I just got back from BaltiCon 44 and, as usual, my good friend, Anthony Stevens took a bunch of pictures. If you want to see some of the fun, check out this link:
http://mentilucent.net/BaltiCon2010/BaltiCon44.html

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My good friend, Anthony Stevens attended BaltiCon this weekend and just sent me some pix and a short video clip.
Take a look at the neat costumes.

This is a really great idea that will probably be hit with so much 'safety' BS that it will never be sold in the US.
Imagine a tractor-trailer delivering a big heavy (sealed) box that delivered enough electrical power for 20,000 homes for five years. Now imagine at the end of that time, a truck dropped off a new one and picked up the old one to be recycled.
That is in the works and will be available in the next couple of years, IF a series of knee-jerk paraniods don't prevent it in the US. Most of the rest of the world isn't going to give a damn.

Visit The Sci-Fi Dominion




Find more photos like this on The Sci-Fi Dominion

This device has been predicted in science fiction circles for decades. From the article:

"When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation - similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker - that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings. It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=482560&in_page_id=1965

The 509th is famous for two things... that is where the atom bombs that were used to end WWII were deployed and it is also the base that responded to the UFO crash site at Roswell, New Mexico.

http://www.ufoinfo.com/news/balthaser0402.shtml

Thanks to Evan for sharing this elegant little piece with us.

Has the rise of digital photography had the unintended consequence of making all of us really aware of fakes after viewing thousands of 'Photoshopped' images? Is this why UFO images are starting to be rare?
Here's a very interesting article by Ernest Lilley.

Some old science fiction novels are still very good reads today. Among them are "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester and "Space Viking" by H. Beam Piper. Here's a quote from Space Viking:

"It may just be," he added, "that there is something fundamentally unworkable about government itself. As long as Homo sapiens terra is a wild animal, which he has always been and always will be until he evolves into something different in a million or so years, maybe a workable system of government is a political science impossibility, just as transmutation of elements was a physical-science impossibility as long as they tried to do it by chemical means."

"Then we'll just have to make it work the best way we can, and when it breaks down, hope the next try[Pg 163] will work a little better, for a little longer," Bentrik said.

This was published in 1963 and is still a very good novel, today. The full novel is part of the science fiction bookshelf at the Gutenberg Project and can be read or downloaded for free.

Now this is an eInk reader I'd like to play with for awhile. If it does all they say, it might finally make books in electronic format a viable market. I've come to realize that most people really don't like to read books on a screen, but eInk technology looks like a paperback page.

This is the Locus list is recommended reads for items published in 2006. I have a lot of catching up to do!

http://www.locusmag.com/2007/2006RecommendedReading.html

If you really want to know how big some of the movie and tv spaceships really are, check out this neat image.

This technology holds some promise for low-cost and low-power lighting in the future. The production costs are still way too high to be economically feasible though.