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Prophets of Science Fiction

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Via New Scientist:

io9's Environment Writing Contest for Science Journalists and SF Writers

From their release:

In November and December, io9.com is sponsoring an environmental writing contest for science journalists and science fiction writers. We are awarding $2000 each for the two best stories (one nonfiction, one science fiction) that deal with environmental disaster - its causes, consequences, and how to deal with both. We invite entries from people all over the world, whether they're seasoned investigative journalists or citizen scientists who have never been published
before.

For full contest rules, please go here.

Here's more information:

We can't prevent environmental disasters without preparing for them. That's why io9 is going to pay $2000 each to two people who write the best stories about environmental disaster. It's io9's Environmental Writing Contest - for science fiction and non-fiction.

io9 is looking for stories that deal with environmental disaster, whether caused by random asteroid impacts or oil drilling accidents. We believe that the first step to solving planet-scale problems is to
assess, honestly and critically, what it would mean to experience such a disaster. We need mental models that can help policy-makers, researchers, and individuals prepare for the kinds of cataclysmic
events that have occurred regularly throughout Earth's history.

We're holding this contest to reward people for coming up with ideas that could help avert the next Deepwater spill and Pacific garbage gyre - or help people prepare better for the next Indian Ocean tsunami and Haiti earthquake. Storytelling is a powerful tool. We want you to use it well.

Our team of judges includes Elizabeth Kolbert (The New Yorker's environment reporter), National Book Award nominee Paolo Bacigalupi (author of Ship Breaker and The Windup Girl), and Jonathan Strahan (editor of the acclaimed Eclipse anthologies).

Contest Guidelines:
Stories should be between 3,000-5,000 words. It must be an original story that has not been published elsewhere.

The contest has two categories: Science Fiction and Non-Fiction. We will pick a winner from each.

Guidelines for Science Fiction Entries:
Your story should deal meaningfully and plausibly with some aspect of environmental disaster. There are no limits on the kind of disaster you explore. It could be an exploding star, a plague, tachyon pollution, nanotech diseases, climate change, or something else. What's important is that your story deal with causes and consequences. How did the disaster happen, who will benefit from it, how will people
(or other creatures) respond to it? We don't want morality tales or after school specials here - just good stories that deal realistically with the subject matter.

Guidelines for Non-Fiction Entries:
Your story can be a piece of investigative journalism, a well-researched history, biographical/autobiographical narrative, or science/technology writing for a lay audience. You can write a profile of people or groups dealing with environmental disaster, analyze the science behind environmental problems, or cover the story of a disaster that has already happened. We prefer stories that involve reporting and research. Though the story must be original, you may base it on research you have already done for another project or piece of reporting.

Winning stories will be published on io9, and we will give $2000 each to the winners in each category.

Deadline for all stories is midnight PST, December 11.

Why Science Fiction is Important!

Via io9 and the wonderful Charlie Jane. Walter Russell Mead writing in The American Interest:

"Taken as a whole, the field of science fiction today is where most of the most interesting thought about human society can be found. At a time when many academics have become almost willfully obscure, political science is increasingly dominated by arcane and uninspiring theories and in which a fog of political correctness makes some forms of (badly needed) debate and exploration off limits, science fiction has stepped forward to fill the gap. In the work of writers like David Brin and Neal Stephenson there is more interesting reflection on America's place in the world than you will find, I fear, in a whole year's worth of reading in foreign policy magazines. Robert Heinlein's work brilliantly lays out the ideology of populist libertarianism and predicted the revolt against the welfare state that has defined American politics since the 1980s. Read C. J. Cherryh's foreigner novels for insight into international relations and her Cyteen novels to sharpen your wits about both international politics and the impact of technological change on human society.
The biggest single task facing the United States today is the unleashing of our social imagination. We are locked into twentieth century institutions and twentieth century habits of mind. Science fiction is the literary genre (OK, true, sometimes a subliterary genre) where the social imagination is being cultivated and developed. Young people should read this genre to help open their minds to the extraordinary possibilities that lie before us; we geezers should read it for the same reason. The job of our times is to build a radically new world; speculative fiction helps point the way."

Vernor Vinge on Superhuman Intelligence: Extended Interview

Via SF Signal:

Known Space

Via Chris Roberson. Wow.

Stranger than Fiction: Technology And Science Fiction

I'm interviewed today at System-Level Design Community, by the very nice John Blyler, who I got to spend some time with recently in Portland, Oregan at the recent OryCon. We talk about science fiction's role in inspiring science, the effect science developments has on the genre, gaming, the Matrix trilogies, and genetic engineering. It was a long conversation, so he is condensing and paraphrasing some of what I said, but doing a good job of capturing a highly-caffeinated Lou and making sense of it.

Still, I'm pretty sure I never said this bit, (but I wish I had):

Anders: Maybe, but maybe not. Remember the quote by John Schaar: "The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created—created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination."

I think he's misremembering when I quoted something I got from Robert Anton Wilson: "The future begins first in imagination, then in will, then in reality." But I like this quote above, and now I've seen myself "say" it, I'll start using it more, retroactively authenticating this usage here. (Nice one that, huh?)

We also talk some about David Louis Edelman's Jump 225 trilogy, (affording me the opportunity to try out the new integration of Amazon Associates and Blogger). Meanwhile, John was a great guy and I wish we'd had time to talk longer than we did.

Dark Matter and Black Hole Powered Starships

Once upon a time, it was the science fiction authors who believed in the possibility of interstellar voyages and the scientists who were skeptical. These days, so many SF authors have given up on traveling between the stars as a naive and impossible fantasy. So I'm glad to see this piece in the New Scientist, "Dark Power: Grand designs for interstellar travel," in which mathematicians Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland at Kansas State University in Manhattan  propose ways to shorten the trip to Proxima Centauri from 74,000 years to "just a few" years.

I was particuarly interested in this bit of Ian M Bank-ish speculation:

"Crane then wondered what would happen if intelligent civilisations could make black holes. This would mean that life in these universes played a key role in the proliferation of baby universes.... He believes we are seeing Darwinian selection operating on the largest possible scale: only universes that contain life can make black holes and then go on to give birth to other universes, while the lifeless universes are an evolutionary dead end."

Shooting for the Moon: Duncan Jones' New Film

Over on Tor.com, Why I Am Over the Moon about Duncan Jones, or rather, seven reasons why I think the film will rock.

"I’ll never get over the scene in Danny Boyle’s absurd and disappointing Sunshine where Cillian Murphy reaches out and touches the sun, because, hey, it looks cool. So, the point is, I was looking for reasons to feel confident. And, wonderfully, just about every interview I’ve read with Duncan has got my confidence growing in leaps and bounds that his heart—and head—are in the right place."

Time-Lapse of the Galactic Center of The Milky Way

Posted using ShareThis

The Big Bounce

A piece in the New Scientist, via James Enge, the universe, if it collapses, may not crunch. It may bounce.

For some reason, this makes me really happy.

Raise Shields!

Via Paul McAuley, a piece on Universe Today stating:

UK scientists working at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford and the universities of York and Strathclyde have tested a "mini-magnetosphere" enveloping a model spacecraft in the lab. It turns out that their prototype offers almost total protection against high energy solar particles.

Deflector shields are a reality. Awesome.