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Futurismic gets a face-lift!

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I figured it was high time Futurismic got re-themed, and here are the results – RSS readers, click on through and take a look!

I got the theme developed by running a design contest at SitePoint – there are some really smart designers and coders over there, and I was presented so many great layouts that I wished I could have had them all!

But that wasn’t an option, and this theme by Bart Suykerbuyk edged ahead of the others by hitting just the right notes of look and feel. The runner-up from Muhammad Alfian Ahmad was also great in a very different way – it was a hard choice to make.

So here it is – have a poke around, an feel free to leave admiring comments below, but also please let us know if you find any bugs, glitches or problems of other types. I’d especially like feedback from Futurismic readers using the more obscure browser types.

Enjoy!

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Boob jobs for tattoos

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edmsuntattoo200 While Paul’s the normal go-to guy for body hacks, I thought I’d share one I came across. In my book it’s not quite as cool as having a touch screen implanted, but some of you may like this more. It’s also a good lesson on how our bodies don’t always appreciate having odd things stuffed into them.

A Canadian tattoo artist had a cowgirl inked on his calf, and last year decided she needed to look a little more 3D, so he got a surgeon friend to implant two small silicon implants into her breasts. Unfortunately, they were rejected and he took it upon himself to perform a bit of self-surgery, which went about as well as you would expect. The artist says about 20% of people reject implants, but he doesn’t mention the upside, which is that up to 80% of the population could be wandering around with 3D dragon tattoos with horn implants. Just try putting a shirt on properly with one of those.

How many of you would get implants to *ahem* augment your cowgirl?

(via Scienceblog Aetiology) (image from canoe.ca)

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Friday Free Fiction for 22nd February

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It’s a very spare week for free fiction, it appears – but there’s still enough to keep you busy!

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Only a single meager sf story on Manybooks.net this week:

(there’s more from Mr Lake further down, BTW …)

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“Breathe” is the first episode of Shadow Unit, the online group writing project of Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette and Will Shetterly. Emma Bull is the author this time.

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Here’s episode 6 of Jayme Lynn Blaschke‘s “Memory” sequence at No Fear Of the Future.

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Via the new Fantasy And Science Fiction Magazine blog comes news of free fiction from Matthew Hughes in the form of “A Little Learning“, an episode from his novel The Commons.

I’ve not read The Commons, but I have read Black Brillion – so I can tell you if you like metafictional games being played in the Jungian collective unconscious, you’ll want to spare the time for this!

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Episode 2 of Warren Ellis‘ new weekly freebie online comic Freakangels is up and about.

Remember – sassy girl in fishnets who pilots a steam powered gyrocopter around a flooded London. Everything else is gravy – and Freakangels being written by Ellis, that’s plenty of gravy to go around.

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Okay, let’s form up the Friday Flash Fictioneers!

Dan Pawley was late posting last week’s piece, so I figure we can blame all that “Monkeywrenching“.

Greg O’Byrne tells of “The Witch On Oasis“, while Gareth D Jones wishes he’d waited “Just One Day“.

Gareth L Powell would like to interrupt this program briefly for “A Word From Our Sponsor“.

Neil Beynon talks to “The Woodsman“, while Jay Lake wants “To Repair Man“.

Now spare a moment to listen to Dr Ian Hocking‘s “Mix Tape“; then maybe you’ll be up for a journey to “The Fayre” in the company of yours truly.

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And that’s it for this week, I’m afraid – though judging by past form that means we’ll have a bumper crop next week.

Don’t forget there’s fresh fiction coming back to Futurismic on 3rd March – and watch out for a little surprise over the course of this weekend, too!

By the way, if you have a tip-off or suggestion for FFF (or just about the site in general), we now have a funky new contact form for you to use.

In the meantime, I’ve got to get myself sorted out – I have a convention to attend tomorrow! I hope you all have a great weekend.

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Nebula final ballot revealed

This year’s Nebula nominees have been released. The winners will be announced in April after the ceremony in Austin, Texas.

