It's been a long week. Here's a few links I ran across to ease your Friday as well as this weekend's photo taken at Lake Hamilton, Arkansas.

Have a good weekend.

Just In Case You Didn't Realize How Big Jupiter Was...
This is a picture of Jupiter's moon Io floating over the planet's clouds, to remind you how freaking huge Jupiter is. Io is the same size as our own moon.

Maya
Explore a 2,000-year-old mural, one of the greatest discoveries of ancient Maya art ever found.

Does The Internet Mean The Death Of Print, Again?
Is the future of science fiction writing totally dependent on the internet? After looking at the (falling) sales figures for magazines like Analog and Asimov, comic book writer and novelist Warren Ellis argues that it's time for people to realize SF magazines are dead — except online.

Saturn's lovely lakes
NASA's white coats have decided that at least one of the massive lakes observed on Saturn's moon Titan contains liquid hydrocarbons, and have also identified the presence of ethane. This makes Titan the only body in our solar system beyond Earth known to have liquid on its surface ... the lakes of Saturn!

Dark themes for young adults
For young adults seeking intricate fantasy reading to fill these final summer weekends, a couple of titles rise to the top of the list. Elizabeth Knox's Dreamhunter Duet, two intriguing crossover novels (also billed as adult reading), combine the buoyancy of teenage characters with the wide border of omniscient narration to produce a navigable and yet intelligent journey for readers.

I've been enjoying a few days off work, so my weekend already started. But for you fellow working stiffs who need something to help make your Friday go faster, here's this weekend's links.

The pic I selected to accompany this weekend's links is a lake (might be a reservoir) outside Leadville, CO. Colorado's just an all-around beautiful place, isn't it?

The Problem of Dialect
One of the trickiest and most tempting acts of writing is to render a person's styles of speech.

What are the Essential SF Books of the Last 20 Years?
An upcoming WorldCon Panel called 20 Essential SF books of the Past 20 Years caught my eye because it sounded like an attention-grabbing post title. And it got me wondering...What are the essential sf books since 1988?

World-Building II
The single most awe-inspiring activity involved with writing is world-building. The writer who world builds becomes Master of the Universe.

Book Piracy Won't Destroy Writers
Why is it that people think so negatively about the Internet? Apparently the Society of Authors, whoever the heck they are, have spouted the doomsday report that the ever popular book group of book pirates will ruin us all.

Top 10 Greatest Robots In Movies
Everyone loved robots, and they have been the source of umpteen movies, books, and comics. In homage to the robots of film, we have picked the 10 greatest.

NOVA: Science Now: Space Elevator
Can we build a 22,000-mile-high cable to transport cargo and people into space?

This weekend's links of interest. This weekend's pic is from Sedona, Arizona. It was taken from a hot air balloon, thus the vantage point.

Have a good one.

A Floating Ecopolis for the Age of Rising Seas
When climate change allows oceans to wash over the lands we once called home, you're going to want to immigrate to one of the ecopolises that Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut created for his LILYPAD concept project.

Thursday YouTube: Classic Authors Speak on The Value of Science Fiction
Nine legendary authors present their ideas on why SF is important to readers and what it teaches them.

World Building & Ten Great Examples of Science Fiction World Building & MIND MELD: Worldbuilding
The ultimate in world-building was probably Lord of the Rings, for which J.R.R. Tolkien invented entire languages and histories. Not my favorite though by a long shot (did all the ballads and poems have to be used?), and Tolkien is likely underappreciated for his world-building since so many people have copied Middle Earth, or aspects of it, over the years, and it feels far from fresh.

Aging
Will research into "longevity genes" help us live longer and healthier lives?

Blackswift Will Be the First War Machine In Space
Development of the U.S.'s first hypersonic military space plane, the HTV-3X Blackswift, is zooming forward, with plans for Boeing and Lockheed to work together on the project.

Here we go with this weekend's links. Let's go with something from Hawaii for this weekend's picture. That's the lava flow from Mt. Kilauea on the Big Island. And, yes, that's about as close as we could get on foot. It was really spectacular once the sun went down.

DC Comics’s Watchmen Back to Press for 300,000 Copies
Riding a wave of interest and excitement over the new film adaptation of Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbon’s classic superhero graphic novel Watchmen, DC Comics is experiencing a boom in demand for the book, shipping more than 300,000 copies of the graphic novel in the two weeks since the release of the film’s trailer.

