Dark Roasted Blend has a great article on “pulp” SF magazine and book art, including examples from masters like Frank Kelly Freas and Chesley Bonestell.

They make an interesting point, too:

At the time, the artists working for the pulps weren’t considered anything but cheap creatives providing cheap entertainment for cheap minds. But now we know what they were: visions of wonder, amazing vistas of the imagination, daring dreams of possibility, magnificent views of What Could Be — but most of all we look back at what they did and recognize it for being truly magnificent art.

This is one of the reasons why I have a taste for pulp. The sensawunda just drips from these pages.

Link

Kelly Link’s collection of short stories Magic for Beginners–for which I have never heard anything but praise–has been made available for download on the Jelly Ink Press site.

The title story and The Faery Handbag both won Nebula and Locus awards. (They aren’t included in the free download for contractual reasons, although you can read The Faery Handbag here.)

Jelly Ink Press also offers her first collection, Stranger Things Happen, for free download. Best of all, both collections are made available under Creative Commons licensing. So far derivative works include audio versions, short movies, plays, and even a cello version of one of the stories.

If two freebies aren’t enough Link’s newest collection, Pretty Monsters, has just been released for sale.

(via SF Scope)

The theory of childhood, also known as child origin, is a damnable, loathsome and indefensible lie. How can any thinking person suppose all humans used to be babies once? There is no development path from babies to adults, no transitional forms between these two species. Show me even one baby with the head of a grown man on his body. Can you? No? Not even a bearded toddler? No adults with unfused skullbones, outside unfortunate disorders? Not even a tiny little newborn girl suddenly sprouting a respectable bosom? You can’t find them, because they don’t exist. There isn’t a single transitional form between children and adults, and you will never find one because the theory simply is an unscientific lie.

Go read the whole thing. It’s brilliant.

Link (via Pharyngula)

xkcd has a wonderful log-scale illustration of the height of the observable universe, from 46 billion light-years clear down to brachiosaurs. (The top is pictured above.)

It’s also available for pre-order as a poster.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operation on October 1, 1958. The Washington Post has an article on its history which includes a photo gallery of some NASA highlights.

If we could travel back to 1958 and tell the people who were founding the organization what it would accomplish in the next 50 years, do you think they’d be pleased or disappointed? We made it to the Moon! Yay! But…in 2008 we’re sort of maybe thinking about going back to the Moon. Um…yay?

I wonder what it’ll accomplish in the next 50 years.

The Evil League of Evil, which recently welcomed Dr. Horrible into its ranks, is seeking new members.

Aspirants to new heights of Evil should submit an application video by October 11. Full details at the Evil League of Evil Website. If you want to rub shoulders with the likes of Professor Normal, Dead Bowie, Fake Thomas Jefferson and, of course, Bad Horse, now’s your chance to strut your evil stuff.

(Henchmen need not apply. Please contact your union.)

Riding silently into the sky, soon she was 100km high, higher even than the old pioneering rocket planes, the X15s, used to reach. The sky was already all but black above her, with a twinkling of stars right at the zenith, the point to which the ribbon, gold-bright in the sunlight, pointed like an arrow. Looking up that way she could see no sign of structures further up the ribbon, no sign of the counterweight. Nothing but the shining beads of more spiders clambering up this thread to the sky. She suspected she still had not grasped the scale of the elevator, not remotely.
– Firstborn by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter

Japan has made the construction of a space elevator a priority in its long-term space development plans, and even though NASA doesn’t envision a working elevator until 2200, a group called the Japanese Space Elevator Association (JSEA) reports that one could be operational in a few decades and cost as little as $10 billion.

The sticking point, as usual, is the material for the cables. The JSEA thinks that carbon nanotubes are the answer, and speculates that the elevator could be powered using technology similar to that in Japan’s bullet trains. The JSEA team even brought a working model (made of Legos!) to the 2008 Space Elevator Conference in July.

Retired Software Engineer Ted Semon maintains a blog devoted to aggregating information about space elevator design and construction. His events calendar lists upcoming conferences, and he has a large list of reference sites. Definitely worth a look if you’re interested in beanstalk technology.

(via io9)

Japan’s newest Web sensation is “Webkare,” a site that’s part social network and part dating simulator. Girls (the site is targeted exclusively at females) try to win the heart of one of four male Anime characters through cut-scene “conversations,” and must collaborate with other Webkare members in order to advance their cause.

The site is immensely popular–it had 10,000 members and 3.5 million page views five days after its launch–with 52% of users in their 20s and another 18% 30 or older. The article questions whether “such an idiosyncratic way of curing loneliness” would work for a Western audience. I can think of a few thousand socially-inept geeks who might approve.

I can envision all kinds of add-on modules and personality packs: Ask the cute girl in Accounting out for coffee, then go home and spend the next few days practicing your moves with her simulacrum.

(Of course, if she ever finds out about the simulacrum it might be a little creepy….)

Link (via Posthuman Blues)

Now that Las Vegas’ Star Trek: The Experience is closing, what’s an SF fan to do? Actual space tourism is beyond the pocketbook of most of us geeks, but fortunately there are plenty of other options.

Besides the Atomic Tourism we’ve mentioned previously, there’s the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, dozens of observatories, Space Camp, Dr. Who Tours, and loads more. Check out this list for places to spend your next vacation.

Incidentally, Shadow and I use WorldCon as an excuse to visit places we wouldn’t otherwise venture. The Other*Worlds*Cafe almost always has a few members present every year, and we always plan a meetup. If you’re a convention newbie and would like to meet a few friendly faces, drop us a line around convention time; we’ll be happy to show you the ropes.

The McFarland Memorial bell tower on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus has a rather arresting shape, which apparently put somebody in a Tolkienesque frame of mind. Last Sunday it was surreptitiously “enhanced.”

Link (via Museum of Hoaxes)