Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins (played by Patrick Kennedy) looks out at the moon in a dramatization that’s part of “8 Days: To the Moon and Back.” (BBC Studios)
Even after 50 years, it’s still possible to find new angles on one of history’s most widely witnessed events — as this year’s retellings of the Apollo 11 moon saga demonstrate.
But “Chasing the Moon,” a six-hour documentary series that premieres July 8 on PBS, freshens the Apollo story in different ways. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Robert Stone goes back to the roots of the U.S.-Soviet moon race and brings in perspectives that rarely get a share of the spotlight.
Science-fiction author Neal Stephenson discusses hsi latest book, “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell,” at Town Hall Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
Seattle author Neal Stephenson’s works of fiction often play off the potential for future facts — for example, the virtual world described in “Snow Crash,” the nanotechnology at the heart of “The Diamond Age” and the millennium-scale thinking that’s embodied in “Anathem” (and in the real-life 10,000 Year Clock bankrolled by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos).
His latest novel, “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell,” kicks it up a notch with ruminations about what it would take to create an artificial afterlife, powered by computerized replicas of human consciousness.
Stephenson acknowledges that his vision in the afterlife in “Fall” plays loosely with the facts of neuroscience. But his books touch on other technological themes that are closer to reality, and he discussed several of those themes this week during a talk at Town Hall Seattle. Here’s a roundup of five ideas well worth thinking about — with recommendations for further reading.
Science-fiction author Neal Stephenson, shown here at a 2018 Town Hall event in Bellevue, Wash., uses Seattle as a setting in his latest novel, “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell.” (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
Are we living in a simulation? Is there an afterlife? And if not, what would it take to create one? Seattle science-fiction author Neal Stephenson knits together ideas as old as the Bible and as up to date as Elon Musk’s musings in an epic 880-page novel titled “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell.”
“Fall” takes its rightful place alongside Stephenson’s earlier works, including 1991’s “Snow Crash,” which anticipated the rise of virtual and augmented reality; 1995’s “The Diamond Age,” which celebrated nanotechnology and neo-Victorianism; and 2015’s “Seveneves,” a tale that started with the moon’s mysterious destruction.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates rated “Seveneves” among his favorite books, saying that it contained “so many cool ideas, memorable characters and good storylines that I can’t cover them all.” I can hardly wait to hear what he says about Stephenson’s latest.
Books about the moon can help get you in the proper mood to see the “Destination Moon” exhibit at Seattle’s Museum of Flight. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
In the 50 years since Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong left humanity’s first bootprint on the moon, that “one small step” has launched one giant load of books.
Basketfuls of books about space are now hitting store shelves — not only to mark the golden anniversary of that first moon landing, but also to provide the context for a renewed focus on lunar exploration.
Whether you’re looking for an Apollo book you can read to your kids, an award-winning sci-fi novel about alternate space history, or up-to-date management tips gleaned from the early space effort, we’ve got you covered. Here are 18 recently published (or updated) books that are well-suited for this year’s summer of space, plus a couple of bonus picks.
Vonda N. McIntyre, a leader of Seattle’s science-fiction community who made her mark with “Star Trek” novels as well as the Clarion West Writers Workshop, has passed away at the age of 70.
McIntyre was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer eight weeks ago — but she managed to complete her final novel, titled “Curve of the World,” less than two weeks before her death at home in Seattle on April 1.
“Space Atlas,” “Space Stations,” “All Over the Map” and “The Universe Today Ultimate Guide to Viewing the Cosmos” are among newly released coffee-table books with cosmic themes. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
If you’re going to give somebody a book for the holidays, why not go big?
In this age of ebooks, smartphones and tiny houses, there’s less need (and less room) for shelves of inch-thick volumes lining the walls. But it’s still nice to have a colorful, glossy-paged book to peruse during the commercials while you’re watching the latest episode of “Mars.” And if it’s a big book about a big subject, that’s even better.
Here are five big-format books on out-of-this-world subjects to put on your gift list, or to consider giving to folks who are crazy about the cosmos.
To be sure, the science-fiction saga about our future fractious solar system has been very, very good to Abraham and his co-author for the book series, Ty Franck.
Writing under the pen name of James S.A. Corey, Abraham and Franck are just finishing up the eighth book in the series, “Tiamat’s Wrath,” and getting ready to start the ninth and final volume. (Abraham says he already knows the title, but is bound by Orbit Books to keep it secret for now.)
