January 2015

Hyperion by Dan Simmons (Italian edition)

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The novel “Hyperion” by Dan Simmons was published for the first time in 1989. It’s the first book of the Hyperion Cantos. It won the Hugo and Locus awards as the best science fiction novel of the year.

On the planet Hyperion the Time Tombs are about to open up and no one knows what the Shrike might do. It’s a creature that lives near them and kills the pilgrims who go there. The Church of The Shrike has decided to send to the planet seven more pilgrims selected in collaboration with the Hegemony.

In the course of the interstellar journey, the pilgrims tell their stories. They reveal the reasons that led each of them to risk their lives to go to Hyperion. They also reveal the connections of various types they have with the planet Hyperion, the Time Tombs and in some cases even with the Ousters, the descendants of the colonists who developed their own civilization separate from the Hegemony.

The panorama seen by the Mars Rover Opportunity on the top of Cape Tribulation (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.)

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NASA released an image of the Martian landscape seen from the Mars Rover Opportunity on the occasion of the earth’s eleventh anniversary of its arrival on Mars. Opportunity landed at 5:05 UTC on January 25, 2004 and now has traveled for about 41.7 km (25.9 miles) on the red planet. About three weeks ago it reached the top of the segment of the Endeavour Crater called Cape Tribulation and from there it used its Pancam (panoramic camera) instrument to take a series of photographs that were combined together.

Atlas Unplugged (Photo courtesy DARPA. All rights reserved)

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Boston Dynamics, the robot manufacturer acquired by Google at the end of 2013, introduced a new version of its Atlas model. It will participate in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), a robot competition which will take place on June 5-6 2015. The new version of Atlas is wireless and for this reason has been called Atlas Unplugged to meet the new demands of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) for the final phase of its competition.

A section of the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko’s smaller lobes seen by the Rosetta space probe (Image ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

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A special edition of the journal “Science” shows the results of the research done so far on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko using 7 of the 11 instruments of ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft. The various detections conducted between August and December 2014 have mostly confirmed the first impressions but reserved some surprises. Meanwhile, the comet is slowly approaching the Sun and its activity is increasing due to the higher heat that receives and causes more and more ice sublimation.

Daimones by Massimo Marino

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The novel “Daimones” by Massimo Marino was published for the first time in 2012. It’s the first volume of the Daimones trilogy.

Dan Amenta understands that it’s one of those days when he arrives to his work place and is immediately called to a meeting where various problems emerge and the result is him being fired. Because of the free time that he suddenly has, he pays some attention to the latest news, among which there are animal mass deaths. When he goes to take his daughter Annah to school, they comes across what at first glance looks like a car crash that involved several vehicles but there’s much more.

Very soon, Dan realizes that all people on the road are dead, even if it’s not the consequence of what looked like an accident. A check of the area shows that only he, his wife Mary and their daughter seem to be still alive. Their attempts to reach someone by telephone and via the Internet are vain. Dan and his family don’t know what may have killed almost everyone in the world and keep on trying to contact other survivors. At the same time they must try to survive in a completely new situation.