Monday, July 30, 2007

Sharkborgs

All I want are some frickin' sharks with frickin' laser beams!

US 'plans stealth shark spies'
BBC News, Thursday, 2 March 2006, 16:44 GMT

Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into "stealth spies" capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has reported. They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting electrodes in their brains, The New Scientist says...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4767428.stm

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Blue Sky

The Sun is shining in the sky.
There ain't a cloud in sight.
It's stopped raining,
Everybody's in the play,
and don't you know
it's a beautiful new day!
(hey hey)

Friday, July 06, 2007

Mundane Sci Fi

So I get this email from Mike:
Information on submitting for the upcoming "Mundane SF" issue of Interzone. At first I thought this was an interesting challenge and wanted to do it, but as I read more of the blog by the co-editors, their snobby attitude toward the rest of the genre gets more and more off-putting. I also increasingly hate that they keep saying that no one is writing about "big ideas" because the submissions are not about their pet causes (global warming, famine in Africa, Donald Trump allowed to breed unchecked, etc.). I mean, I agree with them on most of their little missions, but calling people unoriginal for not writing about what you expect them to write about is just asinine. If you want everyone to write about climate change, make it "climate change month" instead and stop being coy about it. They remind me of the hippies from that South Park episode with the hippy jam band festival, congratulating themselves on how they're changing the world when all they do is smoke pot and smell bad...
So I thought thought I'd at least check it out, and clicked on the link. Take a look at the sources they recommend. I did follow their advice by conjuring a random Wikipedia article and visiting the U.N. General Assembly site (I already keep up with Scientific American and occasionally RealClimate) which gave me a great inspiration for a story about some rogue peacekeeping troops who rampage through Somalia shooting otherwise-recyclable aluminum cans with their laser pistols while listening to the Four Seasons and complaining about all the hurricanes. One of the brave officers pursuing them is getting a divorce, and his son might have small pox.

Good thing I clicked that Wikipedia link or I'd never have learned about Bob Crewe, the lynchpin of the whole plot. And I can have laser pistols, according to the rules. There's no way space travel could ever be profitable, they tell me, but laser pistols are okay.

I would be tempted to try a serious one because, snobby editor-twerps aside, it really might be an interesting challenge, but I have a feeling that several big-name authors are also going to try their hand at this, and it'll turn out that the youngest contributor to the final product will be Reanimated Heinlein.