glasshouse
Just in case you think that I am not doing anything sensible—here’s my house in ↑Minecraft … quite a mad-scientist hideout, isn’t it?
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zephyrin_xirdal
radium age sf
While reading ↑Brian Aldiss‘ ‘Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction’ (1973) [a revised and expanded edition was published as ‘Trillion Year Spree’ (Aldiss & Wingrove 1986)] Joshua Glenn thought that Aldiss unfairly neglected the period from 1904 … Continue reading →
jet age machinery
With all the hype around information technology in all its guises as our times’ core technology, about virtual worlds and social media, Tim Heffernan’s ‘↑The machines that made the Jet Age‘ (a follow-up to his ‘↑Iron Giant‘ in the Atlantic) … Continue reading →
plug & pray
Computer experts around the world, like Raymond Kurzweil and Hiroshi Ishiguro, strive towards the development of intelligent robots. Will man and machine merge as a single unity? Rejecting evolution’s biological shackles dangles the promise of eternal life for those bold … Continue reading →
what counts down?
zeph’s pop culture quiz #15 As there were requests for more recent movies as the subject of the quiz, here you are: What does the countdown in the screencap indicate? What is expected to happen when it is at zero? … Continue reading →
smart bulletts
The picture shows a cut-open smart bullett which homes in on a person’s individual unique heat pattern or signature. The screencap is from ‘↑Runaway,’ a 1984 cyberpunk flic directed by Michael Crichton, starring Tom Selleck and Kirstie Alley. And this … Continue reading →
amazing stories online
The first six issues (vol. 1 no. 1 through vol. 1 no. 6 [April to September 1926]) and the December 1926 (vol. 1 no. 9) issue of the legendary science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, edited by Hugo Gernsback, are—legally and … Continue reading →
cyberpunk shanghai
Canadian photographer ↑Greg Girard has a nice collection called ↑Phantom Shanghai online. Girard’s pictures perfectly catch the cyberpunk ambience and æsthetics and remind me very much of the photographies my pal ↑2R took in China years ago: ↵cyberpunk china and … Continue reading →
cyberneticzoo
Reuben Hoggett’s ↑cyberneticzoo.com is a true treasure trove of the ‘history of cybernetic animals and early robots.’ via ↑entry at the ↑clockworker
Continue reading →hartmann the anarchist
‘↑Captain Nemo was a technical anarcho-terrorist.’ wrote Bruce Sterling (1991: 39) about the main protagonist of ↑Jules Verne‘s ‘↓20,000 leagues under the sea‘ (1870). The same can be said about the character Robur appearing in Verne’s ‘↓Robur the Conqueror‘ (1886) … Continue reading →