Language in Fantasy and Science Fiction

One of the things that really pulls me into a story and transports me to a fantastical or future setting is the language, specifically the invented slang and terminology for various things. For example in Star Trek we have "phasers," "beaming," "transporters," "replicators," "tricorders," "hyposprays," "Jefferies tubes," "Turbolifts," and on and on. Firefly didn't have …

Sunrise Colors

Breaktaking colors this morning, and a shot of Venus, Mars, and Jupiter in the eastern sky just before daybreak. Venus is the top, brightest one, then little Mars, and Jupiter.    

Around the ‘hood and beyond

Just a few more recent pics. Here's the nearly-full moon on June 30, and the Venus-Jupiter conjunction that same night (basically the moon was to the south, and I turned around to face west-northwest to see the conjunction). The brighter of the two planets is Venus. Even though Jupiter is MUCH larger, it's so much …

Future Sci-Fi

More random bizarro thinking on my part. I suddenly started wondering what science fiction of the future will be. Today most science fiction is focused on colonizing other planets, alien encounters, high-tech taking over, dystopias, the fall of civilization, robots, AI, time travel, extending human life. Ok, that's a whole lotta stuff. In say, a …

In Saturn’s Rings

Space geeks, ahoy! This one's for us. This is an amazing movie put together by amateur filmmaker Stephen van Vuuren, using over a million photos culled from more than fifteen different sources, including Apollo missions 8 - 17, the Hubble telescope, Voyagers 1 & 2, and of course the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. From the …