Okay, maybe the headline is a little harsh. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, and I’m sure they were doing the best they could. But, once again, I’m reminded of the chief lesson I learned studying the history of science: the history of science is the history of people being wrong about things.

A fossilized sauropod bone, dated by a team of Canadian and U.S. scientists to 64.8 million years ago, appears likely to force a serious rethinking of the demise of dinosaurs, which were supposed to have been wiped out in a catastrophic meteorite strike no later than 65.5 million years ago — 700,000 years before the death of the giant, vegetarian beast that left its femur behind in present-day New Mexico.

A study of the bone in the latest issue of the journal Geology, co-authored by University of Alberta paleontologist Larry Heaman and two U.S. colleagues, “confounds the long established paradigm that the age of the dinosaurs ended between 65.5 million and 66 million years ago,” states a summary of the findings.

The study also represents a landmark achievement in the use of a uranium-lead dating technique — developed at the University of Alberta — that allowed the team to pinpoint the age of the bone directly from a fragment of the specimen, not just indirectly from the layer of rock in which it was found.

The bone was unearthed near the New Mexico-Colorado border by U.S. paleontologist James Fassett, one of the study’s two American co-authors.

In the past, Fassett has controversially proposed that the region may have been a refuge for some dinosaurs that survived the colossal meteorite strike widely believed to have ended the dinosaur age between 65.5 and 66 million years ago.

The new findings appear to support Fassett’s theory that at least some dinosaurs survived the catastrophic impact and persisted for hundreds of thousands of years.

“For some time, there’s been other evidence that suggests dinosaurs survived,” he said, at least in some small pockets, after their supposed extinction.

But it hasn’t been “ironclad evidence,” he noted. “What was missing was some way to directly date the bone itself. Up to now, it’s just never been possible, so this is the first real success.”

Heaman said confirming the New Mexican sauropod bone as 64.8 million years old “opens the door to all kinds of questions,” including the validity of the theory that a single meteorite strike destroyed all dinosaur habitats around the world in a very short time.

Recent studies have challenged that theory including some suggesting a series of meteorite impacts caused the dinosaurs to disappear and others positing massive volcanic eruptions that triggered deadly, planetwide climate disturbances.

So here’s what I’ve never understood: if birds are descended from dinosaurs…then doesn’t that presuppose that at least some dinosaurs survived after the extinction (however caused) of the majority of the form? I would think it would be hard to evolve from a life form that was 100% extinct.

– S.

Wicked cool news!

The Indian Space Research Organization has discovered, with the help of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, a “giant underground chamber” near the Moon’s equator, in the Oceanus Procellarum area.

Naturally, my first thought was this:

But in actuality, this chamber is far neater.

More than one mile long (1.7 kilometers) and 393 feet wide (120 meters), it is big enough to contain a small lunar city.

The Indian researchers have published a paper detailing their findings and talking about the possibility of making this giant underground vault as a future human base. The settlement would be protected from radiation, micro-meteor impacts, dust and extreme temperature changes by the lava structure that provides a natural environmental control with a nearly constant temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius (which is what the temperature was yesterday here in Toronto, where I live), unlike that of the lunar surface showing extreme variation, maximum of 130 degrees Celsius to a minimum of minus 180 degrees Celsius in its day-night cycle.

In addition, lunar explorers would only need minimal construction, without the added cost of having to use expensive shields against the hazardous lunar environment.

Maybe they’ll call it Clavius Base…

– S.

“I’m going to assume your comment about Hungary was a jab at me.”

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“Well, they took all my comments. So I’m just going to read–I’ve got five minutes!”

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“The balloon is a balloon. They’re not stupid!”

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“Sometimes shit just drops from a clear blue sky.”

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A: “I loved the Angle of Death.”
B: “What?”
C: “It’s a typo.”
A: “For me that’s right up there with the Circle of Life.”

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“‘He had dark, evil eyes.’ Then there are three more evils on the page. It was to the point that I wrote STOP THE EVIL! in the margin.”

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X: “See? I know you guys are going to hate this…”
Y: “Nah, we already told you what we hate.”

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“Right now we’re re-writing stuff we haven’t even read.”

