2016

Buckyball by Fabien Roy

4

The novel “Buckyball” by Fabien Roy was published for the first time in 2010. It was released in a second edition in 2016.

James Pesola and some friends go to spend a night of highs at Miamillennium, a nightclub in Miami. A drug dealer gives them the tablets of a new drug called Buckyball and initially they seem to experience the effect of a prolonged deja-vu but quickly the people who took some realize that something strange is happening.

The effect of the drug is not hallucinatory but takes those who ingested it back in time to that night at Miamillennium. James and the others, who remember everything that happened, have to understand what triggers that return but also other rules because after several “turns” they understand that the situation is really complex.

Initially, “Buckyball” may seem like a classic time loop tale made famous by the movie “Groundhog Day” and adapted into many science fiction TV shows. It’s an impression that lasts little because the reader soon realizes that the protagonist, who tells the story in first person, goes back to the starting point in different circumstances so each “turn” can have a very different duration.

Reconstruction of a trilobite attacking a worm-like prey (Image courtesy Stacy Turpin Cheavens of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Missouri)

0

An article published in the journal “Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology” describes a research of truly exceptional fossils because they kept in ancient ocean sediments the traces left in the Cambrian by trilobites and their prey, worm-like creatures. Their analysis reveals the trilobites’ predatory behavior, which was already sophisticated more than half a billion years ago.

Peter Diamandis and David Kenny at the TED2016 conference (Photo courtesy IBM. All rights reserved)

0

At the TED2016 conference, the XPRIZE founder, president and CEO Peter Diamandis and the head of IBM Watson David Kenny announced a new initiative called IBM Watson AI XPRIZE. There’s a $5 million prize money for those who will be able to give a speech at the TED2020 conference after the participating teams will challenge each other at the IBM’s annual conference called World of Watson. The peculiarity is that the speeches won’t be held by humans but by artificial intelligences.

Tyrannosauroid teeth (Image courtesy L.J. Krumenacker, D. Jade Simon, Garrett Scofield & David J. Varricchio. All rights reserved)

1

An article published in the journal “Historical Biology: An International Journal of Paleobiology” describes various dinosaur fossils discovered in Idaho, USA. Those are several species belonging to the theropod (Theropoda) suborder showing a much greater diversity than was known. The fossils date back about 95 million years ago and according to the team of paleontologists who examined them also include tyrannosaur ancestors.

City by Clifford D. Simak (Italian edition)

0

The novel “City” by Clifford D. Simak was published for the first time in 1952. It won the International Fantasy Award.

At the beginning of the 21st century technology has made leaps forward in building extraordinarily efficient and fast vehicles. The consequence is that human beings have started abandoning cities because they can go and live in the countryside and move very quickly to go to work anywhere.

The progressive death of cities is just one of many great changes that occur in future human society. Space exploration leads to contacts with aliens, which in various ways affect humans. Over the centuries, on Earth the Webster family, the protagonist of many changes, also contributes to the evolution of dogs.