Massimo Luciani

The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick

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The novel “The World Jones Made” by Philip K. Dick was published for the first time in 1956.

Doug Cussick works for federal security and decides to report a fortune teller named Floyd Jones to his superiors. Initially, they think he’s a small potato and not worth arresting, but when Cussick claims that Jones spoke of alien creatures arriving to Earth, they realize he knows secret information.

Jones’ interrogation shows that he does indeed know the future, at least for a year. Cussick discovers that alien creatures do exist, even if they appear to be only single-celled organisms, who are arriving on Earth and have been dubbed wanderers. A plan to eliminate Jones fails, and it ends up helping him seize power while a project to colonize Venus is underway.

A photo and a drawing of the holotype of Zhengheornis buyu.

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An article published in the journal “Science Advances” reports the identification of a bird that lived approximately 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic period, and shows a step in the evolution from the tail type typical of dinosaurs to that of birds, equipped with a so-called pygostyle. A team of researchers led by Wang Min of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who named it Zhengheornis buyu, studied a fossil discovered in 2024 that has a tail with 15 vertebrae, while early bird relatives had tails with over 30 vertebrae.

Ghosts in the Machine by Robert J. Sawyer

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The novel “Ghosts in the Machine” by Robert J. Sawyer was published for the first time in 2025 as an audiobook and in 2026 as a book. It’s the second book of the Downloaded series and follows “The Downloaded”.

Some of the surviving Earthlings are about to embark on a journey to Mars, while another group is traveling to the stars. The astronauts uploaded their consciousnesses again, but suddenly find themselves confronted by their younger selves.

A check of the state of the quantum system that allows the astronauts’ minds to exist inside it shows that it has entered a crisis. Two versions of the same person can’t coexist without disrupting the system, but which version should be sacrificed? An accident on Earth changes the situation even more.

His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem

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The novel “His Master’s Voice” (“Glos Pana”) by Stanislaw Lem was published for the first time in 1968. It was translated into English by Michael Kandel.

Peter Hogarth is a mathematician who joins a secret project under the aegis of the US government aimed at deciphering what is believed to be an alien message. Isolated along with many scientists from various disciplines, he must search for meaning in the neutrino wave detected on Earth.

Finding a key to the message is a priority that the scientists of the project, codenamed “His Master’s Voice,” pursue through various paths. The difficulties in understanding an alien language are compounded by the expectations of the Pentagon and politicians aware of the project, as well as the limitations of the scientists themselves.

Holotype of Tylosaurus rex, at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Texas (Photo Gary Todd)

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An article published in the “Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History” reports the identification of a new species of mosasaur, named Tylosaurus rex because its characteristics indicate it was a massive and fierce predator. A team of researchers reexamined Tylosaurus fossils previously attributed to other species of this taxonomic genus of mosasaurs, concluding that some specimens had anatomical characteristics different enough to warrant assignment to a new species.