Klotho Anti-Aging Gene
A gene in mice and men may give long life, but not without a possible price. (re: Larry Niven)

HELLADS: Lightweight Laser Cannon
Ultra-light High Energy Liquid Lasers are coming. (re: Niven/Pournelle)

The Robotic Blanket Project And The Hunting Robe
The robotic blanket interacts with users; the hunting robe traps them. (re: Clifford Simak)

Wing-Morphing Micro Air Vehicles
Bird-like MAVs use wings based on sea gulls to navigate urban canyons. (re: Jack Vance)

Babelfish Necklace: Environment Translator
Provides a 3D soundscape, 'translating' the environment for the visually impaired. (re: Douglas Adams)

Animaris Percipiere: Walking Robotic Sculpture Stores Wind Energy
Huge clockwork automata beasts roaming the beaches - they live on wind power. (re: Jack Vance)

Tanaka Auto Door
You may be wondering what is so great about a door that opens only just enough to let a person come in or out... besides being cool. (re: Jules Verne)

Carbon Nanotube Ribbon For Space Elevator
An amazing development - real hyperfilaments just like Clarke described for building a space elevator. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Lynntech Non-Lethal Weapon - Jules Verne Right Again
Under DARPA's auspices, Lynntech of College Station, Texas, is developing a non-lethal projectile with a longer range than a Taser. (re: Jules Verne)

Piezer - Homeland Security Orders Verne's 1875 'Leyden Ball'
DARPA is looking for an untethered electro-muscular disruption non-lethal stun weapon. (re: Jules Verne)

Inertial Capacitive Incapacitor: HomeSec Does Verne
With Homeland Security, Physical Optics Corporation is taking a page from nineteenth century science fiction writer Jules Verne. (re: Jules Verne)

NASA And Water Security Working On A Stillsuit
Rather than spend $7K per pound on water, recycling would make more sense - now they have a way to do it. (re: Frank Herbert)

TerminatorBot CRAWLER Gives Danger Two-Fingered Salute
A rescue robot modeled on the movie Terminator. (re: James Cameron)

Node Explorer: Part Hitchhiker's Guide, Part Marauder's Map
A paperback book-sized location-aware media player designed for use at historical sites. (re: Douglas Adams)

NUGGET: NASA's New 'Tricorder'
An experimental instrument could be used to investigate important biological indicators of life - just like Star Trek's tricorder. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

Toshiba Flatbed 3D Display
Remember when R2D2 and Chewbacca were playing a chess-like game with projected pieces? Toshiba invented a table like that. (re: George Lucas)

Doughnut-Shaped Time Machine
Exactly how to generate a gravitational doughnut is not covered in the paper, but Ori has suggestions. (re: H.G. Wells)

Burj Dubai Tower Update
The Burj Dubai tower in the United Arab Emirates is quietly progressing on its goal of being the tallest building in the world. (re: Frank Herbert)

Mars Telecommunications Orbiter Canceled
Bad news for this project; George O. Smith in limbo for a while longer. (re: George O. Smith)

Virtual Girlfriends Updated
Tomb Raider Lara Croft and V-Girl Vivienne, much loved personality-constructs, have both been updated this past week. (re: William Gibson)

Precrime Computer (Minus Precogs) Predicts Robbery
Police in Yonkers use a computer to predict a robbery - and it worked. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Fighting MUSA Robot Unveiled (Kendo, Not Rock'em Sock'em)
The MUSA kendo robot is a logical extension of the traditional "mechanical" aids used for centuries in martial arts. (re: Frank Herbert)

New Materials One Atom Thick Extracted With Micromechanical Cleavage
Science fictional materials are created by extracting individual atomic planes from conventional bulk crystals by using a technique called 'micromechanical cleavage'. (re: Roger Zelazny)

The Vacuum Tube Supercomputer Centre
Offering 'true vector computing at competitive prices', the Supercomputing Centre 'makes maintenance possible with a fork lift instead of tweezers and a magnifier.' (re: Jack Haldeman)

Active Denial System Has Researchers Worried
The 'Sheriff' Active Denial System (ADS), due to be implemented in Iraq by 2006, has some scientists and researchers expressing concerns. (re: H.G. Wells)

Bionic Arm Uses Neuro-Engineering
Scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago attached a unique bionic arm to an injured electrician's left shoulder - just like Steve Austin. (re: Ivar Jorgensen)

