July 2013

Robert Sheckley omnibus containing his novels Immortality Inc., The Status Civilization, Journey Beyond Tomorrow and Mindswap (Italian edition)

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The novel “Immortality, Inc.” by Robert Sheckley was published for the first time in 1958 in the magazine “Galaxy” with the title “Time Killer”. This is the expanded version of a shorter story titled “Immortality Delivered”.

In 1958, Thomas Blaine is 32 years old when he has a fatal car crash. When he wakes up he’s told that it’s 2110 and he reincarnated in a new body. But something went wrong because that body was meant to host the soul of another person. Still confused, Blaine starts discovering that after his death science has made leaps forward in the explanation of what were considered supernatural phenomena related to the afterlife.

Mozilla Foundation logo (Image courtesy Mozilla Foundation. All rights reserved)

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On 15 July 2003 the Mozilla Foundation was created. It’s a non-profit organization that aims to support the development of the Mozilla project. It’s basically the successor of the Mozilla Organization, founded in 1998 to develop the Mozilla Application Suite, a product of Netscape Communications Corporation formed by the web browser Navigator, the e-mail / newsgroup client Communicator and the software for the development of web pages Composer.

Christopher Priest in 2014

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Christopher Priest was born on July 14, 1943, in Cheadle, Greater Manchester, England. He’s written several novels that won various awards, especially the one given by the British Science Fiction Association.

A bioreactor, a special incubator used to grow cells (Photo NASA/Dennis Olive)

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To carry out cancer research, the orbit seems an unlikely place, instead on the International Space Station there are conditions that may favor certain biological research, in particular microgravity.
Over the years, several biological experiments were performed on the Space Shuttles but also on Russian spacecraft and in recent years other ones have been carried out on the International Space Station. The accumulated results have allowed to obtain new information about some of the mechanisms of cancer cell development such as those related to cytokines, proteins that mediate and regulate immunity and inflammation.

James Gunn in 2005

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James Edwin Gunn was born on July 12, 1923 in Kansas City, Missouri. An English professor at the University of Kansas, he also used to teach science fiction. He’s never been a very prolific writer but he’s appreciated, also for his articles and essays. Some of his stories were adapted for the television, in particular the TV show “The Immortal”.