All posts by Paul Raven

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Mechanical nanocomputers

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Babbage-style mechanical 'difference engine'Via Bruce Sterling, we discover that a group of US physicists have produced a blueprint for a robust nanoscale microprocessor. Not such groundbreaking news, you might think – until you discover that they are entirely based on mechanical principles derived from the famous Babbage Engine, a Victorian-era mechanical computer. [Image by lorentey]

Electronic computers proliferated once semiconductors became a reliable mass-production substrate, but there are some places where electronics are too delicate to operate reliably. Which reminds me of a science fiction novel in which the military spacecraft are fitted with mechanical computers so as not to be susceptible to damage from the EMP of nuclear weapons … a big Futurismic ‘thank you’ to anyone who can remind me of the author and title.

In related news, the ubiquitous Google have added another lump sum to the annual Turing Award, the “highest award in the field of computing science” for innovative ideas.

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Friday Free Fiction for July 27th

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Rather than posting links to free fiction piecemeal as it turns up, we thought we’d aggregate the stuff we hear about over the course of the week, and serve it up every Friday for Futurismic folk. So here is the first installment of Friday Free Fiction:

The named-for-perfect-SEO Free Speculative Fiction Online site has posted a list of new arrivals, including a whole bunch of Lewis Shiner short stories.

Matthew Jarpe is sharing the first three chapters of his debut science fiction novel, Radio Freefall.

OK, not strictly fiction, but Subterranean Online has a column from Joe Lansdale and an interview with Patrick Rothfuss. And they are, er, free.

James Patrick Kelly has been gradually podcasting his 1989 novel Look Into The Sun, and is up to the twenty first installment. All the previous bits are still available, too.

And if you want to spend a few minutes having a chuckle at the efforts of a rank amateur, you can read my latest Friday Flash Fiction piece, “AWOL”.

Note for authors and editors – if you’ve just posted some free genre fiction online – in written, graphic or podcast form, or some new format that no one else has ever used before – drop me (Paul Raven) a line using the email address on the ‘Staff’ page, and I’ll list it here.

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A dark day for the space industry

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NASA hasn’t had a good year for PR so far. Following on from the embarrassing media circus over the exploits of an ex-astronaut earlier this year, now they’re having to go public with the news that not only were some astronauts drunk in charge of their launch vehicles, but that they also discovered an act of sabotage on a computer module destined for the ISS.

Even the private sector hasn’t escaped the black cloud; an explosion at the test facility of Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, the company that is to supply Virgin Galactic with its sub-orbital vehicles, has killed three and injured as many again.

Stories like the above make me think that, as much as good as they look on paper, we probably shouldn’t be building nuclear powered rockets just yet – the cost of mistakes and mismanagement could be far higher.