notes.husk.org

Stills of Andrea Riseborough and Tom Cruise from Joseph...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:51:50 +0100

Stills of Andrea Riseborough and Tom Cruise from Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion.

Reality vs Science Fiction

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:35:06 +0000

The Guardian, 29 Febrary 2012:

Soak the English: Welsh want paying for any water piped across the border

Politicians say rain-rich country must be compensated if ‘increasingly valuable resource’ is sent to drought-hit England

Frederik Pohl, The Cool War, 1981:

During the London water shortage just before the completion of the Rape of Scotland waterworks, Irish nationalists went around turning on hydrants and covert sympathizers left their taps running. It worked so well that Palestinian refugees, circumcised and trained for the occasion, repeated the process in Haifa to such an extent that two hundred thousand acres of orange groves died for lack of irrigation.

Dan Dare vs the Post Office Tower (via, via)

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:30:06 +0100

Dan Dare vs the Post Office Tower (via, via)

"I don’t suppose that I have understood more than a small part – all the same I have understood..."

Wed, 18 May 2011 19:27:35 +0100

“I don’t suppose that I have understood more than a small part – all the same I have understood enough to be greatly interested, and elated too, since sometimes it seems to me that you are grasping ideas that I have tried to express, much more fumblingly, in fiction But you have gone much further and I can’t help envying you – as one does those who reach what one has aimed at.””

- Virginia Woolf, in a letter to Olaf Stapledon after reading his novel, Star Maker. Quoted in a Guardian story, Science fiction author hits out at Booker judges, about Kim Stanley Robinson criticising fiction prizes for concentrating on the genre of literary fiction.

How can I do a Pan Am image dump without including an image from...

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 05:46:02 +0000

How can I do a Pan Am image dump without including an image from 2001? Here’s a space flight attendant, but that Flickr account has more screen grabs (including Pan Am ones) in this 2001 set. (via)

"Driven by the need to fix the decaying federal system before it collapses under a mound of Medicare..."

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:43:26 +0100

“Driven by the need to fix the decaying federal system before it collapses under a mound of Medicare bills, overseas adventurism, and decaying infrastructure, she’s willing to use self-denial, entrapment, predatory mercantilism, dirty tricks, and any other tool that boosts the bottom line.”

- Charlie Stross in Accelerando, describing a post-conservative. Not bad, as ~~prediction~~ extrapolation goes.

iamdanw: Here’s what the Barbican conservatory looked like in...

Fri, 07 May 2010 12:21:00 +0100

iamdanw:

Here’s what the Barbican conservatory looked like in 1980

… looking even more like something out of Silent Running than it does now.

"I probably shouldn’t say the whole storyline. It’s not really apparent in the book. It’s so..."

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:55:57 +0100

“I probably shouldn’t say the whole storyline. It’s not really apparent in the book. It’s so brilliantly written because all of these terms are used, but you don’t really understand what world these people live in.”

- Carey Mulligan, interviewed on Collider.com. The previous paragraph gives away the premise of Never Let Me Go, the film (adapted from the Kazio Ishiguro novel) in which she stars next.

For me, that process Mulligan describes - not quite understanding the world in a book, but discovering what it is that makes it different - is a huge part of the joy of science fiction. Sure, a lot of people think that it involves “space suits and aliens” (as Mulligan says in the same paragraph), but the best work doesn’t involve that at all.

(Having said that, I never did finish the novel; it spent a bit too much time with characters as characters, rather than action as a character, to abuse a quote from An Education.)

Reaching for Stars When Space Thrilled and Paranoia Ruled - an...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:41:00 +0000

Reaching for Stars When Space Thrilled and Paranoia Ruled - an article in the New York Times on the upcoming book, “Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962.”

There’s some great stuff in the “interactive viewer”, and unlike the Wired ads, which inspire more mirth than admiration, a lot of these are actually beautiful. I’m looking forward to getting a copy of the book.

"I think of science fiction as the realism of California."

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:09:08 +0000

“I think of science fiction as the realism of California.”

- Kim Stanley Robinson quoted in an article entitled Kim Stanley Robison maps the future’s gray areas in the Los Angeles Times.