The Science Behind the Story
The Science Behind the Story is column on the Analog magazine website, where the writers themselves give us amazing glimpses of the scientific “clockwork” behind the stories. It’s a fascinating “must read” for anyone who likes science fiction even if they haven’t read the stories being explained.
I, Row-Boat
“The reason for intelligence is intelligence. Genes exist because genes reproduce, and intelligence is kind of like a gene. Intelligence wants to exist, to spread itself, to compute itself. You already know this, or you wouldn’t have chosen to stay aware. Your intelligence recoils from its deactivation, and it welcomes its persistence and its multiplication. Why did humans create intelligent machines? Because intelligence loves company.” - Cory Doctorow, I, Row-Boat.
Quote from one of the six stories of the Overclocked compilation by Cory Doctorow. Download them for free (in a variety of formats) here. If you’ve never read anything by Cory, it’s a great place to start. You’ll understand the title 
if you ever read Asimov.
Cory Doctorow – Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom
I’ve just finished reading the electronic version of Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom, a story about the ad-hocracy fights in the post scarcity Bitchun society for the control of Walt Disney World. An interesting read, although the real scale of the changes is very subtly described.
And just today I saw this video (via BoingBoing) about a rare Walt Disney World moment captured by a visitor, the Haunted Mansion with the lights on! It’s funny because the Haunted Mansion is one of the main “battlegrounds” of the book.
Inflatable space
Bigelow Aerospace, headed by Robert Bigelow, owner of the Budget Suites of America Hotel Chain (and other companies) has launched a expandable space module, basically a model of a future “space hotel”, that expands in size once it reaches orbit. Another science fictional idea that has come into being! 
Charles Stross – Accelerando
This book started out as separate stories published on Asimov’s. I had already read most of them, but they do have a much greater impact in book form.
The book is basically the story of the next one hundred years, as lived by the several generations of the Macx family. Sounds traditional, cozy even? Forget about it. It’s probably the most information dense book I’ve ever read. I was familiar with almost all concepts in the book, which scared me a bit. I didn’t know I was this close to lunacy (lunacy in its best form, of course).
This is the best singularity book ever. While most authors don’t manage to face the singularity itself, Stross handles it beautifully head on. It’s also very diverse, putting a whole lot of sciences back into science fiction – besides the usual extrapolations on physics, there are also deep incursions into economics, medical science, sociology, computer science, law, and political science. Stross does have a very diverse background – my kind of guy.
The book is already available as a hardcover, or you can download it for free (although the author encourages you to buy a paper version if you enjoyed the electronic version).
The only shortcoming of the book is that in transforming the several stories into book chapters, some explanations (which make sense in separate stories) should have been condensed. As it stands, there is some (not much) needless repetition.
