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The Observation Deck
- The Sidewise Awards The judges for the Sidewise Awards for Alternate History fiction - a nod to Murray Leinster's short story Sidewise in Time - have just announced the finalists for the 2001 Sidewise Awards. The nominees for novel-length parallel reality fiction are: J. Gregory Keyes, The Age of Unreason Series
(which includes Newton's Cannon, A Calculus of Angels,
Empire of Unreason, and The Shadows of God). Allen M. Steele, Chronospace J.N. Stroyar, The Children's War In the short story category we have: Stephen Baxter & Simon Bradshaw, "First to the
Moon," Ken MacLeod, "The Human Front," The final awards will be announced & presented at ConJosé, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention. Unmanned space probes may not be as sexy as the Apollo launches, but as NASA has been finding out, their discoveries from the Mars Odyssey ship have recently astonished the world - not least the fact that scientists have discovered massive reservoirs of ice beneath the Martian surface. So much polar ice has been found, that if it were to melt, it would cause a deluge the size of four Atlantic Oceans - or a Mars-wide ocean over 520 meters deep This neatly answers the mystery faced by the global community of geologist's - confusion about the evidence of Martian lakes, rivers, coastal shores - but no blooming water anywhere to be seen. Science magazine broke the story in a paper by William Boynton of the Lunar and Planetary Institute of the University of Arizona. Science also speculated that this will now massively increase the chances that warm Martian caverns containing meltwater may be found to hold simple life-forms. Ironically, the Mars Observer spacecraft that reached Mars in 1992 - only to blew up in orbit - was sent there to check for ice, and stood an excellent chance of finding it too. Ditto the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft which death-dived into the planet's Polar Regions in 1999. In a similar fashion, the 1976 Viking lander missed the existence of the ice by about 20cm ...which is how much its drill scoop fell short of the ice layer sitting beneath the Viking Lander. NASA spokesman Raphael Bilern said: "Given the results from the gamma-ray spectrometer, it is likely NASA will now be looking to make a (manned) landing on Mars within 20 years." Martian planetary science expert Professor Darren Milne commented: "This discovery makes manned missions and a permanent presence on Mars a near-certainty. Colonists will be able to use the water on Mars for drinking, growing crops, and in the process of oxygen generation - eliminating the enormous costs of shipping all these stores from Earth." Now that the Chinese government has committed to manned landings and a limited permanent presence on the Moon, the Professor also speculated about the dangers of a new space race developing. "It also places the onus on us to create a new climate for the cooperative exploration and settlement of the solar system. The Russian, European and American work on the international space station shows what we can achieve. Unfortunately, the Chinese have felt marginalized in this process, and their decision to significantly step up their domestic space program can be seen as one reaction to this." "Unless we can resolve these issues before we go into space as colonists, I fear that the kind of territorial disputes we see between China and Taiwan will only spread with us to the stars." "We don't ever want to get to a situation where the question: 'Who owns Mars?' is answered by: 'Who has the most troops there?'" Taxing times for Science Fiction Like all politicians, Michael Williams knows how to win friends and influence people. Unfortunately, this is the same Alabama congressional candidate that wants to raise money for NASA by putting a tax on science fiction books, movies and merchandise. Perhaps all the fumes from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center drifting over Williams' nearby house have been, how shall we say, having an impact on his policies? The logic is that NASA's plans have been stop-go'd by the US Federal government for decades. One minute it's 'let's colonise Mars', the next it's 'wouldn't the space station be cheaper if we don't include a toilet?' Inspired by media coverage of Californian Star Trek conventions, and movies like Trekkies, where fans think nothing to shelling out the large bucks to purchase that must have Mark II Cobra-head phaser, he came to the conclusion that a tax on SF fans is a tax on the selfsame people who actually give a shit if we get to space or not. His proposed 1% tax on SF books, toy, merchandise, comics and the like is, he argues, comparable to taxing petrol and directly linking that money to road-building improvements. Hmmm. Well, here at the 'Nest, we'd say it's more like taxing crime novels to pay for the police force. Or taxing military action thrillers to pay for the Pentagon's latest weapon system. Angry fans in newsgroups have pointed out that such a tax would only raise a few extra million anyway - small change given the huge amounts of wonga that are demanded for serious space travel. Apart from this weighty practical matter, how the heck would you classify SF? Does Tolkien and Eddings escape? What about literary works that have serious elements of SF but would blush with shame if they ever ended up in the SF bin at Borders? ... material like the Handmaiden's Tale for instance? Ho hum. You can tell the silly season for news stories has started.
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OTHER CONTENT - June 2002
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This
month's news shorts include the SideWise Awards nominees being announced,
plus some shock discoveries on the Martian surface.
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