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.

Yeah, I know, I’m preaching to the converted here. But even so, you should all go and read Centauri Dreams making the case for space exploration as a logical extension of scientific endeavour. And while you’re in the mood, Al Globus at Space.com has an essay commending orbital habitats over lunar and planetary bases that is very reminiscent of my essay here a while back …

Looking for fresh markets for your burgeoning fiction career? Perhaps you write stuff that isn’t quite science fiction in the sense that we like it here at Futurismic. If you like the idea of the clockpunk movement (think steampunk, but set further back), the bloggers at Da Vinci Automata are thinking of putting a Creative Commons anthology together, and would like your submission. Meanwhile, Brass Goggles passes the word that old-school pulp and weird tales fiction mag The Willows is looking for new material too. So get writing, already!