2025

The Many Hands by Dale Smith

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The novel “The Many Hands” by Dale Smith was published for the first time in 2008.

The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones are in Edinburgh in the 18th century when the passage of a stagecoach carrying Benjamin Franklin becomes turbulent due to a strange man who tries to attack the driver, who loses control of the horses. The Doctor tries to stop the stagecoach with the complication of some British soldiers who shoot in his direction.

Eventually, Martha Jones manages to get in front of the stagecoach by taking a shortcut and tries to use the sonic screwdriver to stop it. The strange attacker is hit by the gunfire and the soldiers arrest the Doctor and Martha, who realizes that the attacker is a corpse who has been dead for some time.

The Godel Operation by James L. Cambias

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The novel “The Godel Operation” by James L. Cambias was published for the first time in 2021. It’s the first book in The Billion Worlds series.

Daslakh notices that his human coworker Zee is having some problems that have caused a sharp drop in his work performance. He asks God for help, meaning the artificial superintelligence that runs Raba, their habitat. The result is that Zee is suddenly convinced that he must go in search of Kusti Sendoa, the great love he had lost years before for his own fault. Daslakh discovers that the story was implanted in Zee’s mind and is forced to accompany him.

Arriving in the Uranus system, Daslakh and Zee come across Adya, a woman in danger due to a couple of shady individuals. Zee manages to save her but he and Daslakh are projected into space, where they are rescued by a service spacecraft. When they discover that the spacecraft is piloted by a woman named Kusti Sendoa, Zee is delighted while Daslakh becomes very suspicious.

Colony of Salpingoeca rosetta

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An article published in the journal “Science Advances” reports the results of a study on microbes of the species Salpingoeca rosetta that offers evidence that individuals exchange electrical signals they use to coordinate their behaviors. Jeffrey Colgren and Pawel Burkhardt of the Michael Sars Centre at the University of Bergen, Norway, used a newly developed genetic tool to examine the behaviors of colonies of these microbes that belong to the group of choanoflagellates (Choanoflagellata), the eukaryotes most closely related to animals.

Orbital Resonance by John Barnes

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The novel “Orbital Resonance” by John Barnes was published for the first time in 1991. It’s the first book in the Century Next Door series.

Melpomene Murray is given the task of writing an account of her last year of life in order to allow the Earthlings to get to know the life of a thirteen-year-old in the colony established on the asteroid that was named the Flying Dutchman. 2025 was an important year for her and for the colony in general for several reasons.

For people born in space like Melpomene, understanding the behaviors of the Earthlings that led to the catastrophic situation on their planet is almost impossible. This also complicates the relationships with their parents, who are trying to create a new generation that is more empathetic and ready to cooperate.

Tea plantations in the Baisha Li Autonomous County of Hainan (Photo STW932)

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An article published in the journal “Agrobiodiversity” reports the results of a genetic study of the tea plant of the Chinese island of Hainan that indicates that this type of the Camellia sinensis species has an origin that is independent from the other varieties. A team of researchers performed a complete DNA sequencing of the Hainan tea plant to compare it with the DNA of the other types. Knowing the origin of this type of tea offers, among other things, useful indications for its conservation and improvement of its cultivation.