The Great Geek Manual

Art

• io9 has posted Tron 2 concept art that will make fanboys everywhere squee with delight. …except… where exactly do you sit on that light cycle?

Film

• io9 lists 9 Scifi Books That Deserve To Be Films.

Internet

• condition:human is a new science fiction web series. The trailer looks very stylish and is all the more impressive given it’s made with no budget. The finished series is going to be six fifteen minute episodes. The story sounds Bladerunner-esque: near future, AI level companion robots, moral questions about the robots.
• Den of Geek runs down 10 Twinkie sightings in films and TV.
• From the desk of “Oh Jesus, It’s happening for real” comes news that the first clone of an extinct animal has been created.

Literature

• Free Fiction: Preview “White Witch, Black Curse” by Kim Harrison. Buy it February 24th.
• Free Fiction: Read the zombie novel “The Nymphos of Rocky Flats” by Mario Acevedo free today through February 24th at the HarperCollins website.
• Author Richard K. Morgan discusses Tolkien at Suvudu. “The great shame is, of course, that Tolkien was not able (or inclined) to mine this vein of experience for what it was really worth – in fact he seemed to be in full, panic-stricken flight from it.”
• It’s official. Terry Pratchett has been knighted.
• Science spends millions proving what every little kid already knew: Brain scans suggest that readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations.

This is a guest post from laptopLogic.com – make sure to check out their big selection of laptop reviews where you can find your ultimate inexpensive laptop.

With the Kindle 2 coming out, there’s a mass flurry over eBooks once again. The idea of carrying a digital library in ones pocket is absolutely thrilling to some (and sacrilege to others).

Who wants to spend hundreds of dollars on an ebook reader, though? Do you read enough books in a year to justify that cost? Assuming you spend a ‘mere’ $200 on an eReader, you could by 33 $5.99 paperbacks–or almost three books a month every month. Do you read that often?

If you’ve already got a smartphone of some sorts (or an audio player that is similar, a la iPod Touch), then you’ve already got the hardware to make your own eReader. With a few simple steps, you can have your own pocket library for less than $20.
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1856
The first US patent for the tintype photographic picture process is issued to Professor Hamilton L. Smith of Gambier, Ohio, “For the Use of Japanned Metallic Plates in Photography” to obtain “positive impressions upon a japanned surface previously prepared upon an iron or other metallic plate or sheets; and it consists in the use of collodion and a solution of a salt of silver and an ordinary camera.” (US No. 14,300) The patent describes the preparation of the black varnish, along with the varnish’s application and baking.

1878
Thomas Edison patents the phonograph. His first recording is of himself reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by speaking into the device’s large horn, which transmits vibrations to a needle, which inscribes a recording onto a tin-foil cylinder, which is rotated by hand. (US No. 200,521) Read an excellent history of the Edison phonograph at the US Library of Congress website.

1946
Alan Turing presents the “Proposal for the Development in the Mathematics Division of an Automatic Computing Engine (ACE)” to a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, England.

1970
The Soviet Union launches the Sputnik 52 space probe and the Molniya 1-13 communications satellite.
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Our first computers were born not out of greed or ego but in the revolutionary spirit of helping common people rise above the most powerful institutions.

- Steve Wozniak in a Newsweek review, February 19, 1996.

Last Week’s Best-Selling Genre Books

1. Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs
2. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
4. Coraline (Movie Tie-in Edition) by Neil Gaiman
5. Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich
6. From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
7. Men of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong
8. Daemon by Daniel Suarez

New Releases

The following books will be released this week:

Escape From Hell by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
Tor Books. (ISBN: 9780765316325) Hardcover. Length: 336pp
The long-awaited follow-up to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s classic science-fiction reimagining of Dante’s Inferno. February 17

Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress
Tor Books. (ISBN: 978-0756405380) Hardcover. Length: 320pp
The aliens appeared one day, built a base on the moon, and put an ad on the internet: “We are an alien race you may call the Atoners. Ten thousand years ago we wronged humanity profoundly. We cannot undo what has been done, but we wish humanity to understand it. Therefore we request twenty-one volunteers to visit seven planets to Witness for us. We will convey each volunteer there and back in complete safety. Volunteers must speak English. Send requests for electronic applications to witness@Atoners.com.”February 17

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1908
Thomas Alva Edison is issued a patent for an improvement to the “Alkaline Storage Battery.” (No. 879,612) Its purpose is to reduce foaming of the electrolytes in alkaline batteries, an effect which Edison attributes to the presence of microscopic quantities of organic matter. To correct the problem, the alkaline solution is filtered through bone black that has been purified in a hot potash solution.

1913
English Chemist Frederick Soddy introduces the term “isotope.” He suggests that different elements produced in different radioactive transformations can occupy the same position in the Periodic Table, and dubs such forms of an element “isotopes” from the Greek word for “same place.”

1929
The first Academy Awards are announced. Nominees for outstanding picture are the films 7th Heaven, The Racket, and Wings.

1930
Clyde Tombaugh discovers the planet Pluto, becoming the only American astronomer to find a planet inside the solar system. The discovery is the culmination of three decades of work at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, which involved taking millions of photographs of the night sky one tiny sections at a time in search of the one moving point.
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“You know, the average Chinese factory worker must think Americans are insane. Picture this: you work at a plant that makes Halloween stuff—you know, like, rubber severed heads. And you’re all like: Americans decorate their homes with severed heads? These fuckers are savages, man.”

Daemon by Daniel Suarez, 2006.
Chapter 45: Respawning, Character: Laney Price