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News: USC Class Exploring How Sci Fi Fandom Sparked LGBT Rights Movement

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Toward Tomorrow

If you wanted to find life outside the closet in the 1930s, you might as well have started looking for another planet — and that’s exactly what a generation of gay and lesbian sci-fi fans did. They were drawn to a genre that allowed them to imagine new worlds where they could be their true selves and love whomever they wanted. This fall, a senior seminar offered through the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in the Gender Studies Program will look at how Los Angeles’ legendary sci-fi societies overlapped with the early LGBT rights movement, laying the … Read more

Announcement: Echelon’s End, by E. Robert Dunn

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Echelon's End

QSFer E. Robert Dunn has a sci fi series out: Just imagine worlds in which harmony between peoples has been established. Where families are cultured and treasured. Where species from different worlds commune in peace. Imagine further these worlds having resolved all misunderstandings between sexualities, a series of planets where same-gender Echelon relationships are the majority and opposite-gender Reproductionist couplings are seen as necessary only to propagate a species. Now, imagine this civilization on the verge of extending itself into unexplored space … sending out the cream of their generation to colonize this Utopian philosophy into the Unknown. Book 1, … Read more

WORLDBUILDING WEEK: Day Five – Sex, Marriage, Reproduction

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Worldbuilting Week

Welcome to the first annual Worldbuilding Week at QSF. We’ll talk about all aspects of building a world for your story, including languages; alien/magical races; history and timelines; culture and politics; sex, marriage and reproduction; and tools and techniques. It should be a lot of fun. OK, so you’ve come up with your very own language for your new world. You’ve chosen the most awesome-ever aliens or magical creatures to populate it. You’ve set up a timeline for your history, and you’ve built the culture that they’ll live in. Today we’ll talk about the continuation of the species. Elizabeth Barrette … Read more

Announcement: Henri, by Edward Kendrick

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Henri

QSFer Edward Kendrick has a new paranormal thriller out: Allyn and Ransom’s new friend coywolf shifter, Henri, has been hiding at Allyn and Madeline’s house to avoid an insane abductor. Finally deciding he’ll be hostage to his fears no more, Henri enlists his friends to help him lure the maniacal murderer into the open so they can catch him, once and for all. They have to get his attention and a ritzy outdoor party thrown by gallery owner Taegan Sauvage is just the place. Taegan doesn’t realize, when he meets his friends at the party, that the man accompanying them … Read more

News: Watch as Astronauts Eat First Crops Grown in Space

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Nasa harvest

“A crop of lettuce has been harvested from the ISS plant growth system dubbed Veg-01, Nasa’s plant experiment being used to study how plants can be grown in micro-gravity,” NASA’s official YouTube reads. According to Science Recorder: “Expedition 44 crew members, including US. astronaut Scott Kelly, harvested their first crop of ‘Outredgeous’ red romaine lettuce from the orbiting laboratory. They will clean the greens with citric acid-based, food-safe sanitizing wipes before consuming them.” See the Full Story at Passport

WORLDBUILDING WEEK: Day Four – Navigating Culture & Politics

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Worldbuilting Week

Welcome to the first annual Worldbuilding Week at QSF. We’ll talk about all aspects of building a world for your story, including languages; alien/magical races; history and timelines; culture and politics; sex, marriage and reproduction; and tools and techniques. It should be a lot of fun. OK, so you’ve come up with your very own language for your new world. You’ve chosen the most awesome-ever aliens or magical creatures to populate it. And you’ve set up a timeline for your history/ Now you have to build the culture that they’ll live in. Some things to consider – what kind of … Read more

The Next 800K Years in Sci Fi Predictions

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Photo by Michel du Cille/The Washington Post

When will humans land on Venus? When will we have robot cats? And when will the aliens finally come? Science fiction offers some potential answers to these burning questions. The timeline below, created by designer Giorgia Lupi and her design team at Accurat for the blog Brain Pickings, lays out 62 future events predicted by various works of science fiction, from “Hunger Games” to Isaac Asimov. Here’s a selection: 2012: The Titanic is resurrected from the ocean floor. (“The Ghost from the Grand Banks,” Arthur C. Clarke) 2019: The U.S. loses its position as world leader to Japan. Extraterrestrial life … Read more

Announcement: Alt. History 101 Anthology

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Alt. History 101

QSFer Michelle Browne has a story in a new alternative history anthology: The future is history… From Samuel Peralta, creator of the #1 bestselling Future Chronicles anthology series, comes a new speculative anthology series that turns the world you know upside down. In Alt.History 101, thirteen top speculative fiction authors re-imagine the world – as one where the inventor of the smallpox vaccine died before he’d created it, as one where the women’s suffragist movement failed to win the right to vote, as one where the death penalty exists but where all forms of capital punishment are ruled inhumane – … Read more

WORLDBUILDING WEEK: Day Three – History and Timelines

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Worldbuilting Week

Welcome to the first annual Worldbuilding Week at QSF. We’ll talk about all aspects of building a world for your story, including languages; alien/magical races; history and timelines; culture and politics; sex, marriage and reproduction; and tools and techniques. It should be a lot of fun. OK, so you’ve come up with your very own language for your new world. And you’ve chosen the most awesome-ever aliens or magical creatures to populate it! Now you have to come up with a history and build a timeline. How did your world come to be? Were there wars? Settlers? Nation building? Did … Read more

News: NASA Discovers Global Underground Ocean on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus

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Planning a sea-faring vacation to escape from the rest of the world? Don’t discount Saturn’s moon Enceladus, as NASA has just released new research that indicates a global ocean lies underneath its icy surface. Using research from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft that is scheduled to make a flyby of Enceladus on October 28, NASA was able to detect a slight wobble on the moon that researchers say can only be accounted for by a underground ocean. “This was a hard problem that required years of observations, and calculations involving a diverse collection of disciplines, but we are confident we finally got … Read more