Benson Space Company just gave SpaceDev $330,000 to SpaceDev to do a Phase 1 study on it’s Dream Chaser spaceship concept. Since Benson Space Company is former SpaceDev owner Jim Benson’s own company that he left SpaceDev to found, it isn’t as impressive as it sounds, but it’s nice to see forward movement on the Dream Chaser concept.

Because he’s far too modest to crow about it here, it falls to me to announce that Tobias Buckell, a co-blogger here at Futurismic, has just made a new three-book deal with Tor – congratulations, Tobias!

What’s that? You’ve not read any of his work yet? Well, I’ve read his debut novel, Crystal Rain, and I thought it was excellent. Go read the first third for free if you don’t believe me – or catch a podcast of one of his short stories over at Escape Pod. Guy’s got the skills, y’all.

Before slapping your wheezing and underpowered desktop PC for blue-screening you for the third time in an hour, think twice – if robots and other conscious machines get granted rights in a few decades time, there may be a precedent for retrospective prosecution of abusers. Hardware has feelings too, y’know.

Appropriately enough for the season, a scientifically verified virgin birth is in the offing. Of course, this adds no weight at all to the biblical stories of the same type – unless there was a bit in there about Jesus being a komodo dragon that I skipped over.

If you’re a discerning geek who can’t be satisfied with an action figure that’s anything but unique, the Vicale Corporation lets you configure your own with a handy-dandy Flash configurator. [boingboing]