http://tags.lifehacker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/newyorktimes http://io9.com/tag/newyorktimes The New York Times hosts an asteroid discussion, including the upside: StrangeHorizons.com's Susan Marie Groppi points out how often asteroids save our space-opera heroes. And astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell advocates expanding outwards by mining near-Earth objects.

]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5167529&view=rss&microfeed=true Over the weekend, NY Times science fiction columnist David Itzkoff wondered "how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers." This didn't sit well with the Boston Globe's Brainiac blogger Joshua Glenn, who writes: "I attempted to disprove . . . Itzkoff's thesis that people who write speculative fiction are slumming when they write juvenile lit... by providing a hastily annotated list of over three dozen terrific examples of post-apocalyptic/dystopian juvenile fictions, from John Christopher's Tripod trilogy to Jack Kirby's Kamandi series to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome." Both Itzkoff's column and Glenn's response are a great read. [Brainiac]

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