SF² Concatenation

Happy birthday to us, Happy birthday to us...  As of Easter we are 30 years old.

New up...

Below we have our our summer (northern hemisphere) edition with its seasonal round-up of SF and science news, articles and book reviews.

See 'Most recently added' below.  Enjoy.

This is a slightly special edition for those sentients with a penchant for using base ten and for whom our planet's whole-orbits about its parent star garner some significance:  this year is our 30th year of SF² Concatenation doing SF.  This is something that could not have happened without the support of its team and the current band of contributors.  We are no less appreciative of many of you, this site's regular visitors, the number of which -- if the site's traffic statistics are to be believed -- continute to grow: without readers/visitors a site lacks meaningful value. (Currently our site statistics are riding at over 20,000 unique visitors [accessing IPs] dowloading over 150,000 whole-pages a month: figures that are not hits as they exclude search bot visits etc. This is very roughly up 50% over the past 8 years and is broadly in line with our long-term growth in traffic the past two decades.)  This does encourage us, though the 2nd law of thermodynamics is taking its toll.  Truth be told we are not sure how much longer we are going to continue but are going to give reaching the one-third century mark a go. We hope that many of you will stick with us for the next three years.

Your good deed possibly?

We wonder if some of our site's visitors can kindly help?  If you have any social media followers in the London area (even if you live much farther away) could you kindly let them know of a new London SF group so that they in turn might let those of their followers living in south-east London know.  The new group meets in a local pub the 2nd Thursday of each month for informal SF book and film chat. See https://www.facebook.com/northheathscifi/ and www.concatenation.org/n-heath-sf.html.  They say that everone is connected with everyone else via a chain of six people. However the subset of those social-media active online with a decided interest in SF are likely connected to their peers with just two or three connections and so this exercise is ideally suited to social media. So this appeal could stand a good chance of working and that's down to you.  Thank you to all who can help in any way. Your reward will be in silicon heaven. J

Meanwhile, back at the plot...

Forthcoming

Mid-July will see the third this year of our choices as to the best of last year's Nature 'Futures' SF stories. As usual it is a one-page (PDF) short story that has either a bit of a twist and/or edge.  Then mid-September will see our autumnal round up of news and book reviews.

Meanwhile, hopefully you should find something to tickle your fancy below...

Most recently added

v27(3) 2017.4.20 -- New Columns & Articles for the Summer 2017

• Newscast for the Summer 2017. Which includes within it many key sections covering SF books, films and TV as well as science not to mention fandom and convention news. See the master newscast link index that connects to all the news sub-sections.
   
• My Top Ten Scientists – Ian Stewart
• Eurocon 2016 – Barcelona, Spain - Jim Walker
• The 2000AD 40th Anniversary Event - Anthony Heathcote
• SF Film recommendations from the 20th Century -- Part 3: The Space Age (1960-'69) - Tony Chester
• 2016/17 (year to Easter) SF Film Top Ten Chart and Other Worthies  (All archive annual film charts here)
• Gaia 2017 - Annual whimsical SF and/or science snippets and exotica
  Share re-Tweet for this edition's alert here

v27(3) 2017.4.20 -- Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

• The Hanging Tree - Ben Aaronovitch
• Class: Joyride - Guy Adams
• The Massacre of Mankind - Stephen Baxter
• The Massacre of Mankind (2nd review) - Stephen Baxter
• Obelisk - Stephen Baxter
• Take Back the Sky - Greg Bear
• Class: The Stone House - A. K. Benedict
• The Day Before Forever - Anna Caltabiano
• Fellside (2nd review) - M. R. Carey
• Babylon's Ashes - James S. A. Corey
• Arthur Conan Doyle: Gothic Tales - Arthur Conan Doyle
• The X Files Origins: Agent of Chaos - Kami Garcia
• Class: What She Does Next Will Astound You - James Goss
• Star Wars: Bloodline - Claudia Gray
• Star Wars: Catalyst - James Lucenoh
• Doctor Who – The Whoniverse - George Mann & Justin Richards
• Void Star - Zachary Mason
• The X Files Origins: Devil's Advocate - Jonathan Mayberry
• Down Station - Simon Morden
• The White City - Simon Morden
• Arcanum Unbounded - Brandon Sanderson
• Arcanum Unbounded (2nd review) - Brandon Sanderson
• Elantris- Brandon Sanderson
• Defender - G. X. Todd
• The Liberation - Ian Tregillis
• Judge Dredd The Mega Collection: Mean Machine - Wagner et al
• The Guns of Empire - Django Wexler
• Pelquin’s Comet - Ian Whates
• Doctor Who and the Crusaders - David Whitaker
• The Midwich Cuckoos - John Wyndham

v27(3) 2017.4.20 -- Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

• The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft & Magic - Owen Davies (ed.)
• The Extended Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
• Einstein at Home - Friedrich Herneck
• Artificial Intelligence: What everyone needs to know - Jerry Kaplan
• The Science of the Game of Thrones - Helen Keen
• Eugenics: A Very Short Introduction - Philippa Levine
• The Oxford Dictionary of Science - Oxford University Press
• True Genius: The Life and Work of Richard Garwin - Joel N. Shurkin
• Infinity: A Very Short Introduction - Ian Stewart
• Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction - Siva Vaidhyanathan

v27(2) 2017.3.15 -- A new story from the Nature Futures series

• Ghosts in the Machine - Aaron Moskalik
  Can you prove that you are alive? Really prove that you are alive? Administration may want to know...
• The index to all of the Concatenation selection of Nature 'Futures' stories.
• The guidelines for prospective 'Futures' SF short stories authors.

v27(1) 2017.1.15 -- New Columns & Articles for the Spring 2017

• Newscast for the Spring 2017. Which includes within it loads of sections covering SF books, films and TV as well as science.  See the master newscast link index that connects to all the news sub-sections.
   
• My Top Ten Scientists – Tony Ballantyne
• 27th Festival of Fantastic Films 2016 – Great Britain - Darrell Buxton
• British Fantasycon 2016 - Ian Hunter
• 2017 Diary of Major SF Conventions & Forthcoming SF Films of the Year
• SF/F/H book reviewers wanted

Full 'What's New' list

Want to thank SF² Concatenation contributors for their efforts?
Tell a friend about us and/or mention us on your social media
in our 30th anniversary in (2017) year.
We are not big on social media ourselves. Yes, we are ever so 20th century...