Instant Moon Base to Be Delivered by Ares Rocket
When the Ares V rocket lands on the moon next decade, part of its payload will be a full-functioning, instant moon base that will be ready for a several-month long habitation.

The Asteroid that Killed the Martian Magnetic Field
One of the many mysteries of Mars is how the planet lost its magnetic field 4 billion years ago.

The 10,000 Year Clock
The idea to build a monument scale, multi-millennial, all mechanical clock as an icon to long term thinking came from computer scientist Danny Hillis and was published in the form of an email to friends. Later it was followed up with an essay published in the 01995 Wired magazine scenarios issue.

Great Opening Sentences From Science Fiction
You can tell a lot about a science fiction book from its first sentence. Those first few words (or few dozen, in some cases) have to pull you into the story and bring you into a whole alternate world. A good first sentence "hooks" you, pulling you into the story with a quick jolt of action and mystery. But a great first sentence does way more than that — it establishes a tone, it sticks in your mind, and it's like a little otherworldly koan, confounding your expectations.

Five Reasons You Don't Have a Personal Jet Pack Yet
Flying around with your own personal jet engine, strapped to your back, has been one of the hallmarks of futurism for decades. Which sucks, because futuristic stuff is supposed to eventually happen. So why the hell aren't we all flying to work via rocket power?

The Jetpack: From Comics to a Liftoff in the Yard
To rise off the ground wearing a jetpack is to feel the force of dreams. Very, very noisy dreams.

What are the Best Examples of SF/F Worldbuilding?

In keeping with our worldbuilding theme to help out the creative young minds of the Shared Worlds creative writing program, we asked this week's esteemed panelists the following question: Which sf/f story is your favorite example of worldbuilding? Why?

This weekend's links presented for your viewing pleasure.

Amorality Tales: Elric
No matter how many of my remaining brain cells are eaten up by song lyrics or “Simpsons” catchphrases, there is one scene from a fantasy novel I shall never forget: Our hero has fallen in with a horde of savages as they ransack a town. To keep himself from getting caught up in their bloodshed, he takes refuge in a house that has so far avoided the “slaughter-madness,” only to have his sanctuary violated by a barbarian dragging a helpless female villager by her hair.

Rather than immediately leaping to the woman’s rescue, our protagonist tells the intruder to find a safe haven of his own. It is only when the barbarian refuses to leave that our hero draws his sword, attacking with such swiftness and ferocity that the would-be rapist is cleaved in two. Who said chivalry is dead?

DNA Tests Reveal Who Was Having Sex with Neanderthals 40,000 Years Ago
Are modern humans the hybrid children of early humans and Neanderthals? For over a decade, scientists have wondered what exactly happened to the Neanderthals, low-tech hominids who populated Western Europe, when homo sapiens arrived on the scene from Africa and Asia with sophisticated weaponry and the rudiments of symbolic art.

The New Hottest Spot in the Milky Way
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope revealed an image of what could be the brightest star in our galaxy: Wolf-Rayet star WR 102ka or, more fondly, the "Peony nebula" star. Astronomers say that it burns with the light intensity of 3.2 million suns — but that's a rough estimate, and one that might even stretch to 4 or 5 million suns.

The History of Science Fiction: 1900-1909
…probably even more significant was Albert Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity which he published in 1905. As well as giving us the only equation most people know (E=mc2), Special Relativity gave us the concepts of Time dilation, Length contraction and relativity of simultaneity. These are things that science fiction writers still use in stories today.

You, too, could be a superhero but don't plan on a long career
The dream of almost everyone who has flipped open a Batman comic book, to don the cape and to fight crime, is humanly possible, says a University of Victoria professor who has written a book about it. But the stress it would put on the body, similar to an Olympic athlete or champion boxer, would make a career as the caped crusader short-lived.

The Earth-Bashers
Mars isn't the only planet with awe-inspiring craters. Here on Earth, we've been pummeled by space rocks in the not-so-distant past, and our planet has the scars to prove it.

Authors Guild Warns on S&S e-Book Royalty Proposal
The Authors Guild has sent out an advisory to its members suggesting that they carefully review a letter from Simon & Schuster that looks to add an amendment to their contracts that will set the standard royalty for e-books at 15% of the catalog retail price for e-books.