Fujitsu Bendable Electronic Color Display - With Memory
The flexible screen has an image memory function that keeps a vivid color picture in view without expending electricity. (re: Larry Niven)

Smallest Implantable Body Batteries
An implantable body battery 100 times smaller than a standard AA battery has been developed by Argonne National Laboratory in cooperation with Quallion and the University of Wisconsin. (re: Alfred Bester)

Remote-Controlled Robotic Hand Performs Breast Exams
A remote-controlled robotic hand will soon enable medical specialists to examine women from anywhere in the world. (re: E.M. Forster)

Jack Into A Cat's Brain
In this study, Garett B. Stanley, Fei F. Li and Yang Dan have literally jacked into the mind of a cat. (re: William Gibson)

Cultured Meat Straight From The Vat
Science fiction fans - start your grills! Two new techniques of tissue engineering may lead to affordable production of lab-grown, cultured meat for human consumption. (re: H. Beam Piper)

Google Earth And VPlanet Explorer
These two products provide functionality similar to the CIC Earth software in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. (re: Neal Stephenson)

Space Ring Latest Implausible Warming Solution
The journal Acta Astronautica has published what is probably the most outlandish suggestion yet to stop global warming on Earth. (re: Stanislaw Lem)

Juke Bot Robot - Kuka Kicks It
If you are looking for industrial-grade techno music for your next party event, look no further than the Kuka Robotics-based Juke Bot. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Philip K. Dick Robot Unveiled At NextFest 2005
The eerie robotic Philip K. Dick unveiled today at the NextFest 2005 event in Chicago is almost an objectification of Dick's fascination with what really makes people human. (re: Philip K. Dick)

NextFest 2005 - Festival Of Technovelgy
Yes, you read that right - technovelgy, ideas and inventions straight from science fiction books and movies. NextFest is a science fiction-lovers dream come true. (re: Various)

Elektron Oxygen Generator Versus Martian Sawgrass
The International Space Station and the fictional Venus Equilateral Station (from a 1942 story by George O. Smith) have a problem in common - a failure of the 'air plant'. (re: George O. Smith)

3D Holographic Images And Heinlein's Stereovision Tank
Harold Garner and his research team have used a gel-filled tank and a Texas Instruments Digital Light Processing (DLP) Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) to generate dynamic three-dimensional views from holograms. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Mini AERCam Robotic Space Vehicle
The nanosatellite-class spherical Mini AERCam (Miniature Autonomous Extravehicular Robotic Camera) is just 7.5 inches in diameter and weighs approximately 10 pounds. (re: George Lucas)

Robotic Bins, Benches Run Amok
A $261,000 display of robotic bins and benches with friendly personalities and roaming ways came to an abrupt end in Cambridge yesterday. (re: Douglas Adams)

Lifelike Robot Repliee Q1 May Need Voight-Kampff Test
The ultra-lifelike robot Repliee Q1 made quite an impression at the 2005 World Expo in Japan. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Robotic Singing Benches And Bins With Adam's GPP
Robotic benches and bins with Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Genuine People Personalities have been created by Greyworld, a group of London artists. (re: Douglas Adams)

HAL-5 Robot Suit
"Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future," said Yoshiyuki Sankai, inventor of the HAL-5 robotic suit. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Rape Trap Like Snow Crash 'Dentata'
South Aftrican inventor Sonette Ehlers has invented an anti-rape device similar to one mentioned in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. (re: Neal Stephenson)

NYC Heliostats And Star Wars Orbital Mirrors
Three heliostats in New York City will provide much needed light in the planned Teardrop Park South. The park likes in the shadow of three skyscrapers. (re: Theodore Sturgeon)

Micro Spacecraft To Explore Planets
NASA and The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, CA are preparing to flight test 'micro spacecraft' as early as 2006. Robert Silverberg gave a pretty good description in 1969. (re: Robert Silverberg)

Chinese 'Seed Satellite'
China will launch the first satellite designed specifically for seed-breeding in space. The project includes satellite research and development, mechanism research and simulation tests, as well as the launch and recovery of the satellite itself. (re: Gregory Benford)

Breathe Like A Fish Thanks To Alan Bodner
Alan Izhar-Bodner, an Israeli inventor, has developed a way for divers to breathe underwater without cumbersome oxygen tanks. His apparatus makes use of the air that is dissolved in water, just like fish do. (re: Various)

