The gap between art and technology has never been thinner; the extent to which it exists at all is down to the individual artist or engineer. Leonel Moura seems to be straddling the line, having created Robotarium X – a ‘zoo’ for artificially intelligent robots that respond to the presence of visitors and fight amongst themselves in imitation of biological ecosystems. Sound like a J. G. Ballard plot to me.

It’s always the way – you spend a week away from your RSS feeds and you come back to discover a mountain of goodies in among the LOLcats and Google acquisitions hype. Here’s some great stuff for science fiction fans across the web at the moment:

Subterranean have released yet more quality material in the latest edition of their online magazine. Any day that sees an original Gene Wolfe story come available for free is a red-letter day in my calendar.

Fresh from his virtual book-signing tour, John Scalzi posts an interview with Allen Steele, author of many sf novels including the ‘Coyote’ series and his latest, Spindrift.

And if you’re too tired to read, then thank the good people at Orbit Books for pointing out that you can watch a short video interview with the legend that is Charlie Stross, talking about his novel The Atrocity Archives.

IBM are totally in love with the metaverse, and are currently churning out ideas related to virtual worlds at a rate of knots. Their latest wheeze is to give avatars a sort of virtual passport that allows them to keep the same appearance and possessions as they travel between different synthetic spaces. Which is a nice idea, but it could be a slippery slope. Next thing you know, you’ll have to get a replacement virtual passport with a virtual RFID chip in it. And then you’ll have to remove your avatar’s shoes and dispose of any virtual liquids before starting your journey …

Science fiction writer and foresight consultant Karl Schroeder reports that the price of breaking the barrier between the virtual and the real has fallen to well under $10,000. Says Mr. Schroeder: “The technology is evolving so rapidly, in fact, that we’re likely to see a kind of Moore’s Law liftoff in the next several years. Consider that Canon has just announced it will start selling a 3d printer this summer. Fab technology is rapidly tipping over into home hobbyist territory and, once that happens, expect things to accelerate.” This isn’t fiction any more, boys and girls.

All is not well with the computer hardware aboard the International Space Station. Apparently the installation of the new solar arrays has somehow caused a serious malfunction which is still in the process of being fixed. Should you want regular live updates on the situation, you should probably head for Palatine, Illinois, making sure you have plenty of batteries for your baby monitor. I haven’t yet spotted a Slashdot thread excoriating NASA for not insisting on open-source software, but it can’t be long before one appears.