The Frozen Waterfalls of Mars
This deep gorge known as the Echus Chasma was ripped into the Martian soil by gushing water, and scientists speculate that it may once have boasted giant, 4000-meter-high waterfalls.

Book Sales May be Much Greater than Previously Thought
In a report whose findings are sure to be questioned by many in the industry, the Book Industry Study Group has issued a report that says book sales have been seriously underreported.

I ran across quite a few interesting or cool links this past week. Here they are for your viewing pleasure. Have a good weekend.

Did Tor’s free ebooks affect sales?
A few months ago Tobias Buckell noticed a trend in his book sales that most midlist novelists don’t typically see. His book Crystal Rain, which had been released in mass market paperback a year before, experienced a sudden spike in sales, more than doubling from the previous week. Perhaps even more noticeable was the jump in sales of the sequel to that novel, Ragamuffin, which saw an even more dramatic increase.

NOTE: To see the complete index of all of Tor's free e-book giveaways, go here.

That's for girls, he said scornfully . . .
The feminists are mad because I said SF isn't girly. I think SF is girly, because I'm a girl, and my father gave me my first 3 SF books for my eighth birthday (Tunnel in the Sky, Sargasso of Space, and the third one escapes me). I spent one summer in Bantam Doubleday Dell's science fiction department, which was all female. I have an entire elaborate space opera planned out in my head which I may someday write, if my fiction writing stops being terrible.

The Moon Rocket Project NASA Doesn't Want You to Know About
A group of secretive rocket designers have defected from NASA's rocket-building team to spearhead their own forbidden project. They spend their evenings designing Jupiter (pictured), a moon rocket they think will work far better for less money then NASA's current moon rocket, Ares, set to bring some people to the moon in 2020. With all its plans available on a site called Direct 2.0, and nearly 100 engineers working, its possible Jupiter could zoom to the moon before Ares — if it can get some funding.

An Anti-Stress Pill that Prevents Your Body from Aging
Stress runs down the body's immune system, which is why people with high-stress jobs or events in their lives are vulnerable to illness. Now a researcher at UCLA has discovered the link between emotional stress and physical damage — and she's going to develop a pill that will allow you to endure stress without the nasty side-effects. And there may also be one good side-effect: Extreme longevity.

Brightest Supernova In History Has Turned To Velvety Goodness
This supernova dominated our skies for weeks, a thousand years ago. It was brighter than Venus and visible during the day, and observers documented it in China, Japan, Europe and the Arab world. We now know that the brightest supernova on record, SN 1006c, was caused by a white dwarf star that gained mass from a companion star until it gorged itself and exploded.

10 Best Science Fiction Movie Endings
If you saw my list of underrated science fiction movies, you’ll know that I love a good ending. For me a great ending is when the movie really uses those last seconds to add something to the storyline (or even transform your perception of the whole movie), so that you sit watching the credits trying to digest what just happened. (I’ve nothing against epilogue-style endings–I’m looking at you, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King–but they’re not great in and of themselves.)

Hard fantasy
I think it’s been about two years since the Internet spawned a new iteration of an old debate (like it tends to do), in this case the notion of “hard fantasy.” These thoughts coalesced in my head then, but what with one thing and another I was too busy to ever post them, so here I am: well and truly behind the bandwagon. And I’ve lost all my links from that old debate to boot. But it’s a notion I happen to like, so let me toss in my two cents’ worth, however late they may be.

The Apocalypse Is Coming: An Interview with Terry Brooks
Terry Brooks' Shannara books have been entertaining readers for over 30 years with tales of elves and demons, evil deeds and heroic rescues. It's a richly detailed milieu he has created and now he's exploring the origins of his world in his current series, The Genesis of Shannara, an exciting mix of Shannara history and Brooks' Word & Void characters. The new series follows Knight of the Word Logan Tom as he battles across a post-apocalyptic countryside with a group of street kids, fighting to reach the rendezvous with the mysterious and magical Gypsy Morph; meanwhile elf Kirisin must find the blue Elfstones and lead his own reluctant race out of the Cintra Forest; and street kid Hawk embarks on his own voyage of discovery -- about himself.