Category: Critical Mass News

The surreal, digitally altered photographs of Aydın Büyüktaş defy time and space, presenting his home city of Istanbul as though viewed through a wormhole.

His images are the culmination of his reading during his childhood and adolescence in Ankara – science fiction by writers such as Isaac Asimov and HG Wells, as well as scientific and technical journals. “These books made me question the issues of wormholes, blackholes, parallel universes, gravitation and bending of space and time,” he said by email from Istanbul.
— Elle Hunt, writing on Cities in the guardian

There’s a bargain hidden away in a corner of jb hifi: the blueray of the Reconstructed & Restored Metropolis from Fitz Lang is now available!

The post xmas sale means you can get a copy for $8!

This is the version which includes the missing 23 minutes from the Argentinian print, plus a new recording of the original score.

Interest in “Properties of Expanding Universes” is at an all-time high: Stephen Hawking’s doctoral thesis of that name crashed Cambridge University’s open-access repository on the first day the document was posted online.

The Cambridge Library made several PDF files of the thesis available for download from its website, […]
By late Monday local time, the well-known theoretical physicist’s thesis had been viewed more than 60,000 times, says Stuart Roberts, deputy head of research communications at Cambridge. He added, “Other popular theses might have 100 views per month.”

— item from  file770.com

Just to round off the year for Critical Mass, we invite you to jot down some notes on your best new discovery for the year, so that you can spend five minutes telling us about it. What genre book, film, TV show, comic or play took your fancy this year? Come along and tell us about it!

As it’s our last meeting for the year, we’re inviting you to join us for dinner after the meeting: around 8:15 at East of Norman, a short walk from the meeting at Kappy’s.
As usual, a 7pm start Wednesday night!

Directed by New Zealand’s Taika Waititi, [Ragnarok is] the daftest movie from the comic book studio to date, shot through with the anarchically quirky humour in Waititi’s films like What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Boy.

Filmed on the Gold Coast at Hemsworth’s request and employing plenty of locals, including indigenous people, there are a surprising number of Aussie (and Kiwi) accents and in-jokes.

All of the spaceships featured in the film are named after Holden models, including the Statesman, the Kingswood, the Torana and the Commodore.

— more details in The New Daily: http://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/movies/2017/10/24/thor-ragnarok/

The Christian Science Monitor has an entertaining on-line quiz about surviving in the Star wars universe.

Adam’s going to talk about Margaret Cavendish, utopian feminist — 7pm at Kappy’s, 22 Compton St, Adelaide. Don’t miss it! Note this is on the second Wednesday of October.

First published in 1666, written by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World is the first fictional portrayal of women and the new science. Blazing World is the first science-fiction novel known to have been written and published by a woman, and represents a pioneering female scientific utopia.

While you can download the original edition from project Gutenberg, the 2016 edition by Sara Mendelson includes additional critical material and is considered the preferred edition (available online from broadview press).

“Sara Mendelson’s edition of Blazing World is a major contribution to the ever-increasing scholarship on the works of this remarkable woman. Cavendish’s utopian romance, which also functions as a critique of the new experimental science, is becoming one of the canonical texts of the Scientific Revolution.”
— Lisa Sarasohn, Oregon State University

[…] The Imperial Radch trilogy [by Ann Leckie] impressed a lot of people, as witnessed by the array of awards and award nominations it took home. But after such a successful debut—after such a lauded debut trilogy—there is always going to be a question when the author moves on to something new. Can the next book live up to the quality of what has gone before while breaking new ground? Or will they spend their career telling different versions of the same story?

The answer, in Leckie’s case, is Provenance, which is every bit as good as her previous work and very different in theme, tone, and approach. Provenance takes place in the same universe as the Ancillary books, but outside the Radchaai sphere of influence. Hwae is a small planet-nation of limited importance to anyone except its inhabitants and near neighbours. Unlike the Radchaai, the people of Hwae have three genders (and consequently three sets of pronouns, she, he, and e) which young people choose between as one of the signs they have become adult. Hwaeans ascribe immense social and cultural importance to relics, which play a significant (and legitimating) role in their culture and politics. […]

—  “Exploring a New Corner of the Universe: Provenance by Ann Leckie” by Liz Bourke on tor.com

The Guardian reports that Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston is to star in a new 10-part science fiction series called Electric Dreams: The World of Philip K Dick, from Battlestar Galactica’s Ronald D Moore.

Each episode will be adapted and made contemporary by a team of British and American writers, “both illustrating Philip K Dick’s prophetic vision and celebrating the enduring appeal of his work”.

more info from the Guardian