Harper Voyager Books

THE GRIFF giveaway

Shoot us an email now for the chance to get a copy of the wonderful graphic novel by Christopher Moore and Ian Corson:

Outrageously funny New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore and award-winning screenwriter-director Ian Corson team up for a wacky and entertaining graphic tale of alien invasion and a motley crew of Earthlings trying to stay alive and, oh, yeah, save humankind.

eosbooks@harpercollins.com

The Oil Spill (with nods to post-apocalyptic novels)

Numerous sf novels start after a major disaster, as humanity reacts and rallies to devastation. Sheri S.Tepper's novels are deeply concerned with nature and ecology, as are the Wess'har War novels by Karen Traviss, and Sara Creasy's recent debut SONG OF SCARABAEUS, plus several of Kim Stanley Robinson's novels, Paolo Bacigalupi's incredible WIND-UP GIRL, and many others.

It's very interesting to read about in a speculative novel. It's less so in real life.

Everyone's heard about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. If you're like me, you read the headlines and turn or click away before the latest wildlife-in-oil picture makes you cry. It's human nature--we simply aren't meant to focus for long periods of time on tragedies (when was the last time you heard about what's happening in Haiti?). 

I very rarely conflate my professional and personal lives on this blog--the focus should be on the Eos authors and their works--but I'm doing so here today.

Because the oil spill is going to affect all life (human and animal) and the planet, and we're all going to be worse off because of it.  If you're not directly involved, you can't see how awful this is, and even then it's not going away. We're already seeing the side effects--oyster bars closing in New Orleans, oil being absorbed into the atmosphere and re-entering as rain, etc.--and we're going to pay for it (directly and indirectly), and the next generation as well, and probably the one after that.

Friday Fun--punk rock turtle

It's been even more insane here than usual (and that's without looking at the larger world), but since it's Friday afternoon...

Courtesy of the Daily Mail via the always-fabulous Boing Boing, a very alien-seeming punk-rock turtle:

Moving universes

Both cool and a little disturving--a new article on Space.com reveals that something's playing with the universe...

"Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon 'dark flow.'"

More info is here.

Science as Metaphor, Science as Model, Rebecca Ore

Once, in a job back in New York City, a science editor told me I was a biologist manqué.  I’ve never had the math necessary to explore science from the inside by doing it, but I’ve always been fascinated by what confessions math, physics, and chemistry get from Mother Nature.  I’ve long been fascinated with the work with gene sequencing, the secret discoveries about lineages, who we were rather than who we thought we were (the largest surviving population of Celts is in the Midlands if we go by matrilines).  We reconstruct the past from fragments that we project ourselves onto backwards.  We take other fragments and imagine ourselves traveling faster than light forward.  The science in science fiction, like everything else, is “as if real.”  In science fiction, the science has been everything from attempts at vigorous extrapolation (actually rather rare) to trying to get the feel of having science yank a worldview out from under you or me, to trying to get the feel of science right.  We live in a technologically accelerating world where we can’t expect ten years from now to be like ten years ago, or even all that much like today, other than humans will still embrace and resist change.