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a brief history of hellboy
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History
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a brief history of hellboy
Astroforensics
World's Greatest Astronomical Detective Strikes Again!
Donald Olson, an astrophysicist at Texas State University has a habit of taking well-known historical facts and turning them upsidown. Using the stars and Moon and a little bit of math, he's re-dated the original running of Marathon in 491-490 BC, precisely determined the spot in which Edvard Munch painted "The Scream," and figured out the exact minute that Vincent Van Gogh depicted in his painting "Moonrise." As if that weren't enough, now he's changing the date Julius Caesar landed in England, an event that sparked a massive battle and changed the course of Western civilization. More »
mega history
Meet the "Partisan Generation" That Gave You LSD, Conan, and Joseph Campbell
With the recent death of Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD, it's a perfect time to travel back in time and assess how Hofmann's generation helped shape their future — in other words, our present day. Luckily the Boston Globe's Joshua Glenn is here to help you sort it all out. In a recent post on his Brainiac blog, Glenn writes about the "Partisan Generation," which includes Hofmann as well as Joseph "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" Campbell. This generation, born 1904-13, also includes a generation of science fiction writers who made SF mainstream. More »
martians
The Ninteenth Century Madman Who Invented Martians
He was the man who launched a thousand imaginary rocketships to Mars — in the nineteenth century, before anybody knew the word "Martian" and War of the Worlds hadn't been written yet. Percival Lowell, a wealthy Bostonian, spent his youth traveling Japan and Korea before having a nervous breakdown and recovering by falling in love with Mars. He built the Lowell Observatory in Arizona just so he could get a better look at the planet, and spent months staring at it every night, taking notes and writing books about how it might be possible that other creatures lived there. A mesmerizing speaker, Lowell gave lectures and readings all over the country, popularizing the idea that the Martian "canals" might be signs of Martian civilization. With the new Phoenix Mars Lander about to plop down on the Red Planet, the Boston Globe's Nancy Zaroulis has published an amazing and timely article about Lowell's life. More »
alternate history
A Crash Course in Alternate History Novels
So you've snapped up Michael Chabon's Nebula Award winning novel The Yiddish Policeman's Union, and now you want more thoughtful alternate histories to fill your brain and bookshelf. While there are literally hundreds of alternate histories out there (many of them written by various Michael Moorcocks and Harry Turtledoves in different timelines), a few standouts will help you get into the genre and lead you down the happy path to historical mindfuckery. Check out our our suggestions for some brilliant alternate history reading. More »
world without cars
Urban history is littered with the dead bodies of scrapped public transit projects. When eager commuters and car companies turned the automobile into the most popular form of transit in the world in the twentieth century, many cities set aside plans for expanding their public transit systems, such as the electric tram system planned for regions feeding into Melbourne, Australia. In some cases, city planners actually ripped out existing transit systems like Los Angeles' once-enormous cable car network. What would these cities and others look like if their public transit systems had continued to thrive and we lived in a world without cars? We've got five alternate urban histories of public transport for you below.
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The Public Transit Projects that Should Have Been
Urban history is littered with the dead bodies of scrapped public transit projects. When eager commuters and car companies turned the automobile into the most popular form of transit in the world in the twentieth century, many cities set aside plans for expanding their public transit systems, such as the electric tram system planned for regions feeding into Melbourne, Australia. In some cases, city planners actually ripped out existing transit systems like Los Angeles' once-enormous cable car network. What would these cities and others look like if their public transit systems had continued to thrive and we lived in a world without cars? We've got five alternate urban histories of public transport for you below.
More »
martian geography
Using telescopes, astronomers have been mapping the surface of Mars in surprising detail for over 100 years. This map of the entire Martian globe, showing everything from Mare Australe to Mare Boreum, was made in 1890. Now you can check a satellite photo to see how accurate it really was.
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Mars in the Nineteenth Century
Using telescopes, astronomers have been mapping the surface of Mars in surprising detail for over 100 years. This map of the entire Martian globe, showing everything from Mare Australe to Mare Boreum, was made in 1890. Now you can check a satellite photo to see how accurate it really was.
More »
retro futurism
A Machine That Types What Is Spoken To It, 1913
From time immemorial (or at least since the commercial production of the typewriter in 1873), office procedure went like this: the boss dictated, the steno took it down, and a typist translated the squiggles into type. In 1913, Mr. John B. Flowers, "a young electrical engineer of Brooklyn" did his best to eliminate the middlemen (or, most likely, middlewomen) with an early example of voice-activated technology. Click through for a closer look at Flowers's invention—and its limitations.More »
mad archaeology
The mystery of Stonehenge used to be a "how" thing. Visitors and scientists wondered how people 4500 years ago dragged extremely heavy rocks over 200 miles from their Welsh quarry to the legendary pagan holy place. But now it's been established that there were many ways that locals might have gotten the rocks into place using relatively primitive tools. The question now is "why." Why this spot? And also, when exactly was the spot established? A new archaeological dig at Stonehenge — the first in half a century — is already providing hints.
