Astrogator’s Logs

New Words, New Worlds
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Artist, Heather Oliver             

Fame is Beckoning!

July 1st, 2009

blue-saxYours truly pontificates in the latest issue of Crossed Genres. And I don’t have even a Master’s in Futurism!

Many thanks to Peggy Kolm, whose post about The Biology of Star Trek drew the editors’ attention, and to Kay Holt for the penetrating queries.

Excerpt:

Crossed Genres: We send astronauts up; we try to keep everything very clean and very sterile. Am I right in guessing that it just doesn’t seem viable if the population is going to stay there for very long?

Athena Andreadis: Well, these are not self-sustained, long- term missions. The real reason for the sterility is not to contaminate exoplanetary samples. Also, if you read the fine print, you find out that one of the major and most time consuming tasks in places like the space station is scrubbing the fungus off of surfaces because there are no countervailing entities to take care of it. Not very heroic. All these macho alpha-type people up there going ‘scrubba-scrubba’.

Image: Blue Moo, by Sandra Boynton (detail)

“Keeping an Open Mind Is a Virtue, but not so Open that Your Brains Fall Out.”

June 12th, 2009

The Hunter

June 10th, 2009

Equalizer or Terminator?

May 24th, 2009

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!

May 17th, 2009

Set Transporter Coordinates to…

May 13th, 2009

“… ‘Tis Not Too Late to Seek a Newer World…”

May 10th, 2009

Forever Young

May 3rd, 2009

On Being Bitten to Death by Ducks

April 4th, 2009

Snachismo, or: What Do Women Want?

February 12th, 2009

“Dream Other Dreams, and Better”

January 11th, 2009

And Ain’t I a Human?

December 20th, 2008

Barack Hussein Obama, 44th U.S. President

November 5th, 2008

Starwatch

October 13th, 2008

The Heirs of Prometheus

May 28th, 2008

The Shifgrethor of Changelings

April 27th, 2008

“At Least Songs…”

April 20th, 2008

Should We Shout into the Darkness?

April 14th, 2008

Dreamers of a Better Future, Unite!

March 13th, 2008

The String Cuts Deeper than the Blade

September 13th, 2007