All posts by Tomas Martin

Writer and particle physics student from Bristol, England. My story 'A Shogun's Welcome' featured in Aberrant Dreams #7 and 'The Shogun and The Scientist' will be published in the anthology 'The Awakening' in January 2008. I review at SFCrowsnest and wrote the fictional blog miawithoutoil for the world without oil project.
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A Hotel in the sky

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This elegant zepplin could transport you thousands of miles in styleMichael Marshall Smith’s excellent novel ‘Spares’ had a large section of its story set in a crashed flying mall, which previously had flown around the country for people to come up to and shop, eat and live. With airships beginning to come back into favour, the French aerospace research body ONERA has developed the design for a flying hotel called Manned Cloud.

The whale-shaped dirigible would potentially house 40 guests and 15 crew with a range of 5000km. Although airships are less stable in high winds than planes, they also use a fraction of the fuel. Manned Cloud was designed by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud. This kind of sky cruise could be an important part of mid-21st Century travel and using airships for freight would also be very efficient.

[via Lou Anders, image from StumbleUponDemo]

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Battles in cyberspace: Anonymous vs Scientology

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William Gibson, considered by many to be the father of cyperpunk, has written recent novels in the present time as we’re almost in a cyberpunk world alreadyWhen the first cyberpunk writers picked up their pens in the eighties and wrote about conflict acted out over computer networks, it seemed like a lifetime away. In recent years we’ve seen internet attacks on Estonia and on power infrastructure. Countless griefers, hackers and virus-creators have found a way to virtually attack others.

Now it seems there’s something akin to a war on in one corner of the internet. A number of individuals calling themselves ‘Anonymous’ have posted a series of videos on Youtube decrying the Church/Cult of Scientology and what they call its manipulation of its followers. In related moves, a number of high profile Scientology websites were attacked by hackers and taken down. The Anonymous group seems to be using many of the techniques used by Alternate Reality Games like World Without Oil or Perplex City to create a campaign against elements of the real world.

It’s very reminiscent of the blending between virtuality and reality seen in Charles Stross’ Halting State. You can find Anonymous’s original message to Scientology video here and their reply to the media interest here on Warren Ellis’ blog. A new video was released yesterday explaining some more of the group’s message, in particular making it clear they are not just a group of hackers. It also warns of protests against Scientology on the 10th February. Whoever is doing it and for what reason, it’s a fascinating example of just how different our world(s) are now compared to even a few years ago.

[via Elizabeth Bear, image via Wikipedia’s page on William Gibson’s Spook Country]

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Sun shield developments may allow man to travel to Mars

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Sunshine provided a relatively realistic depiction of space travelSpace is a dangerous place. All that vacuum that looks like nothing actually contains huge amounts of solar radiation. In an orbit around Earth or a short trip to the Moon, this is not usually a life-threatening problem – although the Apollo 16 astronauts just missed a solar storm that could have killed them. But in the eight months or so it would take an expedition to get to Mars, a few solar wind storms could easily kill any humans on board. The shield is a common solution in science fiction – from the near-magic forcefield of Star Trek/Wars to the realistic mirrored disk seen on the craft in last year’s Sunshine.

Scientists at Oxford University are aiming to create a similar shield. By creating a magnetic field similar to that of the Earth’s, which protects us from radiation, the scientists found they could successfully deflect intense beams of charged particles. The technology has been proven to work and now needs to be energy-efficient enough to be run by a spacecraft with limited resources – such a development could well provide technology useful in increasing the efficiency of more mundane technologies as well.

[via the Guardian, screenshot from ‘Sunshine’ via Moving Pictures ]

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The Alpha Workshop for Young SF Writers

Diane Turnshek, who runs the Alpha Workshop for young writers, sent me details on this year’s workshop, which will be held in Pittsburgh this July. I had the great pleasure of attending the first two years of the workshop, in 2002 and 2003. Alpha taught me a huge amount about the craft and business of writing and led me to my first few fiction sales. If you write science fiction, fantasy or horror and are between the age of 14 and 19 this is the best possible way to learn more about how to improve your work as well as have a lot of fun meeting other like-minded people.

Alpha uses a similar structure to the Clarion and Odyssey writers’ workshops but over ten days rather than six weeks. The teens accepted to the workshop will have their submission story critiqued as well as writing a completely new story with the help of the staff and guest writers. At the end of the final week everyone is encouraged to submit their story to market before heading over to the Pittsburgh SF convention, Confluence for a final weekend of fun.

The ALPHA SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers (ages 14-19) will be held at the University of Pittsburgh’s Greensburg Campus July 16-25, 2008
in conjunction with Pittsburgh’s science fiction convention, Confluence, July 25-27th. Twenty talented young writers will be selected to attend the workshop on the strength of their submission stories. Four guest authors and ten staff members will be present during the ten-day residency workshop to teach genre writing. Mike
Arnzen, Timothy Zahn, Chris McKitterick and Tamora Pierce are our guest authors for 2008 (our seventh year). Workshop fee: $950.00 For more information, see:
http://alpha.spellcaster.org/

Past graduates have been published in Realms Of Fantasy, Aberrant Dreams, Boys Life, Fantasy Magazine and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, as well as placing in awards like Writers Of The Future and The Dell Award for Undergraduates. So if you know any young writer with an ambition to be published, let them know about Alpha and help create a new generation of genre writers.

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Nano explosives to super-shock the cancer away

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Exploding nanoparticles could help save your life without all the side effects of chemotherapyThose nanoparticles sure are handy. Whether it’s increasing the efficiency of computer chips and solar cells, giving prosthetic limbs sensation or extending the lifetime and capacity of batteries, the applications of the rapidly advancing technology are seemingly endless.

A collaboration of researchers from the US Army and the University of Missouri-Columbia have found that by mixing a nanomaterial that acts as a fuel and one that acts as an oxidizer, they can create explosions that are on such a small scale they are useable within the human body. These ‘nanoengineered thermites’ can create shockwaves that can target drug-delivery to cancer cells, leaving nearby normal cells unharmed. They hope to bring the technology into a working prototype within 2 to 5 years.

[story and image via The Daily Galaxy]