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My story “Borrowed Time”–originally published here–has just been reprinted on something called The Internets. I understand that it’s a series of tubes…

Yes, you can now find “Borrowed Time” available freely online here.

It’s part of the Tuesday Fiction series at the World SF Blog. Every Tuesday, WSB publishes short fiction by international authors, including contributors from South Africa, Israel, Brazil, India, the UK and elsewhere.

Many thanks to Lavie Tidhar, editor of the The World SF Blog, for liking the story and putting it online. Thanks as well to Aliette de Bodard for introducing me to WSB in the first place.

Enjoy!

– S.

It was a good meeting yesterday…

– S.

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A: “I don’t think anything in nature could grow genitalia that fast.”
(5 second pause)
B: “Huh huh huh…”

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“On page 5 I wrote ‘scrotum–WHAT!?’ because you can’t just throw a scrotum in there casually.”

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“I feel kinda bad because I didn’t see any of these problems. Now that I’ve heard them, I agree.”

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X: “You hint that the neuromancer has figured it out.”
Y & Z: “Necromancer.”
X: “Necroma– Whatever. Fucking nerds.”

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“It felt like the story stopped to read a map.”

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1: “Your last line sucks.”
2: “They always do.”

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She: “You mention the ‘bonewand’, but I have two teenage boys, so…”
Him: “That’s awesome! I didn’t even see that one!”
She: “You might want to lose the bonewand.”
Him: “I’ll pay you not to!”
Other Him: “A whole table full of guys miss that, but she gets it?”

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This is too awesome not to share:

The Law and the Multiverse blog is a geek-meets-lawyer funfest, looking seriously at the legal challenges and ramifications of superpowers, superheroes and villains, and the battles they wage against each other.

WATCHMEN often receives praise for taking a ‘realistic’ look at how society would deal with superpowered creatures and vigilantes who leap from rooftop to rooftop in their masks and capes. But Law and the Multiverse looks at how such questions would play out with the actual laws on the books today in the United States.

Questions like: is Superman’s heat vision a weapon? If so, would the Second Amendment protect his right to melt pistols and cook hamburgers with it?

Now, admittedly, it looks at the issue from a US-perpsective, but since most comic book heroes seem to protect American cities and citizens it only makes sense. It’s great fun for those of us who have ever read about an epic battle between superheroes and supervillains and really, really want to know who should be found liable for the broken buildings and shattered streets.

Kicked off on Nov. 30, it addresses questions like: “What if someone is convicted for murder, and then the victim comes back to life?” And whether mutants are a legally recognizable class entitled to constitutional protection from discrimination.

Other topics include the admissibility of evidence obtained through mind reading by Professor X of the X-men and whether the RICO Act could be effectively used by prosecutors against the Legion of Doom.

The answers are dry, technical and funny in their earnestness. The Second Amendment, the bloggers suggest, would protect many powers, but “at least some superpowers would qualify as dangerous or unusual weapons (e.g., Cyclops’ optic blasts, Havok’s plasma blasts)” that are “well beyond the power of weapons allowed even by permit.” Those super-duper powers would be tightly regulated, if not banned outright.

Then there’s this jurisprudential nugget: When Batman, the DC Comics hero, nabs crooks, is the evidence gathered against the bad guys admissible in court? Not if he is working so closely with Commissioner Gordon that his feats fall under the “state actor” doctrine, in which a person is deemed to be acting on behalf of government and thus is subject to the restrictions on government power. In fact, he might be courting a lawsuit claiming violations of civil rights from those who were nabbed.

Enjoy!

– S.

“That’s a lot of pressure.”

1: “I’m on a totally new story now. That’s my…fourth?”
2: “At least.”

“And then a dog-headed man shows up, and…”

“You need to write faster.”

“I’m all full of pretzels.”

“39 words in an hour–attaboy!”

Yes, the first Stop-Watch Gang 24 Hour Story Challenge!

From 6pm tonight until 6pm tomorrow, a bunch of us are holed up at my house for a 24-hour writing challenge modeled on the 24-hour writing challenge at Writers of the Future.

