#gregory benford

[quasi-normalcy]

Reading Gregory Benford's novel Timescape (1980) in 2024 is kind of depressing because, on the one hand, it depicts a horrible climate dystopia that's steadily getting worse, but on the other hand, it assumes that international governments will take the problem seriously and actually take proactive steps to enforce conservation and remediate the problem.

Also, tachyons don't exist in real life (to our knowledge)

[larmegliamori]

Daneel, to Dors: "I have many defenses against detection of my true nature. You have even more, for you are nearly natural."

My honest to god reaction:

Mr. Benford we gotta talk,,,

[phantastische-illustrationen]

Gregory Benford - In The Ocean Of The Night (1978) (Peter Andrew Jones)

[fuzzyghost]

More books that caught my eye lately:

Timescape - Gregory Benford (1980)

Book of Data - Nuffield Advanced Science (1984)

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet - Katie Hafner/Matthew Lyon (1996)

Cyber Way - Alan Dean Foster (1990)

Timestop! - Philip José Farmer (1960)

Fly Fishing - J.R. Hartley (1991)

[trainwiz]

Why is every super mutant line in Fallout 76 either “ME SMASH HUMAN BONES! HAHA! I AM STRONGEST” or “You know human, Gregory Benford once said that there is no greater hubris than to think that we could take the place of godlike implications. Creating life is meant to be sacred, and our existence is just further proof that you rightfully deserved the apocalypse. Now me smash you.”

[eagle-writes]

tom_geraghty

@tom_geraghty@mastodon.online

"Any technology distinguishable from

magic is insufficiently advanced."

Gregory Benford

Jul 8, 2023 at 11:33:13 AM

Ink: Diamine Beethoven

[bookclub4m]

Episode 200 - Library Fiction

It’s episode 200, which means it’s (finally) time for us to discuss Library Fiction! We talk about the stereotypes and tropes of library fiction, unacknowledged work of library workers,and more. Plus: we talk way more about our actual jobs than we usually do.

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray 🦇 | Jam Edwards

Things We Read (or tried to…)

Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges 

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence

Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries, and Lore by Paula Guran (below are direct links to many of the stories from this collection)

In the House of the Seven Librarians by Ellen Klages

In Libres by Elizabeth Bear

Those Who Watch by Ruthanna Emrys

Paper Cuts Scissors by Holly Black

Summer Reading by Ken Liu

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

With Tales in Their Teeth, From the Mountain They Came by A.C. Wise

The Librarian’s Dilemma by E. Saxey

The Green Book by Amal El-Mohtar

A Woman's Best Friend by Robert Reed

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Xia Jia, translated by Ken Liu

The Sigma Structure Symphony by Gregory Benford

The Fort Moxie Branch by Jack McDevitt

The Last Librarian: Or a Short Account of the End of the World by Edoardo Albert

How Can I Help You by Laura Sims

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor 

Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen

Other Media We Mentioned

The Library of Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

The Empty Crown by Rosemary Edghill 

Meghan meant The Abortion by Richard Brautigan (not Trout Fishing in America)

The Midnight Library by Kazuno Kohara

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

Bookhunter by Jason Shiga

Unshelved by Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes

Library Comic by Gene Ambaum and Willow Payne

Welcome to Night Vale

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Episode 134 - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Abbott Elementary

Pounded In The Butt By My Handsome Sentient Library Card Who Seems Otherworldly But In Reality Is Just A Natural Part Of The Priceless Resources Our Library System Provides by Chuck Tingle

My Librarian Is A Beautiful Lesbian Ice Cream Cone And She Tastes Amazing by Chuck Tingle

Party Girl

Public Enemy - Fight the Power

Fictional Librarians

50 Fictional Librarians, Ranked

Rupert Giles (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Barbara Gordon (DC Comics)

The Librarian (Discworld)

Lucien (The Sandman)

Evelyn Carnahan (The Mummy)

Marian Paroo (The Music Man)

Librarians (Welcome to Night Vale)

“While their description is never fully given, minor details of their physical characteristics have been described:”

yellow, gnarled teeth

sharp claws and pincers

Wings

Tentacles

thousands of spiny legs

rattles (that make noise when they move)

thoraxes

Links, Articles, and Things

Two-Fisted Library Stories zines

North Boulder Library is ready to open (there’s a slide in image 6!)

