Wings of Saint Nazaire is “a retro space combat sim in the vein of Wing Commander and X-Wing” and the alpha version can be played right now if you have unity installed in your browser, or downloaded in Linux, Mac or Windows versions. X-Wing and Tie-Fighter were games I played a lot as a kid and a new space sim like that would be welcome indeed.
Your Happening World (September 10th through September 16th)
- Collection of images of game designers doing the right thing –
- Janus & Aurora — SF3, The Society for the Furtherance & Study of Fantasy & Science Fiction – Janus was nominated for three “Best Fanzine” Hugos in 1978, 1979 and 1980. Jeanne Gomoll was nominated for two “Best Fan Artist” Hugos in 1978 and 1980. Janus and Aurora were the most prominent feminist science fiction fanzines of their time. With the exception of Amanda Bankier’s fanzine, The Witch and the Chameleon, which ceased publication in 1976, Janus and Aurora were the ONLY fanzines with this focus.
- Robot Hugs – Pronoun Etiquette –
- Pinoy-Culture ~ A Filipino Cultural & History Blog | do you have any posts about, or could you maybe write something about, bakla and tomboys in the philippines? – Pre-colonial or current? Queers were accepted in society before the Spaniards and they weren’t treated any differently. And actually even a few of our deities were transgendered like the Tagalog deity Lakapati who was the deity of fertility for the fields and crops and was the one of the most worshiped and respected. A
- The First Successful Demonstration Of Brain-To-Brain Communication In Humans – For the first time ever, neuroscientists have demonstrated the viability of direct — and completely non-invasive — brain-to-brain communication in humans. Remarkably, the experiment allowed subjects to exchange mentally-conjured words despite being 5,000 miles apart.
Otherbound — Corinne Duyvis
Otherbound
Corinne Duyvis
387 pages
published in 2014
It was thanks to The SKiffy and Fanty Show that I got to know about Dutch author Corinne Duyvis and her début novel Otherbound, when they had an interview with her about her book. This interview intrigued me enough to buy the ebook and start reading it immediately, because Duyvis was saying smart things about diversity and disability; it also helped that in the Dutch SF round table was raving about this book. And they were right to. This is a smart, well written fantasy novel with a clever, original idea at the heart of it that deserves to be a huge success.
Nolan would be just a normal high school kid, where it not for his crippling epileptic seizures. Amara is a servant girl, her only job to keep the fugitive princess Cilla safe, functioning as the lightning rod for the princess’ curse. Any drop of her blood spilled will attract the world’s vengeance on her, so instead Amara has to draw the curse to her, because she has a healing power that will allow the curse to do its worst and still leave her alive. As a side effect of her “gift”, Nolan was dragged into her world, her mind, seeing and experiencing Amara’s life every time he closes his eyes, every time he blinks. So when Cilla’s protector and Amara’s overseer, Jorn, punishes Amara for her neglicence by thrusting her arms into a fire, Nolan feels the pain alongside her. It’s this what’s really behind his epilepsy, this loss of control as he’s sucked into Amara’s world and can’t pay attention to his own.
Fly along in my beautiful balloon
So a couple of weeks ago my brother and his family went on holiday to the Belgian Ardennes and took my mother with them for a long weekend, during which they went to a ballooning festival. That got my mum to talk about how she wanted to do that someday, which my sister in law (more or less; it’s complicated) remembered. So when she found somebody offering a ticket for such a balloon flight cheap online, she didn’t hesitate but talk that guy into giving the ticket to her for just a bouquet of flowers and some pictures from the flight. She’s awesome like that; her skill at social enginering would be scary if used for evil.
To cut a long story short, mum wanted somebody to go along with her, nobody else in the family wanted to or dared to, so I got to go along. Having to buy my own ticket even. But it was worth it and it was brilliant flying over the Dutch countryside on a perfect evening, live tweeting the whole thing.
ImagiCon revisited
A couple of days ago I blogged about ImagiCon and their payment system. Now the chairwoman has responded:
We’re sorry to hear that you’d rather not make use of Paylogic. We’ve opted for this system, because, as a starting convention, it’s downright impossible (not to mention quite expensive) to create and maintain our own system for digital tickets. We chose Paylogic because it’s one of the most reliable systems and even though people have to register/log in to buy a ticket, we can assure you that you will NOT receive any unwanted mailings from Paylogic or from our convention. The data they ask is used by us so we have a statistical overview of the public that attends our convention. It serves no other purpose.
I could quibble with this explenation — other cons have managed to handle their own registration– but I like and appreciate that the con took the time to respond to my complaint. It’s a fair point and though I’m still likely to buy my own ticket at the door, even if it’s slightly more expensive (16 vs 20 euros), it has put most of my fears at rest. The only real point that remains is the obligatory reporting of gender in the form, with neither the possibility to opt out nor an option other than male or female. There should at least have been an option for unknown/undeclared/other.