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SETI boffin promises ET detection by 2032

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Senior SETI astronomer Seth Shostak‘s prediction that ET intelligences will be discovered within “two dozen years” seems to have the proviso “if we get the funding:”

The prediction is based on a few qualifiers. The first is the assumption made by researchers within SITI that the power, range and speed of the Allen Telescope Array [ATA] with 42 radio camera dishes currently on line and a projected total of 350 dishes will evolve into new technologies capable of distances and speed unfathomable presently. Secondly, an obvious component is necessary funding for evolving technologies.

Hopefully the necessary improvements will be made:

ATA´s current capability is about 1,000 stars that can be viewed simultaneously. The next decade will allow researchers to view up to a million stars at once.

[from Physorg][image from Alun Salt on flickr]

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Dispatches from the Long Now

Some cool items from the Long Now Foundation:

Since we hope to build the space for the 10,000 Year Clock underground, for the last 10 years I have been collecting references and images of the great, ambitious, and or inspiring underground spaces and stonework of the world (in some cases they are also lessons of what not to do).

The pictures more than reward a click.

And if this project seems more than a little monkish, well, a wine seems appropriate:

Long Now’s eponymous red wine by the Pelissero winery was recently reviewed by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. … The labels are printed with archival inks on acid free paper and the corks are flame marked “Long Now”.

[Photo: Laughing Squid]

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NASA gets serious about recycling water

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When you make that long trip to the planetary system of Fomalhaut, what are you going to drink? New York Times reporter and all-around brave person John Schwartz reports:

How does distilled urine and sweat taste? Not bad, actually…

Your intrepid reporter opened one of the bottles of “Purified Recycled Water” that Mr. [Robert] Bagdigian [leader of the project to recycle stuff on the International Space Station] brought with him. The wryly worded label was a little intimidating: “We use only the finest ingredients! Urine, Perspiration, Food Vapors, Bath Water, Simulated Animal Waste, and a touch of Iodine. No Carbs or Calories Added.”

With that as my verbal drum roll, I took a sip. Aside from a slight tang of iodine, it tasted like, well, water. I’ve had tap water that tasted much more like things I don’t want to think about.

The $250 million water recovery system is on its way to the station, “preparing our home in space for a larger international family,” as NASA’s spokesperson couches it. The system will recycle about 90 percent of the water used aboard the station and could pay for itself in a couple of years. Astronauts don’t seem worried; one of the first customers for the system, Sandra H. Magnus, says: “We drink recycled water every day, on a little bit longer time scale.”

[Apparently my water is OK for space by tom.glanz]

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Friday Free Fiction for 14th November

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Good grief, it’s Friday again! Where does the time go? Well, some of it obviously goes into scouring the RSS feeds of the genre scene in search of free fiction for you to read…

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Two shorts and a novel at Manybooks:

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There’s a couple at Feedbooks:

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Here’s one at Afterburn SF: “The Ambassador” by Mark Lawrence

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The Fantasy & Science Fiction gang have another free sample up for your perusal: “The Only Known Jump Across Time” by Eugene Mirabelli

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COSMOS Magazine has published one of its seemingly irregular fiction pieces in the form of the post-Singularity tale “A Place to Call Home” by Amber D Sistla

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Fresh fiction from Mindflights: “The Book Signing” by Valerie L Smith

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From Eos Books:

For November and December only, click to download a free eBook of Adam Troy Castro‘s novel Emissaries From the Dead.

Well, you heard ’em – get to it!

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Strange Horizons presents the concluding part of “Return” by Eric Vogt

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Via just about everyone, The New Yorker has a story by Jonathan Lethem called “Lostronaut”

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Futurismic alumnus Tobias Buckell has a bunch of his stuff to try, including a big chunk of his latest novel, Sly Mongoose:

… I’ve folded the first third into an RTF file and put it up online, just like my segments for Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin. All three can be found around the website, and the broken links some reported have been fixed. So here they are:

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There’s three fresh pieces at Byzarium:

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Via SF Signal:

  • The November issue of Aphelion features stories from by T Richard Williams, Scott T Barnes, Joshua L Hamilton, E S Strout, Mary Brunini McArdle, Jeani Rector, Casey Callaghan, Ash Hibbert, K A Masters, Joel Doonan, and Kim Rush (phew!)
  • Electric Spec comes as a PDF you can download. The new issue has stories from Tyree Campbell, S Hutson Blount, Jason K Chapman, Lyle Skains, and Bob Burnett

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Big Pulp presents “Save Tomorrow With a Smiley” by James Bloomer

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Here’s this week’s selection of Friday Flash Fiction:

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Non-fiction bonus! Locus Online is hosting a PDF version of the October 2008 issue of Locus Magazine.

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Well, that’s all for this week. You know the drill by now with letting us know about anything you or your friends are doing in the free fiction bracket, right? Right – deadline 1800GMT every Friday. Have a great weekend!

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A Bit of a Generation Gap

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It’s NaNo time ago, and I’m almost half-way through. I’m on pace with my word count, and things are looking positive.

While on the forums, I came across a particularly interesting thread regarding steampunk – which is coincidental considering Paul’s most recent post. I came to realize that there is a significant difference in my particular mindset on the way in which genre works and the mindset of those who are writing what they deem to be genre. I don’t think it’s necessarily a difference of one’s definition of genre, but a difference in the generation gap that lies between us. To me, such things as steampunk, cyberpunk, and even space opera are things born out of ideology: there was a reactionary, responsive feel to the works that originated these particularly specific sub-genres of speculative fiction. All of that seems to be lost, and there are other who agree (read Jeff and Ann Vandermeer’s anthology Steampunk, which has a foreword by Jess Nevins).

Once you’ve been in the industry as a writer or editor for any length of time, you begin to understand that the industry is both fickle and evolving. Some of it is to preserve the species, and some of it is to appease the public. What I notice in the change of ideology, however, is that it isn’t so much about either of these things as it is a matter of how the writers themselves, begin to become removed of the ideology and more interested in the trappings and the appearance.

What, then, is the ideology of today? What is the theme, the motif, that runs through speculative fiction that very well could produce a new sub-genre in the vein of these greats? Is it New Weird in the style of China Meiville? Is it Mundane SF after Geoff Ryman’s vision? Or is there some beast yet to rise that we haven’t quite caught a glimpse of?

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