15 Librarian & Library Fiction by POC Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

What You Are Looking for Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts

Cora's Kitchen by Kimberly Garrett Brown

The Next Best Fling by Gabriella Gamez 

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

The Library of the Dead by T.L. Huchu

The Library of Fates by Aditi Khorana

The Plotters by Kim Un-Su

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

The Library Thief by Kuchenga Shenjé

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

Bookhunter by Jason Shiga

Give us feedback!

Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Instagram, join our Facebook Group or Discord Server, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, October 1st we’ll be getting ready for spooky season with the Weird West! (That’s Supernatural Horror Westerns)

Then on Tuesday, October 15th it’s time for our “We All Read the Same Book” episode as we discuss A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher.

[stefy-69-09]

Quando la chimica è quella giusta, tutti gli esperimenti funzionano.

~Gregory Benford~🌹

[mancino]

Quando la chimica è quella giusta, tutti gli esperimenti funzionano.

Gregory Benford

[banchuuya]

bc I'm a nerd I think my oc is gonna be named after Gregory Benford, who is an Astrophysicist that also writes sci fi novels, but we're gonna call them Beni

I now have a internal debate over what their ability should be called, given his book titles

their ability allows them to manipulate spacetime, which they frequently take advantage of to teleport or change appearances. this also lends them cool eyesight that allows them to actually see some interactions with the space all around them and it's pretty sick. so, some my two ability name options would be:

Timescape (this book is about a scientist trying to send messages back in time to prevent an ecological crisis, but he has to stay vague enough they don't fix it completely, otherwise it creates a paradox lol)

Anomalies (a collection of his short stories but also the name of one of his short stories. An amateur astronomer discovers that the moon is slightly out of orbit, throwing the scientific field into chaos as they find distortion where the moon should've been. The amateur asks "what happens if there is a computational error in reality" ie what if it's all a simulation babey)

Anyways pls lemme know in comments or something which you guys think is just cooler or fits better or just thoughts <3

[ahgastayverse]

TACHYONIC ANTITELEPHONE

STRAY KIDS “ASTRONAUT” MV THEORY

A tachyonic antitelephone is a hypothetical device in theoretical physics that could be used to send signals into one's own past.

Albert Einstein in 1907 presented a thought experiment of how faster-than-light signals can lead to a paradox of causality, which was described by Einstein and Arnold Sommerfeld in 1910 as a means “to telegraph into the past”. The same thought experiment was described by Richard Chace Tolman in 1917; thus, it is also known as Tolman's paradox.

A device capable of “telegraphing into the past” was later also called a “tachyonic antitelephone” by Gregory Benford et al.

Wikipedia, Science Pie

[larmegliamori]

So I've started Foundation's Fear

[braindamagelesbian]

3, and 13 (because u love to be a hater)

thank you elise!! ily. 🐌

3. What were your top five books of the year?

This was so hard I read a lot of good books this year but here’s five (not mentioned elsewhere)

- An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon; this book hits like a fucking truck, like a spaceship on a long haul journey through the stars that has recreated the social dynamics of the Antebellum South?! it’s a lot but so so good. the protagonist, Aster, is on a personal quest to find out what happened to her mother who disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

- To Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer; part scifi mystery novel, part philosophical treatise on the interactions between religion and gender and society, part the confessions of the most unreliable narrator possible. set in a world in which the French Enlightenment Revolution succeeded and several religious wars led to the splintering of society into ‘Hives’ where discussion of religion and gender is banned. a theft threatens to cause society to collapse and local criminal Mycroft is tasked to find it while simultaneously protecting his charge, a boy with God-like powers.

- Dead Silence by SA Barnes; scifi thriller/horror/mystery set on the space travel equivalent of the wreck of the Titanic. also our protagonist sees ghosts.

- Notes From The Burning Age by Claire North; a post-post-apocalypse novel about a librarian in charge of protecting and disseminating literature from before the end of the world due to catastrophic climate change.