Futurist Gets Around To Digital Immortality
Ian Pearson, head of the Futurology unit at BT, claims that the wealthy will be able to download their minds into computers by 2050. Science fiction writers have been making the same claim since the 1960's. (re: David Brin)

CIA's 'Silent Horizon' Internet War Games
The CIA has just finished conducting a series of cyberwargames. The intent was to test the ability of government and industry to repond to Internet disruptions, which have grown more damaging over the years. (re: John Brunner)

QinetIQ First Automatic Shipboard Landing Of STOVL Craft
QinetIQ experimental VAAC craft with 'Autoland' technology succeeded in the first fully automatic landing of a short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft on a ship. (re: Various)

Traversable Wormholes And Time Machines May Not Be Usable
According to a new paper by physics researchers by Roman Buniy and Stephen Hsu, traversable wormholes and time machines cannot be both stable and predictable. (re: Jack Williamson)

Sky Billboards In Fact And Fiction
The Federal Aviation Administration intends to amend its regulations; the FAA wants to make sure it can enforce a law that prohibits "obtrusive" advertising in zero gravity. (re: Jules Verne)

Jack Vance's Incredibly Thin Solar Sail
Jack Vance guessed the thickness of an ultralight solar sail propulsion system Alliant Techsystems and NASA have recently tested. (re: Jack Vance)

Lumaray FL6 LED Flashlight
Okay, it's not a lightsaber - but it looks like you might be able to find your seat in a darkened cineplex with style. (re: George Lucas)

Making A Living From Space Junk
In an unusual act of generosity, the Soviet space program has been showering valuable metal scraps on the villages surrounding the Plesetsk Cosmodrome for more than forty years. (re: George Lucas)

Scientists Succeed At (Cryogenically Enhanced Magneto-Archimedes) Levitation
Scientists at the University of Nottingham have succeeded in (Cryogenically-Enhanced-Magneto-Archimedes) levitating some of the heaviest elements in nature, including lead and platinum. (re: Isaac Asimov)

Dubai World Island Earth
Al Nakheel Properties are working on a Dubai island project that will consist of between 250 and 300 islands shaped like the continents of the world - The Dubai World Islands. (re: Larry Niven)

Self-Replicating Modular Robots
Cornell scientists have been working on machines that replicate themselves. Their strategy is to use small modules that attach to each other with electromagnets. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Product RFID Tags Now Play Jingles
A computer science student from Durlach in Germany has worked out a way to store a tune on the radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags now attached to many consumer goods. (re: Greg Bear)

Mars Telecommunication Orbiter - Interplanetary Broadband
Lockheed Martin Space Systems is expected to land a $500 million contract to build the Mars Telecommunication Orbiter, intended by NASA to pioneer the use of lasers in planet-to-planet communication (re: George O. Smith)

Flexible Fabric Speakers Are Coming
A Korean research firm has announced that it has developed a technology for the mass production of sound speakers that are as flexible as fabric. (re: Bruce Sterling)

Cellphone Towers: Modern Day 'Message Trees'
Cellphone towers disguised as trees? Sounds like the message tree from a 1958 James Blish novel. (re: James Blish)

Eye Ball R1 Remote Surveillance Camera
The Eye Ball R1 is a compact wireless 360° mobile display system. It can be used in tactical operations by law enforcement personnel. If only they team up with the Rotundus robot guys... (re: Larry Niven)

Anemone Clock, Hug Shirt, Robot Dentist, Eternal Fridge Light? (They Must Be Fiction)
I sometimes read about devices and things that are so futuristic that they must be fiction. Four such items are described in this article. (re: Various (and none))

UCB - University of California Bone Regeneration
UCLA professors Kang Ting and Ben Wu are developing a new molecule they’ve named University of California Bone (UCB). This technology may be the most significant advance in bone regeneration in decades. (re: J.K. Rowling)

Snake Robot Roundup: Part Two
More snake robots - the Polybot-Based snakebot locomotion study and the OmniTread snakebot (most recent of its kind). (re: Various)

Snake Robot Roundup!
The snakebots are coming; slithering, grinding, undulating robots that slide on their bellies like a reptile across the Earth (and maybe other planets). (re: Various)

