Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Category Archives: science fiction
Scientific Reality and Ideological Imagination
Reality check about warp drives; Reality perspective about the Kardashev ladder; My evolving ideas about traditional vs. honest science fiction; How the latest conservative panic appears in the new film Sound of Freedom; How House Republicans are openly discriminating against … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Music, Science, science fiction
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The Supreme Court’s Conservative Rollback
Topics today: This week’s Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and discrimination against gays; My wondering why such discrimination against, say, mixed-race couples, and people of other religions, isn’t also OK (or maybe it is?) Republican hysteria about immigrants, whom … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, science fiction
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Trip Report: Preservation Park and the Locus Awards
No blog post yesterday; I was busy from about 2pm to around 8pm attending one day of the Locus Awards Weekend (this link might expire soon) in downtown Oakland, about 10 miles down the hills from our house.
Posted in Personal history, science fiction
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The Understanding of Human Nature, and Its Relationship to Science Fiction
Here’s a draft of another essay trying to summarize my take on science fiction and my provisional conclusions on the topics I’ve been reading about over the past couple decades.
Posted in Personal history, Psychology, science fiction, The Book
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The Broadest Possible Terms
Let’s return to yesterday’s item from OnlySky, which strikes me as a way to expand one of my key themes. In fact, perhaps we can build one of my hierarchies to begin with the most basic conception of what science … Continue reading
Posted in Narrative, science fiction, The Book
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Fox News Admits They Were Wrong; Reviews by Michael Dirda
First, a follow up to my Media Literacy post three days ago. Stop the Presses! Something amazing has happened! Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 23 May 2023: Fox News falls for another hoax, as the Dominion defamation settlement pays off, subtitled “The … Continue reading
Posted in Mathematics, Narrative, Science, science fiction
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Intuitive TV and Movie Physics
Remember this? Remind you of anything? This is the logo that would appear at the end of a Universe Pictures movie in the 1930s.
Posted in Astronomy, Physics, science fiction
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About New Books by Phil Plait and Jamie Green
Phil Plait’s Under Alien Skies Jamie Green’s The Possibility of Life And a Facebook cartoon about the cynicism of anti-intellectuals Phil Plait on John Scalzi’s blog today, about his new book Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe, … Continue reading
Posted in Astronomy, Book Notes, Cosmology, Lunacy, science fiction
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SF and AI in MSM
Items about Isaac Asimov and AI, Adrian Tchaikovsky and octopuses and AI, SF magazines and AI-generated stories. The Atlantic, Jeremy Dauber, 3 Mar 2023: What Isaac Asimov Can Teach Us About AI, subtitled “The science-fiction writer imagined artificial intelligence—and what … Continue reading
Posted in science fiction, Technology
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Two Philosophical Bits
Are you the same person you were last week? How long should you shop?
Posted in Philosophy, science fiction
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