Futures Past "A Visual History of Science Fiction" Due Out in November **UPDATE**

Wow, lots of news about publication of really superior Science Fiction.

Jim Emerson just sent me a note, with his "Editor Hat" on to let us know about "Futures Past" described as a Visual History of Science Fiction, which will be available in November of this year (2014).  

Jim makes it clear that this is no "one trick pony" printing 1 volume, done, and gone.  Nope, this will be the first of a 50 (that's right fifty volume set!!!) volume series that will cover 1926 to 1975.  And talk about comprehensive! Each will cover all the SF books, films, magazines,  and more, in exhaustive detail, with a great number of full color illustrations as well.  The hope is for this series to be the "most comprehensive history of the field ever".

The first volume will be for the year 1926 (which Jim tells me is available right now, and I suspect that it will be one hell of a treat.  Here is the website - www.sfhistory.net 

**UPDATE**  Jim sent me a note that it is year 1926 that will first be available and that volume is available right now!  Please check the website for more information. (ed. PAC) 

Human History is but a Thin Slice of Time

Our narrow slice of time is just that!  A mere fraction of thin line at the very end of modern man's time.

Here to put it into perspective is Vsause who's video everything into perspective is so very short of time.

Pay attention, you will be surprised at just how little influence we have in the overall scene of things.....

Once in a Lifetime Venus Event

Coming this June is an astronomical event that will not take place again in your lifetime, or to put it more accurately, not again until 2117.

June 5 & 6 of 2012 will transit the sun. This pass will take about six hours to complete. The last transit was 2004. The reason for the two relatively short periods separated by a much longer periods (the transits have two rather quick transits, only separated by eight years - hence the 2004 to 2012 time frame then a 105 year wait.) of 105 to 121 years - happens only when Earth and Venus are in line with the sun. This doesn't happen often because of the different orbital times and the fact that neither Earths or Venus' orbit are flat.

The Science Daily article is rich with historical data, which if you have even a passing interest, I suggest that you check this Science Daily article out.  It really is worth it!

Chinese censors ban time travel TV shows

Yep, you read the headline correctly! From Cory Doctorow @ Boing Boing blog:

• The Chinese General Bureau of Radio, Film and Television has prohibited new science fiction TV dramas, following a vogue for shows where modern Chinese people travel to ancient China. They've also prohibited production of "the Four Great Classical Novels", on the grounds that the widespread adaptations of them take too many liberties with the original texts.

It would appear that in China, the time-travel themed drama is becoming more and more popular. Many of the time-travel stories and movies are based on real historical, but there is a growing trend to exaggerated events to add humor to the narrative. Many thing this is exceedingly funny while others aggravated by the lack of respect of the historical texts and now there is a trend to completely make up historical events. Hence the raised ire of the Bureau.

Check the complete text here

IBM Centennial Film: 100 X 100

The full name of this short film is "IBM Centennial Film: 100 X 100 - A century of achievements that have changed the world" it may sound a bit self serving, IBM's achievements over the past 100 years are nothing short of amazing. I am not suggesting that we go and deify the company, it is just put into chronological order, it is hard to imagine what the world would have been like without some of the equipment that by today's standards is quaint, but at the time of inception was noting short of ground-breaking. IBM uses a rather unique method of describing their innovations. Many of the narrators were born when IBM was creating their innovative breakthroughs. I think it is a clever use of resources. You don't have to be a wild eyed supporter to appreciate the images and history.

A Nuclear Aircraft?!

Hey, does anyone remember that at one point in the very early 60s, the US almost had a long range nuclear bomber?! Oh yeah we did! The XB-70 Valkyrie.

Why you sanely ask? Well in the early 60s, the USA's nuclear deterrent was based around the aging B-52 fleet.

The Pentagon was looking for the eventual replacement, to the B- 52. They wanted a bomber that could cruise at ultra-high altitude, carry nuclear bombs, and stay aloft for extended periods. It also needed to escape intercepting fighters, to it had to be fast as well. Jet engines of the day just couldn't produce the power that would be needed to fly high, fast and carry heavy payloads. As such early research turned to a nuclear reactor to power the plane. Crazy as it sounds, research in the 50s had already flown functioning reactors in test planes. Not to power the plane mind you, but the reactors were fueled and running during many test flights.

Design finally settled on the XB-70 Valkyrie (not a complete pipe dream if you look at it. The Valkyrie it seemed strongly influenced the SR-70 & B-1b planes)

The Valkyrie's days were numbered right from the start however. Cost over-runs and technical problems soon brought the XB-70 project to a grinding halt. Also, long range ICBMs were proving themselves very reliable at putting multiple warheads on target, plus other advancements in missile tech made it impossible to fly high enough or fast enough to avoid being shot down.

In the end only 2 XB-70s were ever built and neither was fitted with a reactor. One crashed during a test flight collision with a chase plane and the final Valkyrie resides at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Ohio.

Read the excellent article here on the IO9 blog Wikipedia on the xb-70

Lego Antikythera Mechanism

Now talk about facinating... Mix whimsey with real practical science and you get something like this post I first came across on Dvice. It is a fully functional Antikythera device rendered in Legos. In my mind you could not have picked a better medium for demonstrating this marvelously complex mechanism. The blocky nature of the hardware lends itself well to a modular design that shines in this video as they demonstrate what has to be described as the oldest known mechanical computer.

Did Bell Labs Slow Information Technologies by More than 50 Years?

