No need to worry about the potential toxicity of carbon nanotubes making their way into the food chain any more; researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have discovered that nanotubes are biodegraded in the presence of a natural enzyme found in horseradish. That’s one less thing to beef about, then. [via KurzweilAI]
All posts by Paul Raven
Friday Free Fiction for 19th December
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the days to start getting longer again. Still, we’re nearly there now, and it’s holiday time for most of us – so put your feet up and enjoy some free science fiction stories, why don’tcha?
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Here’s a few from Feedbooks:
- “Unthinkable” by Rog Phillips
- “Upstarts” by L J Stecher
- “True Names” by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum
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A reminder from EOS/HarperCollins:
For November and December only, click to download a free eBook of Adam Troy Castro’s Emissaries From the Dead.
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Strange Horizons presents “How to Hold Your Breath” by Meredith Schwartz
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Tor.com presents “Firstborn” by Brandon Sanderson (the guy who’s finishing off the Wheel of Time series, apparently).
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Mindflights presents “The Void Test” by Therese L Arkenberg.
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Polu Texni presents part 2 of “Running Free” by Mark Sherwood
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It’s been a while since the last instalment, but things are back on track with Memory #29 from Jayme Lynn Blaschke
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Something more than a trifle blasphemous from Hal Duncan:
See, y’all know Revelation, right? The last book of the New Testament, the one with all the Antichrist and Armageddon gubbins, all the Rapture and wrath of God malarky? You may not have read it, but you’re bound to be familiar with its zany eschatological content, even if only by way of horror movies and heavy metal lyrics. Well, if you have read it, you may recall the lines where a curse is laid out on anyone that fucks around with the text. Add to the words of this book, we’re told, and that’s bad news, baby. Take away from the words of this book, and that’s just as bad. We’re talking biblical plagues, baby, a pointy reckoning upon anyone who adds to or takes away from the words of this book.
Course, it doesn’t say anything about changing the order of those words.
Which is exactly what he has done; violent eRa is a story told using all the words from the book of Revelation in a different order, featuring God as the villain of the piece. Not that Duncan seems particularly bothered by the risk of a curse, anyway…
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SpaceWesterns presents:
- “Le Grand Bazar” by Dr Philip Edward Kaldon
- “Droidtown Blues” by Camille Alexa
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Here are the extras that the SF Signal crew picked up:
- Jeff Patterson presents “Thrilling Holiday Tales“
- Aphelion webzine has just released issue #128
- Scott Sigler is serialising his new novel Contagious as a string of PDFs delivered by RSS. Neat.
- The Edge of Propinquity #36 features Jennifer Brozek, Rick Silva, James M Sullivan, Ivan Ewert and Eric R Lowther
- Revolution SF presents “Stormsong” by John E Rogers, Jr
- Elizabeth Hand is in a seasonal frame of mind with “Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol“
- Anthony G Williams has set free his novel Scales
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And here’s some Friday Flash Fiction, some of which has a festive flavour:
- “Serenity Valley” by Phred Serenissima
- “Bitterness the Star” by Shaun C Green
- “Last Christmas” by Justin Pickard
- “Jetsam” by Gareth L Powell
- “Baubles” by Neil Beynon
- “An Dùsgadh Dàlach” by Gareth D Jones (which is his story “Delayed Reaction” translated into Scottish Gaelic)
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And that’s about your lot. Friday Free Fiction is going to go into hibernation until the new year (because most everyone will be too busy to pay any attention, AMIRITE?), but your tip-offs and plugs are always welcome for the next instalment on January 2nd. Adios!
Only the smart die young
You’d probably think that intelligence would be an asset in the modern battlefield, and hence the smart soldiers would be the ones to survive, right?
Well, as logical as that sounds it may not be the case: a study of records from Scottish army units from WW2 and from the education system about a decade before suggests that the average IQ of those who survived the war was lower than those who lost their lives.
Space shuttles for sale – $42million o.n.o.
Start scrimping and saving, US citizens, because 2010 will present you with an opportunity to purchase a piece of space memorabilia without peer – a used space shuttle. [image by D’amico Rodrigo]
Also, you’ll need to ally yourself with the right sort of organisation: a science museum, perhaps, or a university. NASA won’t sell them to any old interested party with $42 million in used banknotes, you see… or at least, that’s the plan at the moment while they scout for potential buyers. If there aren’t many interested parties, maybe your independent bid will be taken more seriously.
So why not go for it? The buying price includes the cost of stripping out all the toxic and hazardous materials, as well as flying it to a US airport of your choice – worry-free bargains like this are one of the upsides to the economic slump, I guess.
Royal Navy submarines now running on Windows; destroyers next
As someone who has opportunity to observe the hapless and Byzantine bureaucracy of the Royal Navy in action at fairly close range, I’m both unsurprised and vaguely terrified to find that their latest batch of nuclear submarines have been fully kitted out with a specially developed version of the Windows XP operating system, and that the RN is so pleased with the speedy installation that they’ll be using the same software in a forthcoming class of destroyers. [via SlashDot]
The potential punchlines to this news pretty much write themselves.