Republic of Cascadia

"Now is the time for the citizens of Cascadia to demand their freedom from the oppressive governments of Canada and the United States. For too long have our people put up with indifference and condescendence from distant seats of power. We have been subject to francophonic imperialism and wasteful spending of our tax money. Our entrepreneurs have been attacked by the so-called justice system for merely doing their jobs and growing our economy. When will we say enough is enough?

The former American states of Oregon and Washington and the former Canadian province of British Columbia must join together as a sovereign nation. Only then can we have self-determination and take our rightful place in the Global Community."

http://zapatopi.net/cascadia/

Orange Prize for Fiction

"Launched in 1996, the prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing from throughout the world. The winner receives a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze known as a 'Bessie', created by the artist Grizel Niven. "

http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/

Keeping Track of Characters When Writing Fiction

"Authors who write fiction have the advantage that they can make everything up, but the disadvantage is they have no sources to go back and check. Creating fictional characters requires great care to make sure no inconsistencies are introduced. Keeping records for your characters helps to make them realistic and effective and saves headaches later."

http://www.sellingbooks.com/keeping-track-of-characters-when-writing-fiction/

SF Crow's Nest

"Yahoo has ranked SFcrowsnest as among the best in the genre; we're one of only four web sites to make it into the Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction; our ranks of users still swell every month; and the nice emails we get from thousands of kind fans helps keep our morale up. "

http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/index.php

Star Trek : Gatekeeper

"The year is 2889 - a period of time and dimension travel within Starfleet and United Federation of Planets. The first known stationary Nexus * appears above Ares City - the Capital of Mars, and in the years to come millions of alien ships are appearing in the Alfa Quadrant to enter the Nexus - threatening to set the entire quadrant in chaos.

Year 2890 the Vulcan president of United Federation of Planets, Sedak, orders the building of the biggest space structure in UFP's history: The Gatekeeper Station. The station's task is to keep people at a distance from the Nexus.

In 2892 the station is ready and one of the sharpest minds in Starfleet - young Elisabeth Janeway is picked out to run the station. Her team consists of eight genetically engineered species created by the UFP underground on Vulcan - all exceptional skilled within their field of expertise, but with secrets of their own. They are to be known as The Gatekeepers.

Entering her private quarter after a long day's work, Janeway is confronted with two androids and their warning of a powerful warlord closing in on the Alpha Quadrant to take control of the Gatekeeper station and enter the Nexus in search of his long lost love. While the warlord is unknown to Janeway, his partner most certainly is not - the Borg Queen.

During the preparation for battle a small arm from the Nexus reaches out and embraces the upper half of the station, and five well known characters appear on the station bridge: The finest captains from Starfleet history are back and ready to join the fight."

http://www.startrekgatekeeper.com/

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_36376443387

http://www.startrekgatekeeper.com/forums/showthread.php?24-Plot

Andromeda Spaceways magazine 47

"Lots of entertainment in this Science Fiction magazine based in Australia but with the world and the galaxy in mind. [...] If you haven't checked out this magazine before it would be worthwhile looking at their website to see what is on offer."

http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/articles/books/2010/Andromeda-Spaceways-magazine-47-15538.php

Alien Life Forms in Fiction

"Their senses will be different (e.g. could see a different part of the spectrum to us), their morals and social structures will almost certainly be different. We may not even recognise the way they communicate as language. But the biggest thing to be aware of is biochemistry."

http://www.sellingbooks.com/alien-life-forms-in-fiction/

"The Outfielder" - Short Fiction, Serial Fiction, Essays,...

"an on-going collection of: Short Fiction, Serial Fiction, Essays, Sketches, History and Culture Articles, Film Analysis and Poetry. by Desmond Schumann. I post as soon as I have something to post"


http://desmondschumann.blogspot.com/

"The Stranger staggered up the sloping sand, with his arms held at his sides to brace his aching ribs. He gasped for air and choked trying to swallow it; white dots sprouted in the corners of his vision, then throbbed outward into tendrils of blindness that clutched greedily at his sight. The Stranger collapsed onto his hands and knees, dry-heaving hot, dusty air. The wind-blown patterns in the sand doubled inches in-front of his eyes. With each plume of his breath, a sand-devil blossomed on the desert-floor; these whipped grit at the Stranger's sweaty brow and blistered cheeks, and outlined a ghastly orange-skeleton ontop of his features. [...]"


http://desmondschumann.blogspot.com/2011/06/fiction.html

Follow Desmont at http://twitter.com/#!/im_a_scallywag

Ward Shelley’s “History of Science Fiction”

"... Ward Shelley's twisty, tentacle-y "History of Science Fiction." Now, at a single glance, you can finally see how the Enlightenment gave birth to cyber punk:"

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2011/03/09/ward-shelley-s-history-of-science-fiction.aspx

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine

"We accept science fiction, fantasy and horror works up to 10,000 words in length."

