If you’re a fan of science fiction novels, the you can’t fail to have an opinion on this recent column in Asimov’s, wherein Norman Spinrad attempts to wrestle a perennial genre bugbear and define ‘hard’ science fiction. For my money, having read all the books he uses as examples, I think he’s done a pretty good job.

I’m gutted. AbeBooks, the nigh-ubiquitous second-hand book site, is offering the chance for you to win two tickets to the Nebula Awards ceremony this coming May; all you have to do is answer one easily-Googled question. Why am I gutted? It’s only open to US and Canadian residents. Meh. [SFBC]

If you’ve read Accelerando by Charles Stross, you may well remember the street-punk character from the beginning of the book named Spring-Heeled Jack, who bounds around town in a pair of petrol-powered booster-boots. Like any sf author with sense, Stross borrowed the idea from the real world, and CNet has an article that talks about the invention of the boots in Cold War Russia – they really did exist, though they never made it to the consumer market. More’s the pity … [SlashDot]

If you haven’t read Accelerando, you can download it legally for free. It comes highly recommended.

Rudy Rucker isn’t just a quirkily brilliant science fiction author, he’s also a computer science and mathematics professor with some real head-expanding ideas. The 10 Zen Monkeys blog has a video of Rucker talking about how natural processes are like computation, and there’s a companion article in words, too.

There’s no denying that access to usable fusion power technology would revolutionise civilisation as we know it, and open up the as-yet unexplored realms of space to human development. So it’s heartening to read reports that researchers are still making incremental steps toward building fusion reactors that aren’t based around the inefficient tokamak design. Maybe you’re an early adopter? If you have the time and tools, you could always play around with fusion at home.