Hypersonic Sound (HSS) - Loudspeaker Just For You
Hypersonic Sound (HSS) technology does for sound what lasers did for light - provide a far more focused stream of energy over a greater distance with less dispersion. (re: E.E. 'Doc' Smith)

First Asteroid Belt Found Around Star Like Our Sun
An asteroid belt may have been found surrounding a star much like our own Sun, according to Dr. Charles Beichman of CIT. His team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to make the discovery. (re: Niven/Pournelle)

New Phase Of Ice May Exist
A new phase of ice may exist at temperatures between 4 degrees Kelvin to 50 degrees Kelvin, at high pressures, according to researchers at the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center. (re: Kurt Vonnegut)

Minority Report Glove Interface From Raytheon
Defence contractor Raytheon is working on a computer interface taken from the movie Minority Report, which starred Tom Cruise. (re: Stephen Spielberg)

Mars Crew Selection Fact And Fiction
According to a recent article in The Scientist, psychological factors would seriously challenge the crew of a manned Mars mission. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Find Extraterrestrial Civilizations By Their Works
Should we be looking for extraterrestrial civilizations, rather than just listening for them, as we do in the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project? That is the suggestion of a French astronomer, Luc Arnold (re: Larry Niven)

Reduce Global Warming By Blocking Sunlight
At a conference last year on global warming, distinguished astrophysicist and sf author Gregory Benford pointed out that the various measures proposed to stop global warming will not do the job soon enough. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

'Pleistocene Park' For Woolly Mammoths?
Scientists with the Mammoth Creation Project hope to find a frozen woolly mammoth specimen with sperm DNA. The sperm DNA would then be injected into a female elephant; by repeating the procedure with offspring, a creature 88% mammoth could be produce (re: David Brin)

Nanostructured Thermoelectric Devices (And John W. Campbell, Jr.)
Nanostructured thermoelectric devices may have a wide variety of practical applications, generating electricity from heat; sounds a lot like John W. Campbell's thermelectrium from a 1935 story. (re: John W. Campbell, Jr.)

Sony Patents Ultrasound Brain Beam Matrix
Now entertainment giant Sony has patented a method of beaming an artificial world of experience - The Matrix - directly into your brain using ultrasound. (re: Vernor Vinge)

Chemical Guidebook To Extraterrestrial Life Sought
Would you know extraterrestrial life if you found it? US scientists are working on a chemical guidebook to create a definitive method to determine whether extraterrestrial rocks have ever harbored life. (re: Michael Crichton)

Prairie Dogs Can Talk, Says Scientist
According to Dr. Slobodchikoff, Professor of Biology at Northern Arizona University, prairie dogs are capable of referential communication. (re: H. Beam Piper)

Trauma Pod Battlefield Medical Treatment System
DARPA has awarded a $12 million contract to develop an automated medical treatment system that can recieve, assess and stabilize wounded soldiers immediately following injury. The trauma pod is used to treat soldiers on the battlefield using advanced (re: Frank Herbert)

Transgenic Zoo Needs Herbert's Fences
Peter Yeadon has been thinking about a Transgenic Zoo for Toronto; it is an ongoing study of nanotechnology and new medical techniques. (re: Frank Herbert)

Lunar Dust Fountains Due To Electrostatic Charges
A great article on NASA's website points out how science fiction author Hal Clement predicted in a 1956 short story that electrostatically charged lunar dust particles might actually suspend themselves above the surface: (re: Hal Clement)

Philip K. Dick's Bubblehead Brainiacs
Over-expressing the protein CPG-15 in rats gives them bigger brains; these enlarged brains have grooves and furrows like evolved mammalian brains with larger surface areas. (re: Philip K. Dick)

TETWalker: Shape-Shifting Robot Swarm
A tetrahedral walker, or TETWalker robot, was demonstrated recently at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. This bot is a prototype member of an autonomous nanotechnology swarm that can alter their shape to flow smoothly over rocky terrain, or combine (re: Neal Stephenson)

Dying Stars And Planets To Live On
Astronomers and astrophysicists have long thought that the best place for life as we know it is a planet in the "habitable zone" - the range of orbits that leads to planets with liquid water - surrounding a main sequence star like our sun. Science fi (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Grand Odyssey Futurecast System - You Star!
Space Child Adventure Grand Odyssey, an animated film showing at the Aichi Expo 2005, has a very special star - you! Visitors to the Mitsui-Toshiba Pavilion get a full-face high resolution digital scan; these faces are edited into that perform (re: Ray Bradbury)