Novels:
Odyssey – McDevitt, Jack (Ace, Nov06)
The Accidental Time Machine – Haldeman, Joe (Ace, Aug07)
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Chabon, Michael (HarperCollins, May07)
The New Moon’s Arms – Hopkinson, Nalo (Warner Books, Feb07)
Ragamuffin – Buckell, Tobias (Tor, Jun07)

Novellas:
“Kiosk” – Sterling, Bruce (F&SF, Jan07)
“Memorare” – Wolfe, Gene (F&SF, Apr07)
“Awakening” – Berman, Judith (Black Gate 10, Spr07)
“Stars Seen Through Stone” – Shepard, Lucius (F&SF, Jul07)
“The Helper and His Hero” – Hughes, Matt (F&SF, Feb07 & Mar07)
“Fountain of Age” – Kress, Nancy (Asimov’s, Jul07)

Novelettes:
“The Fiddler of Bayou Teche” – Sherman, Delia (Coyote Road, Trickster Tales, Viking Juvenile, Jul07)
“Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter” – Ryman, Geoff (F&SF, Nov06)
“The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs Of North Park After the Change” – Johnson, Kij (Coyote Road, Trickster Tales, Viking Juvenile, Jul07)
“Safeguard” – Kress, Nancy (Asimov’s, Jan07)
“The Children’s Crusade” – Bailey, Robin Wayne (Heroes in Training, DAW, Sep07)
“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” – Chiang, Ted (F&SF, Sep07)
” Child, Maiden, Mother, Crone” – Bramlett, Terry (Jim Baen’s Universe 7, June 2007)

Short Stories:
“Unique Chicken Goes In Reverse” – Duncan, Andy (Eclipse 1: New Science Fiction And Fantasy, Night Shade Books, Oct07)
“Titanium Mike Saves the Day” – Levine, David D. (F&SF, Apr07)
“Captive Girl” – Pelland, Jennifer (Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, Fall06 Issue #2)
“Always” – Fowler, Karen Joy (Asimov’s, apr/may07)
“Pride” – Turzillo, Mary (Fast Forward 1, Pyr, February 2007)
“The Story of Love” – Nazarian, Vera (Salt of the Air, Prime Books, Sep06)

Scripts:
Children of Men – Cuaron, Alfonso & Sexton, Timothy J. and Arata, David and Fergus, Mark & Ostby, Hawk (Universal Studios, Dec06)
The Prestige – Nolan, Christopher and Nolan, Jonathan (Newmarket Films, Oct06 based on the novel by Christopher Priest)
Pan’s Labyrinth – del Toro, Guillermo (Time/Warner, Jan07)
V for Vendetta – Wachowski, Larry & Wachowski, Andy (Warner Films, Mar06 Written by the Wachowski Brothers, based on the graphic novel illustrated by David Lloyd and published by Vertigo/DC Comics)
World Enough and Time – Zicree, Marc Scott and Michael Reaves, Michael (Star Trek: New Voyages, www.startreknewvoyages.com, Aug07)
Blink – Moffat, Steven (Doctor Who, BBC/The Sci-Fi Channel, Sep07)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy:
The True Meaning of Smek Day – Rex, Adam (Hyperion, Oct07)
The Lion Hunter – Wein, Elizabeth (Viking Juvenile, Jun07 (The Mark of Solomon, Book 1))
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Rowling, J. K. (Scholastic Press, Jul07)
The Shadow Speaker – Okorafor-Mbachu, Nnedi (Jump At The Sun, Sep07)
Into the Wild – Durst, Sarah Beth (Penguin Razorbill, Jun07)
Vintage: A Ghost Story – Berman, Steve (Haworth Positronic Press, Mar07)
Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass- Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog – Wilce, Ysabeau S. (Harcourt, Jan07)[via about 50,000 writers’ livejournals]

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And the Oscar for "Best Short Film of a Sub-Atomic Particle" goes to…

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Single frame from electron movie …this video of a single electron’s motion.

The movie, made at Lund University, Sweden, shows how an electron rides on a light wave after just having been pulled away from an atom. This is the first time an electron has ever been filmed. (Via EurekAlert.)

How do you film something that circles the nucleus of an atom once every 150 attoseconds? And how long is an attosecond, anyway?

To answer the second question first, an attosecond is 10 to the -18 of a second, or, as Johan Mauritsson, an assistant professor in atomic physics at the University, puts it, “an attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe.”

By using attosecond pulses created from intense laser light using recently developed technology, the researchers were able to guide the motion of an electron and capture a collision between it and an atom on film.

As you might guess, the encounter has been slowed down enormously so our slow-poke eyes and brains can register it.

OK, so it probably won’t win an Oscar at this Sunday’s Academy Awards, but it’s still pretty darn cool.

You can read the original scientific paper from Physical Review Letters here, and additional discussion of the achievement here.

(Image: Lund University.)

[tags]physics, particles, lasers, atoms[/tags]

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