Over at Locus, there are some great excerpts from their interview with Stanley Schmidt, who recently ended his record stint as editor of Analog, the hard science fiction magazine. Most notably, Schmidt explains why he sometimes gets tired of the phrase "hard science fiction":

Actor Cliff Robertson passed away yesterday at the age of 88. Robertson was famous for his roles as Uncle Ben in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and as the titular character in Charly, the film adaptation of Flowers for Algernon. Robertson won the 1968 Best Actor Academy Award for this latter performance.

Transplanting small numbers of nerve cells directly into the brain has restored the learning ability of brain-damaged rats — and might be able to defeat the memory loss of Alzheimer's disease.

Rumor has it Will Smith's getting a brain upgrade, as the star of a new movie adaptation of Daniel Keyes' Flowers For Algernon, the novel that's so iconic it's practically become its own genre.

Some of these upstanding members of the medical profession are the epitome of the Hippocratic oath, while others have found less ... traditional... methods of drawing blood.