Author Tim Wu writes of a Bell Labs engineer, Clarence Hickman, who had a secret machine, about six feet tall, standing in his office. It was a device without equal in the world, decades ahead of its time. If you called and there was no answer on the phone line to which Hickman's invention was connected, the machine would beep and a recording device would come on allowing the caller to leave a message. Oh yes, an answering machine - at it's heart, a magnetic tape recorder using magnetic tape. Hardly decades ahead of it's time though huh? Well what if I told you that this machine was built and working in 1930?! At that time we were lead to believe that sound could only be captured by pits pressed into hot Bakelite. Magnetic tape would make cassettes and video take possible and ultimately the medium that made it easy to store and transfer computer information and the tech at the heart of most every computer today - the hard drive. This information avalanche began in the 80s, decades AFTER the tech was shown to be feasible.

Oh it gets weirder! The information concerning the research and advancements made with magnetic tape research was not even discovered until the early 90s! Soon after Hickman had demonstrated his invention, AT&T, who controlled Bell Labs, ordered the Labs to cease all research into magnetic storage, and Hickman's research was concealed for more than sixty years! Historian Mark Clarke, came across Hickman's laboratory notebook in the Bell archives while doing research. Clarke writes AT&T "refused to develop magnetic recording for consumer use and actively discouraged its development and use by others". Why? Well according to Clarke's research, has to be some of the most twisted logic that I have ever heard of. It seems "AT&T firmly believed that the answering machine, and its magnetic tapes, would lead the public to abandon the telephone."

It's definitely a surreal and twisted idea to think that tape recording would keep businessmen from signing contracts?!! You have got the read the Gizmodo article here. The short sighted paranoia will leave you stunned! But AT&T / Bell Labs execs thought it was reason enough to squelch technological advancement for better than half a century! Unbelievable !

Leonard Nemoy explains origins of Vulcan greeting

Now here is a piece of tv history that I am sure that the hard core Star Trek fans know but the averave viewer may never have picked up on. The history behind the Vulcan greeting. Here is Leonard Nemoy with the background info.

Thanks to SF Signals for the original post

July 24th U,S.'s second choice for first spaceport

Today is a bit momentous. It's the date that the U.S. gets it's first spaceport. Well I should be fair
the date is right, except that the year was 1950. And the place? If you said Cape Canaveral, well you're almost right. You see, Canaveral was the SECOND choice even though it was in fact the FIRST launch facility.

According to the Wired article:

• ...the original site in California was rejected after the Mexican government refused to let rockets traverse the air space over Baja California. (A near miss in Juarez, Mexico, where a wayward rocket from White Sands, New Mexico, crashed into a cemetery, probably influenced that decision.)

And the first off the pad? Well the old timers know it was a modified German V-2.

Lots of good space history here in an article on Wired

Giant Sand Worms found in England!

Holy Frank Herbert Batman huh? Not too often I can get that sensational but it would appear that this is true if you take into account how long ago.

Proof that giant worms, which grew up to 3ft long and 6in wide, which lived 260 million years ago, were found in Torbay, Devon. These animals lived underground before dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Scientists have found evidence of large burrow holes that are said to have been made by the creatures as they traveled beneath the surface - but as yet haven't found any evidence of the animals which made them. The large holes were found across an area of sediment at the bottom of what was a desert valley or dry river bed that only contains water during times of heavy rain.

Comment: Light Speed or How I Lost My Mind Thanks to the History Channel

Did anyone catch the program Light-speed on the History channel recently? Fascinating program, managed to burn more than a few of my synapses.

One of the most mind bending concepts in the program was that the speed of light was a limit to how far we can literally see in the universe. Since the big bang, light has traveled outwards for some 13.5 billion years. So we can not see any further because light hasn't had time to get there yet. That's disturbing enough, but consider.

In my world view or universe view there shouldn't BE anything past that point, but this is where it got strange. From our Milky Way we can see another galaxy at the limit of the 13 billion year limit. So, consider this a spoke in a wheel.

We are at the center of this wheel and the rim is 13 billion LYs away. Remember the light limit is 13 billion LY. So we can see the galaxies and they can see us. If we spin 180 degrees we can see 13 billion LY in that direction as well, but no further, and that's the rub. If we can see a galaxy 13 billion LY away at the edge of the visible universe, it's fair to say that they could see the Milky Way at the edge of their observable universe.

The twist comes when we realize that 180 degrees from observing them we KNOW that there is 13 Billion light years of space behind us that they CAN'T see. Which leads me to conclude that there must be at least 13 billion light years of space beyond what we can see because we have already demonstrated that there is an equal amount behind us that the other galaxy can not see. And if the universe is 13 Billion LYs old how is it we can see better than 26 billion LYs in space (if you can see 13 in one direction and 13 in the opposite that twice as much as the history of the universe even though light only traveled 13 billion ly to cover the distance) And how far does this reach.

Does that mean light speed does not apply to space/time? Did the big bang happen everywhere at the same time? If so, what does that mean to the mono-bloc before the big bang? Now do you see why I might be ready for the rubber room?

The "web" time forgot

I often rail against the common misconceptions used when describing the internet and the world wide web. Users do not often differentiate between the two but in truth they are two separate entities. The internet supports the web, the web could not survive without the internet but the internet could operate without the web. Think of the internet as the computer and the web an application running on it. Simplistic surely, but there is a distinction. Ok, that being said, Barry sends in this article from the New York Times describing visionary Paul Otlet's description of an interconnection of devices that would allow users to look up all manners of documents anywhere in the world. Not in the 80s or the 50s but In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. Although Otlet’s proto-Web relied on a patchwork of analog technologies like index cards and telegraph machines, it nonetheless anticipated the hyperlinked structure of today’s Web. Otlet’s vision hinged on the idea of a networked machine that joined documents using symbolic links. While that notion may seem obvious today, in 1934 it marked a conceptual breakthrough.

click the title to go to the complete article. There is a snippet of the film "The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World" that sounds like a manual for setting up the web in the 90s not the 30s. Facinating!