to introduce their young friends to the field, it is hard to find the good stuff that will get them started and hook them for life (Jumper and its sequel Reflex, which I reviewed here earlier this month, are good choices for this task).

In creating and sustaining a new series of books that consistently identify quality, age-appropriate science fiction and fantasy, Yolen and Nielsen Hayden are doing important work -- providing a road-map for newcomers to the field, and a friend that they can visit with every year. What's more, the introduction to each story includes a suggested reading list of sf and fantasy novels of note that you should read if you like the story.

The stories in this anthology range from good to brilliant to jaw-dropping. It is relatively short on science fiction, but the main sf piece, Bradley Denton's "Sergeant Chip" is so good that it practically had me in tears on the bus this morning (no surprise, as Denton is one of the field's towering and under-appreciated geniuses, whose Buddy Holly is a Alive and Well on Ganymede is possibly the funniest book I've ever read). Sergeant Chip is the first-person narrative of an electronically enhanced dog serving in the K9 forces of an American military unit occupying a conquered country that is much like Iraq of today.

Many of the other standouts here are "contemporary fantasies," set in the modern world, American interpretations of magic realism, a favorite genre of mine. Kelly Link's "Faery Handbag" and Delia Sherman's "CATNYP" are the best examples here.

As to the rest, they are a taster's menu of well-executed, broadly chosen stories from every corner of the field, from heroic fantasy to straight-ahead science fiction to high fantasy. Brilliantly, the editors have also included Rudyard Kipling's 1904 story "They" -- and they promise that each edition of the anthology henceforth will include one century-old story from the annals of history.

The book should be appearing on shelves any day now -- it has a May pub-date which usually means that it starts appearing in April. If you have a young person in your life whom you want to introduce to a field that will teach her or him the most important lessons the world has to present; or if you are looking to reconnect with the field after neglecting the short story magazines and anthologies, then this book is the one for you. Link

Winner announced for iPod Limerick
Contest

Lessons learnt from OED's science
fiction effort

Soon we were being deluged with dozens of e-mails a day, containing suggestions, citations, and questions about our work. Mail came from all over the world, and correspondents included several noted SF writers. It took months to fully catch up with the backlog (and the pace has reached more manageable levels). But the results have been spectacular. Some of the entries we have published from the project include Martian, meteor storm, mind-meld (from ‘Star Trek’), moon base, and multiverse, and out-of-sequence entries bot (a robot), filk (a type of song performed by SF fans), and Sturgeon's Law (‘90% of everything is crap’, formulated by writer Theodore Sturgeon)...

Science fiction has several advantages as a subject for this kind of investigation. The vocabulary is largely self-contained; SF terms tend to occur in SF and nowhere else, while, say, political language can be found anywhere and everywhere. The fans are particularly committed, often have linguistic interests, and are computer literate. They may also be more likely to be able to volunteer time than specialists in more academically oriented fields.

My Tokyo Death Cult: CC-licensed science
fiction

Japanese policemen's guns are small and sort of puny. Except when they are shooting at you. Right now, they are shooting at me and my companion and we are running scared. The Policemen's shots are a little tentative, like someone picking chewing gum out of their hair. In fairness to the police, I should mention that we are in Shinjuku station, the world's busiest. Currently it is occupied by... oh, I don't know... 2.5 Lichtensteins. I am on average 4 inches taller than those around me, and a crucial 4 inches to boot, so as I barge through the crowd, hurting everyone, I must remember to crouch. To help me remember this, I visualize two things: the cloth that hangs in front of every drinking establishment in this country and those photos of JFK's autopsy that my father and I discussed over breakfast in 1977.

Michigan TV "journalists" confuse
Asimov's Science Fiction with pr0n

The local TV station had been running radio promos for a story about a local school magazine fundraiser that included an "adult" magazine. It's a conservative area, so we figured maybe they accidentally got order forms with Playboy, or maybe the locals were just throwing fits over FHM and Maxxim.

Nope -- the adult magazine in question was Asimov's Science Fiction.

Winner announced for Spymac Dashboard
widget contest

Keynote design contest winner gets a
Cinema Display

Vote for the Free Site Giveaway Contest
winner!

Winner announced for Holiday Song Lyric
Contest

Spymac iPod photo contest winner
announced

Winner of Second Life contest to design
Cory's book

Falk Bergman was the first to bring me by to have a look at his prototype in development, a giant book positioned next to a seat. Sitting on it automatically fixes your camera position in place, to give you the best possible view of the book.

"The viewer in-world itself is very simple," Falk tells me modestly. "It is basically a shopping agent with two displays that hooks into Page Up and Down [on the keyboards] for changing the pages."

Update: Dragonpage radio have recorded a podcast with me about the book and it went live today. Here's the MP3 link

Locus Online: Science Fiction News,
Reviews, Resources, and Perspectives

locusmag.com
track this site | 3 links

philipkdick.com - The web site devoted
to science fiction visionary Philip K.
Dick

philipkdick.com
track this site | 7 links

Microsoft Research Cambridge Offers Fact
Not Fiction at Science Open Day

Lists of Bests : Phobos Entertainment's
"100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have
to Read"

listsofbests.com/list/29
track this site | 3 links

Science Fiction Case Mod Contest: The First Winner!