NASA’s Cassini probe just sent back some amazing photos of Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth-largest, ice-covered moon. Enceladus was recently confirmed to have a global underground ocean under its icy crust. The moon is 500 km in diameter. It also has geysers that erupt from holes in its crust. The new photos offer closer views than ever before. Full Story at Towleroad.com
QSFer Dusk Peterson has a new alternative history book out: The Eternal Dungeon is no longer a prison. It’s a battlefield. Split apart from their closest loves and friends, a small group of prison-workers seek to abolish the use of torture against prisoners in the queendom’s royal dungeon. Time is running out, for the deadly High Seeker has already flogged and executed prison-workers who opposed his policies. Do the reformers have enough time and skill to bring about radical change in the dungeon? Will they be able to overcome their mistrust of one another? This suspenseful novel can be read … Read more
Today’s topic comes from QSFer MD Grimm: What are ghosts? Are they echoes that repeat, residual hauntings? Or are they, essentially, lost souls trapped for emotional reasons? We talk a lot about vampires, shifters, and even zombies, but ghosts don’t get nearly as much play. And yet they are, except for their form, arguably more human than any of those other paranormal creatures, lending themselves well to character storylines. So what are ghosts? How can we use them in our stories? And what are some of the LGBt stories that have done them well?
China is constructing what will be the world’s largest radio telescope. The Independent reports: Assembly of the five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, began in July and is expected to be completed in 2016. Once finished, the reflector dish of the telescope will be 500 metres in diameter, replacing Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, only 300 meters in diameter, as the world’s largest. The wider the dish, the more effective the telescope becomes at picking up weak messages from outer space. Nan Rendong, the chief scientist of the FAST project, told the Xinhua news agency: “A radio telescope is like a … Read more
QSFer Moondancer Drake has a new FF paranormal book out: An evening at the movies turns into a living nightmare for Elizabeth Crew as her lover Dusty battles for their lives and the unborn baby Elizabeth is carrying. Dusty’s dying request is that Elizabeth go live with Dusty’s family, where she and the baby will be safe. Dusty’s family takes Elizabeth into their home with open arms and a bit of concern. What will happen if Elizabeth learns that her new family includes shape-shifters? For Elizabeth, the family secrets are not all that awaits her in the darkness. “Moondancer Drake … Read more
OK, we have an event for today’s discussion – we’re interviewing the folks from Mischief Corner Books, a publishing company that also puts out the fabulous MCB Quarterly. We’ll have Angel Martinez and Freddy MacKay for sure, and some of the other folks may stop in. Full Disclosure – I’m now a part of the group as well. This will be a casual chat – I’ll be asking questions, but feel free to throw yours in as well. You can see their website at http://www.mischiefcornerbooks.com Come join the chat
ASTRONOMERS BELIEVE THAT a series of objects sighted in deep space bear all the hallmarks of alien construction. A star, which sits above the milky way in the sky and is invisible to the human eye, was stared at for more than four years by the Kepler Space Telescope up until 2014, and now scientists think that objects surrounding the star could be a “swarm of megastructures”. The Kepler telescope is manned by a team of citizen scientists, known as the ‘Planet Hunters’, who sift through the data on the 150,000 stars that the telescope monitors. “We’d never seen anything … Read more
QSFer Sarah Madison has a new paranormal book out: When FBI agent Jerry Lee Parker wakes from a coma after a murderous attack on his life, he has no memory of his immediate past. In the blink of an eye, he has gone from having a nearly photographic memory to recalling nothing of the last six months of his life, including his partner and lover, John Flynn. While Lee tries to reboot his past and reconnect with John, there are events at play around him he doesn’t understand. John is keeping secrets from him, secrets which could get them both … Read more
There’s a piece of advice I see tossed at authors a lot lately. Don’t worry about genre or tropes. Write what’s in your heart. Okay, setting aside the somewhat treacle-y nature of this advice, I’d never tell an author to discard their writing passions. If you’re not writing from your core, your passions, the whole thing becomes a cold, unhappy business. But throwing out genre? That’s a different kettle of Antarian singing blood eels. Sure. It would be lovely to say go nuts, write whatever! Writers should be free! Free, I say! Which is great, in theory. Thing is, writing … Read more
Scientists may have found genetic indicators of whether someone has same or opposite-sex attraction. The link was discovered when scientists compared the DNA of 47 sets of male twins. The pairs included some where the two twins had a different sexual orientation. Looking at the molecular data from nine genome sites, researchers could guess whether a twin pair was straight or gay with up to 70% accuracy. Lead researcher Dr Tuck Ngun, from the University of California at Los Angeles, said: “To our knowledge, this is the first example of a predictive model for sexual orientation based on molecular markers.” … Read more