- Blackfish City by Sam J Miller; another book set in the aftermath of catastrophic climate change, but this time about a city floating in the arctic and the aftermath of a genocide against individuals who are psychically bonded with animals through nanomachines.

Honorable mentions: Velocity Weapon (Megan O’Keefe), Black Sun (Rebecca Roanhorse), Piranesi (Susanna Clark),

13. Least favorite books of the year?

I grabbed this book called Shadows Of Eternity (Gregory Benford) from the library, bc it was advertised as a story about a library of alien SETI messages, and somehow kept reading it following all of the random transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny that was in like the first 1/4 of the book. It did not get any better and was honestly not well written for a guy who’s supposed to be a big name in sci fi.

Also hated Women & Other Monsters (Jess Zimmerman) and quit like not even 10% of the way in bc it was just her talking about how disgustingly fat she thinks she is and refusing to examine why a racist/transphobic/fatphobic/ableist society categorizes certain features as ugly and others as beautiful.

[81scorp]

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” ―Arthur C. Clarke

“Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advandced” ―Gregory Benford

[bewitchingbooktours]

A Bewitching Monday

A Round-Up of Daily Virtual Book Tour Stops

Tales of the Wythenwood Book One by J.W. Hawkins Virtual Book Tour https://www.mommasaystoread.com/2024/09/tales-of-wythenwood-book-one-by-jw.html

Experience these powerful new voices—vivid, visceral, and visionary—as they explore uncharted worlds and reveal unlimited possibilities.

Writers of the Future Volume 40

“Deliciously unpredictable and absolutely engrossing, Nicola Solvinic’s The Hunter’s Daughter is one of the best debuts I’ve read in a very long time. With a dash of magical realism and the kind of complicated, conflicted heroine I love, Solvinic pulls off a nearly impossible feat: making the reader care about a woman who may well be following in her serial killer father’s footsteps. Put The Hunter’s Daughter at the top of your TBR list—I loved this book!” —Karen Dionne, bestselling author The Marsh King's Daughter The Hunter’s Daughter by Nicola Solvinic https://amzn.to/48NTMdP https://bit.ly/3YDcQHB #nicolasolvinic #mysteryauthor #crimeauthor #thrillerwriter #criminology #criminologymastermind #crimefiction #crimethriller #crimenovels #detectivenovels #suspensenovels #thrillerbooks #murdermystery #mysteryseries #whodunit #mysteryreads #bookcommunity #mustread #bookrecommendation #bookish #booklovers #readinglist #bookclub #bestseller

Check in for chills, check out with goosebumps: Explore Michigan's haunted hotels with author, Roxanne Rhoads. Haunted Hotels of Michigan https://amzn.to/3Touz4p #MichigansMostHauntedHotels  #MichigansMostHaunted #HauntedMichigan #MichiganGhosts #GhostlyGetaways #MichigansGhostlyGetaways #HauntedTravel #GhostTravel #GhostTourism #HauntedTourism #DarkTourism #HauntedHotelsofMichigan #MichigansHauntedHotels

As an Amazon Influencer, I earn from qualifying purchases #Amazon #ad #CommissionsEarned

[ulkaralakbarova]

