September 2016

Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge (Italian edition)

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The novel “Marooned in Realtime” by Vernor Vinge was published for the first time in 1986 serialized in the magazine “Analog” and then as a book. It’s the sequel to “The Peace War”. It won the Prometheus Award.

About 50 million years in the future, Yelen and Marta Korolev managed to organize the survivors of humanity after its mysterious extinction occurred in the 23rd century. The two women are part of the hi-tech group, people who lived in the last decades before the Extinction, and are trying to create a future for their species.

The survivors leap forward in time using the bobbles, spherical force fields that completely isolate whatever they contain. The computer that runs Yelen and Marta Korolev’s system is sabotaged and the result is that Marta can’t leap forward with the others but gets sort of marooned in time. Wil Brierson, one of the few survivors who has some experience as a police officer is charged with finding the culprit with the help of Della Lu.

Fossil of Acanthostega gunnari

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An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research on Acanthostega gunnari (photo ©Ghedoghedo), that about 360 million years ago was one of the first tetrapods as it was one of the first vertebrates to have limbs recognizable as legs. A team of researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen led by Jennifer Clack, who in 1987 discovered a deposit containing many skeletons of Acanthostega, examined those specimens and concluded that they were juveniles.

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On September 8, 1966 the TV show “Star Trek” made its debut in the USA. Today it’s also referred to as the original series to distinguish it from the shows produced in the following decades.

“Star Trek” was canceled at the end of the third season but the show started being broadcast in syndication on various US channels gaining new fans. This success, although late, led to the set up of an organized fandom and conventions. In addition to repeats of the episodes and fandom activities, initially there were only comic books to help make the movement grow but after a few years things started changing.

In the early ’70s they action figures started getting produced and in 1973 an animated series was produced. With the growing interest in the saga, Gene Roddenberry planned a new TV show but in the end the return of “Star Trek” took place in 1979 with the first of a number of movies. The return on television was only a matter of time and in 1987 the saga returned with the TV show “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, which brought a renewal in that fictional universe.

50 years later, that quest for utopia seems more relevant than ever. The original “Star Trek” series reminds us that if we hope to get there we must boldly go where no one has gone before.

Reconstruction of the Azhdarchid Pterosaur found in Canada (Image courtesy Mark Witton)

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An article published in the “Royal Society journal Open Science” describes the discovery of a pterosaur attributed to the azhdarchid family. This flying reptile lived about 77 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period and is the first of its kind discovered in the British Columbia coast. For now indicated only as RBCM.EH.2009.019.0001, the specimen is a partial skeleton found subjected to CT scans to obtain information about a rare type of small-sized pterosaur.

Coyote Rising by Allen Steele

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The novel “Coyote Rising” by Allen Steele was published for the first time in 2004 fixing-up some stories published separately between 2003 and 2004 in versions that were revised for the edition as a book. It’s the second novel in the Coyote series and follows “Coyote”.

On Coyote, a moon of a gas giant planet in the system 47 Ursae Majoris, 46 light years from Earth, another starship arrives carrying new colonists. Almost all the inhabitants of the first colony founded after the arrival of the URSS Alabama decide not to submit to the collectivist ideology and flee to keep on living in their own way.

Matriarch Luisa Hernandez, who runs the new collectivist colony, hoped to count on the collaboration of the first colonists but must deal with their rebellion. Initially, the clashes between the two factions are limited but over time the situation becomes increasingly tense.