One of the many striking scenes in the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace takes place on the planet Coruscant, a completely urbanized planet whose skies are filled with vehicles, moving in orderly lines just as cars move along our city streets. It’s one of the quintessential science fictional visions of the 20th century, found …
Category: Blog
Science fiction
My interest in science owes a lot to a form of literature my brothers introduced me to at a very early age, and which quickly became my favorite: science fiction (SF for short). Before science fiction was called that there were two writers who nevertheless get included in the genre: France’s Jules Verne and England’s …
Crop circles
Last week, Ken and Linda Mann found two mysterious circles in the wheat on their farm, about 75 kilometres south of Saskatoon. Three kilometres to the west, Hutterites from the Brethren of Dinsmore colony found five more. As crop circles go, these were relatively mundane. The most complex designs appear in England, like the one …
“Is real science killing science fiction?”
We live in a science fiction world. Desktop computers, the World Wide Web, genetic engineering, cloning, space stations–they were all the stuff of science fiction not very many years ago. This poses a problem for today’s science fiction writers. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to write “hard” science fiction, based on real, plausible scientific thought …
Immunization
As the latest crop of First Graders trundle off to school, I can’t help thinking back to my first year of school in Texas, and the badge of maturity I proudly wore on my left arm: the round scar produced by smallpox vaccination. It proved I was practically grown-up. Today, kids no longer receive smallpox …
The bandwidth bonanza
August 30 was the 30th birthday of the Internet. On that day in 1969 a group of scientists and technicians at UCLA plugged two computers together through a refrigerator-sized box designed to let them talk to each other–and it worked. Originally involving just four university-based computers used by only a few dozen people, the Internet …
Missions to Mars
Thursday, September 23, 1999, wasn’t a good day for NASA. At 5:01 a.m. EDT, the Mars Climate Orbiter, a $125 million (U.S) space probe intended to observe Martian weather for two years, fired its engines to enter orbit around Mars and dove behind the planet. It never reappeared. After several hours of study, NASA announced …
Skateboarding
Skateboarders have become as much a part of the urban landscape as pigeons, scooting down the roads and sidewalks, jumping over curbs, turning any ramp, railing or set of steps into an excuse for acrobatics–seemingly defying the laws of physics. Skateboarding may seem like the ultimate in turn-of-the-millennium hipness, but it’s been around a long …
Adapting to space
In the movies, spaceships have artificial gravity, because it’s a heck of a lot easier to film that way. Real-life astronauts aren’t so lucky. The men and women who inhabit the Mir space station spend months in weightlessness. Sure, it’s a lot of fun–flying around, leaving objects hanging in mid-air–but inside those cosmonauts’ and astronauts’ …
Airships (1999)
It’s one of the most familiar newsclips of the 20th century: the giant airship Hindenburg approaching the mooring mast in New Jersey, the sudden rush of fire, the announcer choking out “the humanity, the humanity!” as the Hindenburg settles to the ground in flames. Many people think giant, passenger-carrying airships died forever with that crash. …
Bouncing balls
Summer is high sports season, and most of the games being played involve balls: baseballs, tennis balls, volleyballs, soccer balls. At first glance, every ball appears much the same as every other ball: round and bouncy. The only thing that’s different is the size. But in fact, each ball is designed specifically for the sport …
Con-Version XVI
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I had the pleasure of once again attending ConVersion, the annual science fiction convention held in Calgary. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re picturing a bunch of oddballs in Star Trek and Star Wars costumes, sitting in the dark watching videos and yelling out the dialog in time with …
My latest live walk and vlog
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