Then there’s the TV show: The third season of “The Expanse” is wrapping up on the Syfy cable channel, and a month ago, Amazon picked up the show in dramatic fashion for a fourth season.
That announcement was made at a space conference by none other than Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, with the cast of “The Expanse” sitting out in the audience.
Abraham has compared the writing business to a casino, and says that “writers are, among other things, professional gamblers.” If that’s so, he’s hit the jackpot with “The Expanse” alone.
But that’s not his only play: He uses a different pen name, M.L.N. Hanover, for a long-running wizards-and-demons book series known as “The Black Sun’s Daughter.” Under his own name, Abraham writes fantasy novels (and has contributed to the “Wild Cards” graphic novel series).
Abraham, who lives in New Mexico with his wife and daughter, wore yet another hat this week: He served as an instructor for the Clarion West Summer Workshop, which brings a select few writers to Seattle’s University District to sharpen their skills in speculative fiction.
It was in that capacity that he gave a reading at University Book Store, and sat down in the store’s coffee shop before the reading for a Q&A with yours truly. Here’s an edited transcript of the talk, which started out with the revival of “The Expanse” TV series and ended up with a wide-angle look at politics in the Donald Trump era.
Seattle science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler gets a star turn in today’s Google Doodle graphic.
Seattle science-fiction author Octavia E. Butler passed away in 2006, but she’s getting timely good wishes today on what would have been her 71st birthday in the form of a Google Doodle tribute.
The black writer’s work broke the “white guys with lasers” mold for science fiction by telling stories that reflected the future-day diversity she wanted to see in present-day society. Not in a preachy way, but in the form of more than a dozen thought-provoking, award-winning novels and shorter works.
In 1995, she was the first science-fiction writer to win a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” and four years later she moved from her native California to Seattle. She died unexpectedly at the age of 58 after falling and striking her head on a walkway outside her home.
Physicist Freeman Dyson’s latest book is “Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters.” (Dan Komoda / Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ USA)
Alien megaspheres … rockets powered by nuclear bombs … freeze-dried life in outer space: These are just some of the ideas that have flowered in the brain of physicist Freeman Dyson, and he’s not done yet.
Dyson, who turned 94 last December, has spent most of his career at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and he still hangs his hat there as a professor emeritus. But he also has a connection to the Pacific Northwest: His son, tech historian George Dyson, lives in Bellingham, Wash.
The elder Dyson renews his Northwest connections on Wednesday at a Town Hall Seattle presentation that’s framed as a conversation with Seattle science-fiction author Neal Stephenson and Robbert Dijkgraaf, director of the Institute for Advanced Study.
The 1991 stamp that served as the rallying cry for the New Horizons Mission to Pluto is “updated” by members of the New Horizons science team on July 14, 2015, the day the spacecraft flew past Pluto. Principal investigator Alan Stern is at far left. (Credit: Bill Ingalls / NASA)
It took nine years for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft to get to Pluto, and laying the groundwork for that history-making space mission here on Earth took nearly twice as long.
The drama and intrigue surrounding New Horizons during those decades, as chronicled in a new book titled “Chasing New Horizons: Inside the First Mission to Pluto,” might be enough for any planetary scientist. But Alan Stern — the book’s co-author, the mission’s principal investigator and arguably Pluto’s most ardent defender — is ready to do it all again.
Stern doesn’t expect his campaign to send an orbiter to Pluto to face quite as many challenges, now that the world knows so much more about the dwarf planet with a giant heart.
“I hope it’s a more straightforward process,” Stern told GeekWire. “First of all, there are now a lot more people who are interested in going back to Pluto. … Now that we’ve done the flyby, there isn’t a planetary scientist in the world that isn’t impressed.”
Last month, Stern and other New Horizons scientists signed onto a white papercalling for NASA to fund an in-depth study of potential Pluto orbiter missions. That grass-roots approach mirrors how the “Pluto Underground” campaign for New Horizons got started around a restaurant table in Baltimore, back in 1989.
“Chasing New Horizons,” written by Stern and astrobiologist David Grinspoon, traces the twists and turns that led from there to the piano-sized spacecraft’s launch in 2006 and its Pluto flyby in 2015.