"Non-fiction articles will be considered on anything vaguely related to speculative fiction. "

http://www.andromedaspaceways.com/

Sci-Fi Air Show

"The SCI-FI AIR SHOW’s purpose is to preserve and promote the rich and varied history of Sci-Fi/fantasy vehicles. Through display and education we seek to celebrate the classic design and beauty of these ships and the rich imaginations that created them. When the cameras stopped rolling, many of these proud old ships were lost and forgotten. Please join us in working to keep these rare and beautiful birds soaring! "


http://www.scifiairshow.com/

Nano Trek

"This is a really tiny Enterprise. This image won the prize for Best Ion MicroGraph in the 47th International Conference on Electron, Ion and Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication Bizarre/Beautiful Micrograph Contest. It was created and recorded by Takayuki Hoshino and Shinji Matsui of the Himeji Institute of Technology."


http://www.neatorama.com/2010/03/17/nano-trek/

Cory Doctorow: Radical Presentism

"Science fiction writers who claim to be writing the future are more apt to be hamstrung by their timidity than by the pace of events. An old saw in science fiction is that a sci-fi writer can take the automobile and the movie theater and predict the drive-in. But the drive-in is dead, and the echoes of its social consequences are fading to negligibility; on the other hand, the fact that the automobile was responsible for the first form of widely carried photo ID and is thus the progenitor of the entire surveillance state went unremarked-upon by “predictive” sci-fi."


http://tinhousebooks.com/blog/?p=410

George Lucas Then vs George Lucas Now

"Call me a luddite if you have to, but I miss the days in which science fiction movies were actually done with real gadgets, real models, real robots—even with dwarves inside—and real explosions."

http://gizmodo.com/5287578/george-lucas-then-vs-george-lucas-now

A Calendrical Proposal by The Lost Wizard

"It occurs to me that in the forseeable future humankind will have colonies on other planets in the solar system. These planets will obviously have need of different calendars than are presently in use on the earth. This is necessitated by the fact that they have different day lenghts and substantially different year lengths. With the explosion of different calendars this provides, there becomes some need of a standard interplanetary calendar for scientific and commercial purposes. Most fiction writers just use the gregorian calendar that much of the human population of the earth uses. However, there is no particular need for the interplanetary calendar to be based on any particular local calendar. In fact, it is probably better if it isn't. The rest of this document includes a proposal for such a calendar."

http://lost.l-w.ca/theoretical/calendar.txt

Face Mining: Finding Who and When in Video

"Here we illustrate the face mining concept for the TV series Star Trek. Specifically, we applied our state-of-the art algorithms in face detection, face tracking and face recognition to 67 Star Trek episodes over three seasons. This process automatically extracts all visible face tracks, and clusters these into a small number of same-person groupings. Currently, we recognize frontal or near-frontal tracks. In the near future, we will extend our results to non-frontal tracks as well."

http://facemining.pittpatt.com/

Sword of Honour

http://www.flickr.com/photos/81905588@N00/3139670745/

In the news


http://www.nowpublic.com/strange/star-trek-klingon-sword-used-colorado-robberies

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (23 February 1932 – 18 December 2008

"Roddenberry was involved in the "Star Trek" universe for more than four decades. She played the dark-haired Number One in the original pilot but metamorphosed into the blond, miniskirted Nurse Christine Chapel in the original 1966-69 show. She had smaller roles in all five of its television successors and many of the "Star Trek" movie incarnations, although she had little involvement in the productions."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081218/ap_en_ot/obit_roddenberry_1


http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Majel_Barrett

Forrest J Ackerman, writer-editor who coined 'sci-fi,' dies at 92

"Forrest J Ackerman, who influenced a generation of young horror-movie fans with Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and spent a lifetime amassing what has been called the world's largest personal collection of science-fiction and fantasy memorabilia, has died. He was 92."

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-ackerman6-2008dec06,0,6853867,full.story

Why the love affair with man-eating plants?

"A new BBC adaptation is being made of The Day of the Triffids, but why are we still prepared to believe in a post-apocalyptic world roamed by flesh-eating semi-sentient plants? And do we have a love affair with fictionalised destruction?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7762438.stm

"When we die, everything ends, but in these stories that's inverted - everything ends but we get to live on. It is the world evacuated of everyone else. You can go into shops and have everything you want, live in any house you want."