The process:

a) Random word and image prompts have been distributed to the members of the Stop-Watch Gang. While not limited to the idea presented, the goal is for the prompt to start you thinking in a direction you might not have thought of before. You then run with it.

b) Between receiving the prompt and Friday at 6 p.m., is research time. Random books from the library or bookstore (or online sources) that are consulted to teach you something you didn’t know before. Try to take enough notes about interesting stuff that you can use in the story.

c) Also interview or talk to a stranger without letting them know you’re writing a story. Find some aspect of the person that might inspire a character or chain of events that you can use in the story.

d) The goal is to have a completed, original story (zero draft, as good or bad as you like) in 24 hours. It must have a plausible beginning, middle, end (i.e., a real story).

If you want to read more on the process, check out my Writers of the Future journal for full details.

And what do we have to fuel our writing frenzy?

$300 in cash. Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheet of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.

Actually, that’s a lie. We’ll probably have Doritos. Maybe some Pepsi. Not very Hemingway, I know, but there you are.

See you on the other side.

– S.

Seemingly no sooner had I heard that Realms of Fantasy was going out of business again, and read the farewell messages from the publisher and the editors (here and here), than like a phoenix RoF has risen again, er, again.

Word came last week that Realms of Fantasy Magazine has been sold to Damnation Books LLC. Damnation Books LLC publishes dark fiction as Damnation Books. They also own and operate Eternal Press, which does romance and mainstream fiction.

The press release indicated that the December 2010 issue will go to print with the new ownership publishing the February 2011 issue. All subscriptions already paid for will be honored.

Future plans include expanding digital editions for ebook and desktop readers. The April 2011 issue will be themed ‘dark fantasy’ to coincide with World Horror Convention 2011 where Damnation Books will be hosting a party, and a booth in the dealer’s area.

The June 2011 issue is the 100th issue of Realms of Fantasy Magazine. Plans for a larger ‘birthday bash’ issue are already in place to celebrate this milestone.

Yay!

Posted below is a re-post of an all-call from Douglas Cohen, a RoF editor, for help in tracking down authors of submissions to RoF that were sitting with the fiction editor Shawna McCarthy when RoF closed up. If you’re in that category (as I am) be sure to email and let them know how you’d like your story handled.

– S.

ROF: Fiction: Help Me Internets!

by Editor Douglas Cohen on November 11, 2010

Hi Everyone,

I’m about to ask for your help with something. As I noted when I announced that Shawna and I would be coming back, there are a number of submissions that were in various states of consideration when the magazine announced its closure. The only right thing to do was release these manuscripts from consideration. Now, the manuscripts I had that were going to be passed along to Shawna were discarded. In the interests of goodwill, I’ve subsequently contacted all of these authors and invited them to resubmit their manuscripts to me via email if they’re so inclined. (PLEASE NOTE: this is a special exception made just for them under the circumstances–we’re still at this time just accepting submissions via snail mail).

However, there are also quite a number of submissions that are sitting with Shawna, enough that I thought it would be a good idea to post this note. Here’s the thing: Shawna is going to have a lot of reading ahead of her as we build the magazine’s fiction inventory back up. Since I don’t have the manuscripts, it would drive me rather insane to hunt down all of the email addresses to all of the authors who have stories with Shawna. And it would be rather time consuming for Shawna to email all of these people to see if they’d like their manuscripts to still be considered. Then she’d also still have to wait to hear back, which eats up more time. I’d rather Shawna be able to use this time to read stories as we get the magazine caught up. Some folks have already told me they still want their stories to be considered. But I’d like to hear from the rest of you. If you had a story that was with Shawna and would still like it to be considered, please email me (slushmaster@gmail.com) and tell me the name of your story. It will save Shawna the trouble of reading a story that has since been withdrawn. It also wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to let me know you’re officially withdrawing your story or that you’ve already sold it elsewhere.

So here’s where you come in, Internets. Blog about this. Tweet about this. Facebook about this. Help us out. As Picard would say, “Make it so.”

Thanks all.

ETA: Please don’t contact me regarding general slush submissions. Not that those stories aren’t important, but it will just create too much confusion. We’ll figure this out a little later, thanks.

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