Tag: science fiction

Unreal science

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
August 15, 2006
4 mins to read
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My wife and I spent the weekend at ConVersion, Calgary’s annual science fiction convention. Featured this year were David Weber as Guest of Honor, Larry Niven as Special Guest of Honor, and R. Scott Bakker as Canadian Guest of Honor and Jeremy Bulloch, who played Boba Fett in the original Star Wars trilogy, as Media …

TorCon3: The 2003 World Science Fiction Convention

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
September 4, 2003
9 mins to read
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See my photos of TorCon3 here. I was sitting at a table at the front of an ordinary room in the Toronto Convention Centre a few days ago, along with three other writers of children’s books. We had just begun a panel discussion on “Writing For Children” when in strolled a massive troll, gray as …

Happy birthday, HAL

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
February 24, 2003
7 mins to read
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Last month a very important celebrity marked his birthday. He wasn’t an actor, though he was in a movie; he wasn’t an author, though he appeared in a book. And strangest of all, he died almost 30 years before he was born. He was HAL, the artificial intelligence that guided the spacecraft Discovery to its rendezvous with …

Are bananas doomed?

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
January 27, 2003
5 mins to read
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Canadians eat approximately three billion bananas a year; it’s our favorite fruit. But a recent news story suggests the bananas we enjoy so much could be extinct within 10 years. The villain is a fungus by the ominous name of Black Sigatoka that’s spreading out of control through the banana-growing countries of the world, threatening …

ConJose: The 2002 World Science Fiction Convention

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
September 3, 2002
3 mins to read
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Every Labour Day weekend, somewhere in the world, thousands of peopld gather for the World Science Fiction Convention. This year they gathered in San Jose, California, for the 60th WorldCon, as fans call it, and I was there. WorldCon covers the whole world of science fiction and fantasy, with particular emphasis, not on TV and …

Invading Mars

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
August 13, 2002
8 mins to read
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One of the prototypical science fiction novels is H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, in which invaders from the Red Planet successfully conquer the Earth, only to succumb in the end, not to humanity’s feeble efforts, but to the attacks of Earth’s microbes, against which they have no defense. Wells may have been the first SF …

How to become a science fiction writer

By Edward Willett in Art Columns, Blog, Columns
May 31, 2002
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Hello, my name is Ed, and I’m a science fiction writer. I’m the author of four young adult fantasy and science fiction titles, Soulworm, The Dark Unicorn, Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star, and Spirit Singer (all available at Book & Brier Patch as paperbacks; Spirit Singer is also available as an e-book from Awe-Struck E-Books). …

Star Trek tech

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
November 27, 2001
5 mins to read
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“Like something out of Star Trek” has become a catch-phrase for all things high-tech. But as Erik Baard points out in articles recently posted to Wired Online, we live in such a high-tech age that the Star Trek future is beginning to look more like last Thursday. As Baard notes, fans have wondered for decades …

It’s 2001! Where’s our space odyssey?

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
January 9, 2001
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Ever since 2001: A Space Odyssey appeared in 1968, 2001 has been one of those years, like 1984, that somehow represented “the future.” Well, guess what? 1984 came and went, and now 2001 has arrived–and with it, a spate of news stories comparing the “predictions” in the film with the reality. I think that’s a …

ChiCon: The 2000 World Science Fiction Convention

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
September 11, 2000
5 mins to read
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As I mentioned last week, 6,000 people recently gathered in Chicago for the 58th annual World Science Fiction Convention, myself among them. Mention “science fiction convention” to most people and they immediately think of a Star Trek convention. However, science fiction fans have been getting together long before Star Trek penetrated the public consciousness. At …

Robert J. Sawyer calculates God

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
September 4, 2000
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The notion that the universe has a designer, that it didn’t occur entirely as the result of blind cosmic forces, is not one that gets a lot of attention from the media. Many people assume that all reputable scientists dismiss the notion out of hand. Many reputable scientists do–but not all. There are actually strong …

Artificial muscles

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
February 9, 2000
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It’s not often that a three-year-old makes a significant scientific contribution, but one did recently–inadvertantly. Ron Pelrine, a senior research engineer with Stanford Research Institute International, wanted to keep his toddler out of the refrigerator, so he and his wife purchased a latch which attached to the side of the refrigerator with a special adhesive. …