A gangster, Nino, is in the Cash Money Brothers, making a million dollars every week selling crack. A cop, Scotty, discovers that the only way to infiltrate the gang is to become a dealer himself. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Nino Brown: Wesley Snipes Scotty Appleton: Ice-T Garald “Gee Money” Welles: Allen Payne Pookie: Chris Rock Stone: Mario Van Peebles Selina: Michael Michele Duh Duh Duh Man: Bill Nunn Park: Russell Wong Old Man: Bill Cobbs Kareem Akbar: Christopher Williams Nick Peretti: Judd Nelson Keisha: Vanessa Williams Uniqua: Tracy Camilla Johns Frankie Needles: Anthony DeSando Reverend Oates: Nick Ashford Prosecuting Attorney Hawkins: Phyllis Yvonne Stickney Police Commissioner: Thalmus Rasulala Don Armeteo: John Aprea Master of Ceremonies: Fab 5 Freddy D.J.: Flavor Flav Frazier: Clebert Ford Prom Queen: Laverne Hart Fat Smitty: Eek-A-Mouse Biff: Gregg Smrz Teacher: Erica McFarquhar Singer at Wedding: Keith Sweat Gigantor: Max Rabinowitz Woman in Hallway: Marcella Lowery Judge: Manuel E. Santiago Prosecuting Attorney: Ben Gotlieb Reporter: Thelma Louise Carter Reporter: Linda Froehlich Bailiff: Christopher Michael Recovering Addict: Kelly Jo Minter Recovering Addict: Tina Lifford Recovering Addict: Erik Kilpatrick Assistant DA: Ron Millkie Kid on Stoop: Harold Baines Kid on Stoop: Sekou Campbell Kid on Stoop: Garvin Holder New Year’s Eve Band – (Guy): Teddy Riley New Year’s Eve Band – (Guy): Aaron Hall New Year’s Eve Band – (Guy): Damion Hall Singers – Spring – (Troop): Rodney Benford Singers – Spring – (Troop): John Harrell Singers – Winter – (Levert): Gerald Levert Singers – Winter – (Levert): Sean Levert Butchie The Doorman: Jimmy Cummings Courtroom Spectator (uncredited): Akosua Busia Prostitute in The Pool (uncredited): Lia Chang Gangster Standing at Bar (uncredited): Jake LaMotta Barber (uncredited): Larry M. Cherry Brides Maid (uncredited): Cynthia Elane Girl in the Window (uncredited): Toni Ann Johnson Connie The Waitress (uncredited): Candece Tarpley C.M.B. Member (uncredited): Chris Thornton Film Crew: Director: Mario Van Peebles Story: Thomas Lee Wright Music Supervisor: Doug McHenry Screenplay: Barry Michael Cooper Casting: Pat Golden Production Design: Charles C. Bennett Director of Photography: Francis Kenny Casting: John McCabe Editor: Steven Kemper Unit Production Manager: Preston L. Holmes Costume Design: Bernard Johnson Original Music Composer: Michel Colombier Music Supervisor: George Jackson Associate Producer: Fab 5 Freddy Associate Producer: Suzanne Broderick Associate Producer: James Bigwood First Assistant Director: Dwight Williams Stunt Coordinator: Jery Hewitt Stunts: Danny Aiello III Stunts: G. A. Aguilar Second Assistant Director: Joseph Ray Production Supervisor: Brent Owens First Assistant Editor: Kevin Stitt Camera Operator: John Newby First Assistant Camera: Gregory Irwin Second Assistant Camera: Myra-Lee Cohen Additional Camera: Ed Hershberger Steadicam Operator: Ted Churchill Production Sound Mixer: Frank Stettner Boom Operator: Keith Gardner Cableman: Rosa Howell-Thornhill Art Direction: Barbra Matis Art Direction: Laura Brock Art Department Coordinator: Roberta J. Holinko Set Decoration: Elaine O’Donnell Script Supervisor: Cornelia ‘Nini’ Rogan Makeup Artist: Diane Hammond Assistant Makeup Artist: Ellie Winslow Hairstylist: Larry M. Cherry Hairstylist: Aaron F. Quarles Wardrobe Supervisor: Barbara Hause Wardrobe Supervisor: Jane E. Myers Wardrobe Assistant: Jill E. Anderson Gaffer: Charles Houston Rigging Gaffer: Martin Andrews Best Boy Electric: Val DeSalvo Key Grip: Robert M. Andres Best Boy Grip: Paul Wachter Dolly Grip: Tom Kudlek Property Master: Octavio Molina Assistant Property Master: Laura Jean West Assistant Property Master: Kevin Ladson Charge Scenic Artist: Jeffrey L. Glave Construction Coordinator: Raymond M. Samitz Special Effects Supervisor: Steven Kirshoff Special Effects Coordinator: Wilfred Caban Second Unit Director: Jeff Lengyel Second Unit Director of Photography: Jacek Laskus Second Unit First Assistant D...