SF Signal: SF Tidbits for 10/5/07

SF Tidbits for 10/5/07

Charles Stross has begun posting the opening chapters from his latest novel, Halting State. See prologue and Chapter 1. More to come. [via Big Dumb Object]

SFRevu interviews Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Edward M. Lerner, and Frank Beddor. [via Locus Online]

SF Gospel has some quotes by Theodore Sturgeon on science and religion. "There is no secret sect of guys with test-tubes out to destroy the temples. There are more anti-religionists outside Science than in it...and if God [thinks] about this at all, He probably feels that He made a cosmos quite roomy enough to contain them all."

Norman Spinrad has decided to release his latest and as-yet-unpublished novel, Osama The Gun, as free-to-read sections online at Scribd. [via Velcro City Tourist Board]

New/Updated at Gutenberg...Free fiction from Alan E. Nourse: "The Link", "Meeting of the Board" and "My Friend Bobby".

Reemixx asks: Is sci-fi becoming mainstream? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Mr. Average Joe is just starting to realize that science fiction works contain a lot of content that he can relate to, increasing his interest in it somewhat. This realization may occur on a subconscious level."

Something Awful lists The 22 Most Awful Moments in Science Fiction.

Big Dumb Object lists 10 Things that are stupid about The Bionic Woman.

Chris Roberson unearths a commercial for the WALL-E robot.

Obsessed with Film has the new teaser poster for Iron Man.

Holy lecturing, Batman! Neatorama points us to quotes from the old Batman TV show, focusing on quotes where Batman lectures Robin. "Even crimefighters need their sleep, Robin."

Something Awful lists as the Number One most awful thing ever to happen to science fiction, the downfall of the Soviet Union due to Reagan Star War's program.

"From that point forward, the name Star Wars would be directly linked in history with the fall of one of the greatest empires mankind had ever seen."

I cannot fathom what this man means by "greatest empires" but as best I can tell from the text, he is LAMENTING the downfall of the Soviet Union and lambasting Ronald Reagan for his part in it.

The Soviets were worse than the Nazis by any rational measure: lasted longer, killed more Jews, told more lies, fooled more fools, stole more stuff, enslaved more slaves, took over more territory, and, thanks to the threat of atomic war, posed a threat to the existence of civilization, perhaps even to human life itself.

The gulags and camps and secret police and show trials and government-orchestrated famines and wars and insurrections killed in megamurderer numbers, near 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000 are due to lethal forced labor in gulag and transit thereto.

The greatest empire the world has ever known? In what sense of the word great?

I must be misunderstanding with he means. No one could be that evil. No one could be that stupid.

Posted by John Wright on Friday October 05, 2007 at 12:26 PM

WTF happened to Something Awful? Has Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons lost his funny bone? Did Lowtax steal his funny bone and give it to Cliff Yablonski?

I use to love Something Awful but oh how the mighty have fallen.

Posted by tditto on Friday October 05, 2007 at 1:18 PM