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The terrifying world of tomorrow…today!

The BBC is reporting that astronomers are puzzled by a strange bright spot which has appeared in the clouds of Venus. Even better, the spot was first observed by an amateur astronomer.*

In what one hopes is unrelated news, I received here in the office my advanced copies of Usurper of the Sun, a hard SF novel (and Seiun winner!) that details in its earliest chapters the discovery of a strange bright spot on Mercury by an amateur astronomer, namely high school girl Aki Shiraishi. Fun novel or horrifying guide to our grim future of climactic collapse and alien invasion? YOU decide.

* Oh, I’m sure the Venus spot is just volcanic activity and not aliens breaking the planet apart to build a ring around the sun. Totally, absolutely sure. I have no idea why I created a “Holy crap, we’re all gonna die!” tag.

Far Out Space Porch

One of the neat things about Japanese SF is that one of the recurring themes is international cooperation. Indeed, in The Lord of the Sands of Time, travelers from the twenty-sixth century travel back to the second century AD in order to propagate a set of Laws that declare catastrophe to be inevitable and cooperation between peoples the only hope for survival.

Well, this isn’t quite the same as teaming up to fight off an alien invasion across more than 100,000 years, but Space.com reports today that a Japanese “space porch” will be aboard the next Endeavor mission. Also, the porch is named “Jeff.”

Here’s hoping this sort of international cooperation continues so that when the aliens arrive a heavily armed space portico named Lorraine will be in orbit to fight them off…

All You Need is…HAL?

While watching Terminator Salvation the other day, I got to thinking about “Cyberdyne”, the fictional company that built SkyNet in the film series. (Cyberdyne isn’t mentioned in the film all that often, but if you’ve seen the movie your mind likely started wandering too.) Googling around today, I found that Cyberdyne is real! It’s a Japanese company with a convenient English-language website. And they make a product called Robot Suit HAL!

HAL and Cyberdyne? Sometimes people like to beg for futuristic science fiction-y trouble, I guess. Or maybe they are just preparing for war against the alien Mimics, as in All You Need Is KILL.

There’s even a bit of a resemblance, I think. Here’s a dude in a HAL suit:

HAL suit

And here is Keiji Kiriya rockin’ the Jacket on the cover of KILL:

All You Need Is KILL cover

As you can see, in the grim future of All You Need Is KILL, it is always after Labor Day and thus Kiriya wouldn’t be caught dead—even though he dies over and over again while trapped in a time loop— wearing white.


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