Dublin 2019: Retrospective Hugos for 1944

Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon was the 77th World Science Fiction Convention, the oldest science fiction convention in the world. Each year, it meets in a different city, and for 2019, the host was Dublin, Ireland, the first time for Continue reading Dublin 2019: Retrospective Hugos for 1944

Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review articles

Almost two dozen review articles from Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review are now posted. Many of these were written while in the process of moving from one country to another, and moving from typewriter to computer. The editor was Continue reading Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review articles

License agreement as literature

George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm (August, 1945) has 29,966 words. Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 (October, 1953) has 46,118 words. Apple’s  “Apple Developer Program License Agreement” (June, 2017) has 42,993 words. In terms of plot, setting, and character, the license agreement is no Continue reading License agreement as literature

Titles from a strange upbringing

There are many titles I wish I had read; I have bookcases filled with unread and partially read volumes. But here are some that are high on my list: Untouched by Human Hands: The Last Dangerous Visions, by Robert Sheckley Continue reading Titles from a strange upbringing

National Book Festival

For the first time, the National Book Festival was held inside the air-conditioned confines of the Washington Convention Center. In recent years, the Festival was held on the National Mall, at the height of summer, in various hot and humid Continue reading National Book Festival

Early version of Google

This was the early version of Google. Using these humble wooden drawers, generations of scholars and researchers, desperate students and cunning spies, despairing parents and fanatical bibliophiles, and every other shape and size of reader delved into the depth and breadth Continue reading Early version of Google

Invisible Man does not like rain

What do you know about the Invisible Man? I mean, besides the fact that he is invisible? Well, did you know he does not like rain?

Automatic translation

I was just alerted to a new site, ackuna.com, that is promoting their crowd-source translation capabilities by showing how bad machine translation can be. To illustrate this, you type in some text, and their “Bad Translator” feature runs it back Continue reading Automatic translation

Send your poem to space

Entries to the Your Poem in Space competition were submitted on oversized postcards. For launch, the postcards had to be folded for placement in the cargo container. Yes, this postcard has traveled 120,000 feet into the thin air, or four times as high as a jetliner at cruising altitude.

Humans can not only put people on the moon, we can also send poems to space. On Thursday, September 20, 2012, a large helium-filled balloon was launched from Weston Park, west of the University of Sheffield in Sheffield, England. Equipped Continue reading Send your poem to space