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Digging for the Secret Origins of Stonehenge
The mystery of Stonehenge used to be a "how" thing. Visitors and scientists wondered how people 4500 years ago dragged extremely heavy rocks over 200 miles from their Welsh quarry to the legendary pagan holy place. But now it's been established that there were many ways that locals might have gotten the rocks into place using relatively primitive tools. The question now is "why." Why this spot? And also, when exactly was the spot established? A new archaeological dig at Stonehenge — the first in half a century — is already providing hints.
More »
music
If there were a musical equivalent of alternative history writing, Harry Partch would be its best-known author. A hobo in his teen years during the 1920s, Partch grew up to be one of the twentieth century's greatest speculative composers, who created his own set of 27 new instruments that could be played in his specially-designed symphony space. Influenced by the tonal scales of Asian and Native American music, Partch's instruments use the "Just Intonation" scale, which is composed of 29 tones. This scale is a more direct reflection of the tones we hear in nature, and was used quite commonly in the West before the 12 tone scale (which you know from pianos) was invented about 250 years ago.
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Alternate History Orchestra Includes Harmonic Canon and Chromelodeon
If there were a musical equivalent of alternative history writing, Harry Partch would be its best-known author. A hobo in his teen years during the 1920s, Partch grew up to be one of the twentieth century's greatest speculative composers, who created his own set of 27 new instruments that could be played in his specially-designed symphony space. Influenced by the tonal scales of Asian and Native American music, Partch's instruments use the "Just Intonation" scale, which is composed of 29 tones. This scale is a more direct reflection of the tones we hear in nature, and was used quite commonly in the West before the 12 tone scale (which you know from pianos) was invented about 250 years ago.
More »
cloning
Was the First Human Clone Born in 1978?
In 1978, David Rorvik, medical reporter for the New York Times and Time Magazine, wrote a book called In His Image: The Cloning of Man. In it, he claimed that a real human clone had just been born. Everyone believed him because he was — at least until then — a credible reporter, and his book was published by a well-known publishing house in the medical field. Everyone, that is, except for the rest of the science community. More »
10,000 bc review
10,000 BC -- This Ain't Evolution
So we caught the new Roland "Independence Day" Emmerich vehicle 10,000 BC, opening in a theater near you today. It's a science fiction film in the most literal sense of those words. This flick takes the sciences of evolutionary biology and anthropology and turns them into fiction. Sadly, it wasn't the 300 style of anthropology fiction, where you know everything is wildly inaccurate but find yourself in a forgiving mood because the action is so terrific and the concept design kicks ass. 10,000 BC was actually so historically inaccurate that not even the giant ostrich attack scene made up for it. Spoilers and cranky comments about scientific accuracy ahead. More »
retro futurism
The World's Biggest Computer Kept Us Safe from Cold War Commies
Listen to the heartbeat of SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment), IBM's giant air defense computer, in this propaganda ... I mean, educational ... film from approximately 1956. Weighing in 250 tons and using 60,000 vacuum tubes, SAGE "was the largest computer ever built." It required an acre of floor space. More »
poll
What Do You Look For In Science Fiction?
Science fiction is really a jumble sale of about twenty different genres. We use the term "science fiction" to label a whole range of material, from space opera to near-future dystopias. But what really matters is what you get out of reading or watching it. What do you look for in your science fiction? Click through to vote. More »
ufo hunters
Is The Truth Out There For SciFi Channel?
Sure, we may tease History Channel's UFO Hunters every Monday when we run down the shows you should watch each week on TV, but elsewhere on the internet, fans are wondering what happened to the SciFi Channel's show of the same name, that debuted on the same day and in the same time slot as the History Channel's series, only to disappear immediately afterwards. Is the answer related to the show's poor ratings, or something much more sinister?More »
alternate history
NASA's Secret Mission to Saturn in Nuke-Powered Ships
Back in the mid-twentieth century, a bunch of NASA engineers had a dream — a highly-classified dream — about taking a nuclear-powered rocked to Saturn. They even went so far as to plan the entire device, create design specs and concept art (some of it pictured here), and name it "Project Orion." Now science historian George Dyson has unearthed a bunch of the recently re-classified papers related to Project Orion, which his father Freeman Dyson was involved in, and put them together into a short, entertaining presentation. Essentially he's unearthed an alternate history of the space program that might have been if NASA hadn't canceled it. Check out his entertaining story below. More »
Chabon's "Policemen" Busts Genre Divisions
Michael Chabon continues to crush genre boundaries like John Barth on steroids. His alternate-history detective novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union is the first novel ever to get Best Novel nominations from both the Edgar Awards (for mysteries) and the Nebula Awards (for science fiction). [GalleyCat, via SFAwardsWatch]
Michael Chabon continues to crush genre boundaries like John Barth on steroids. His alternate-history detective novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union is the first novel ever to get Best Novel nominations from both the Edgar Awards (for mysteries) and the Nebula Awards (for science fiction). [GalleyCat, via SFAwardsWatch]
retro futurism
