Dresden Files on the move?

From the Sy Fy Portal blog:

While it still doesn't ensure that SciFi Channel will bring back "The Dresden Files" for a second season, it appears that the network is still looking for ways to make it work. The Edmonton Journal is reporting that the city could see one of two series move to the Alberta city, with one being "The Dresden Files." The SciFi Channel series allowed "Dresden Files" renewal deadline to pass last month without any word on the series. "Dresden Files" currently films in Toronto, Ontario, and a move to Edmonton would mean a more than 2,000-mile relocation. Both Alberta and Edmonton are offering nearly $9 million in incentives for one of the television programs to film 13 episodes in the city. An announcement is expected to be made by mid-month, and if "Dresden Files" isn't chosen, it could mean the beginning of the end for the series.

Micro-generator feeds on good vibrations

A sugar-cube-sized electric generator that feeds on environmental vibrations has been developed. It could power swarms of wireless sensors or even medical implants, researchers claim.

The new micro-generator harvests power electromagnetically, exploiting the wobbling of several magnets attached to a millimetre-sized cantilever. It measures just 7.0 millimetres by 7.0 mm by 8.5 mm, and the team behind it say it is the most efficient micro-generator yet developed.

The generator converts 30% of environmental kinetic energy into electrical power, and could keep all sorts of low-power devices running without batteries – particularly when alternatives like solar power are not an option.

(Image: Steve Beeby/University of Southampton)

thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post

You Can't Travel Back in Time, Scientists Say

from Live Science online

While the idea makes for great fiction, some scientists now say traveling to the past is impossible. There are a handful of scenarios that theorists have suggested for how one might travel to the past, said Brian Greene, author of the bestseller, "The Elegant Universe" and a physicist at Columbia University. "And almost all of them, if you look at them closely, brush up right at the edge of physics as we understand it. Most of us think that almost all of them can be ruled out."

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Fred Saberhagen RIP

Locus Magazine online reports:

SF and fantasy writer Fred Saberhagen died June 29, 2007, at the age of 77. He began publishing in 1961 with short stories in Galaxy and If magazines, and published collection Berserker in 1967, first in a series about interstellar killing machines programmed to destroy all life. Saberhagen's 60+ books also included the Empire of the East sequence, beginning with The Broken Lands (1968), the Dracula sequence, beginning with The Dracula Tape (1975), and two books co-written with Roger Zelazny, Coils (1981) and The Black Throne (1990). His last book was Ardneh's Sword (Tor, 2006).

• The family will announce a date for a Memorial Celebration later this year.� Donations would be appreciated to Doctors without Borders, Catholic Relief, SFWA Emergency Medical Fund, and John 23rd Catholic Church in Albuquerque.

Photo by Scott Edelman)

Quantico: by Greg Bear - Ron Huber's impression

Ron's comments about Quantico (shorter version of our conversation about this book on the podcast : 59 www.beameup.podomatic.com)

Paul, I enjoyed yakking away today about Quantico by Greg Bear. I couldn't call it my review so much as my impressionist rant. The Thinking Man's Tom Clancy, I recollect saying. Quantico is a good read for those (like me) that like that sort of near future action adventure.

True to that genre, coincidences pile up, major characters survive unsurvivable crashes and explosions, and murderer-wannabes are thwarted by a sudden need to declaim at length to helpless prisoner Rebbecca before delivering the lethal stroke, giving the cavalry time to come to the rescue.

But those are practically de rigeur for the AA genre. Bear's futurist equipage for the large cast of characters is entirely believable or at least suspension-of-believable: the neo-blackeberry 'slates', the mini-UAV 'midges' ; characters on the whole believable; the Arab-bashing is within present-day American norms--though Bear is fairly merciless in Quantico to middle easterners of all types.

I liked the meeting of the protagonists and supporting characters with Madame President. It powerfully depicts the personality stresses of such a gathering.

As Chief Villain, Lawrence Winter was rather interesting - starting off as your basic merciless amoral maniac, then going through a sort of flowers-for-Algernon decline and fall into final irrelevancy for his hubris.

I look forward to reading more of Greg Bear's works.