RepRap: Self-Replicating Rapid Prototyping
A self-replicating, rapid prototyping machine developed at the University of Bath in England could transform the nature of manufacturing. People could produce everyday household objects in their own homes and put them together. (re: Philip K. Dick)

IVF Parents Pick Sex, Alter Balance Of Nature
Should parents undergoing fertility treatments like IVF have the right to choose the sex of the baby? Lawmakers in Britain have split over this issue, reigniting the debate over "designer babies". (re: James Blish)

Smart Buildings And Network Security
Smart buildings, which use building automation systems (BAS) to put air temperature, lighting and security on a common network, are popping up on college campuses and in the corporate world. So are security problems. (re: William Gibson)

Cigarette Lights Self (Not That We Needed It)
The cigarette has a tip anointed with sulphur and phosphorus. Striking the tip against a rough pad on the side of the packet ignites the cigarette, which is reinforced with slivers of bamboo or tobacco leaf to stop it breaking. (re: Robert Heinlein)

ShasPod - Compact Talmud Study Aid
The ShasPod is a twenty-gigabyte iPod loaded with 2,711 shiurim, one for each page of the Talmud. A shiur is a brief (30-60 minute) discussion by a religious teacher. Each shiur is in English mixed with Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) and some h (re: Frank Herbert)

Siemens Communicator Badge: Trek-style Communicator
The device can be worn like a badge, or on a lanyard around your neck. Commands from the user are transmitted via Bluetooth to a central home communications server. The server uses proprietary voice recognition software to convert your voice commands (re: Star Trek)

Life Detector Robot To Find Life On Distant Worlds
Zoe, which was developed by Carnegie Mellon University, detects life by looking for natural fluorescence from cells that contain chlorophyll. The robot can also spray four special dyes on soil samples; they fluoresce only when they bind to one of fou (re: Frank Herbert)

Bacillus Loquacious: AI-2 and the Talkative Bacterium
"When we think about bacteria, we think about them as being tiny single-celled organisms that live these very asocial reclusive lives," said Bonnie Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. "In fact, bacteria have developed language, an (re: Greg Bear)

DARPA's 'BigDog' Robot Now In Puppy Stage
The Defense Advanced Research Project Authority (DARPA) Learning Locomotion project seeks to create algorithms that help multi-legged platforms learn to walk in varied terrain. DARPA will be handing out a series of $600K-$800K research grants to teac (re: William Gibson)

Did Giant Space Clouds Cause Mass Extinctions?
It's possible, according to a computer model prepared by researcher Alex Pavlov at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The model shows that "dramatic climate change" may occur when interstellar dust accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere due to the p (re: Arthur Conan Doyle)

Moon Dust Substrate For Solar Panels
Simulated moon dust has been used to make the substrate of a solar cell, according to University of Houston researchers. The fine grey powder is 50% silicon dioxide, along with a mixture of oxides of twelve different metals (including aluminum, magne (re: John W. Campbell)

Microwire Data Storage
Microwires 3 to 5 times thinner than a human hair are being studied as a possible data storage alternative to CD-ROMs. Microwire technology originated in the old Soviet Union; they are now being studied elsewhere. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Brain 'Pacemaker' For Depression Sufferers
For the first time, deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been shown to treat people suffering from major depression. DBS has been used to successfully treat epilepsy and Parkinson's. (re: Larry Niven)

Teddy Bear Robotic Companions
A plush robotic teddy bear sat on display at TechFest, a two-day Microsoft event that started today. Steven Bathiche, a research and development program manager, is looking to go beyond the bears you know. (re: Harry Harrison)

Invisibility Using Plasmonic Covers
Researchers Andrea Alu and Nader Engheta of the University of Pennsylvania have written a paper on how plasmonic resonance effects might be used to render an object invisible. (re: H.G. Wells)

Young Blood Found To Revive Aging Muscles
Dr. Thomas Rando and his group have been studying specialized cells called satellite cells, which are the stem cells in muscles. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Invisible Galaxy Of Dark Matter Discovered
In 2001, a group of astronomers led by Neil Trentham of the University of Cambridge predicted the existence of dark galaxies - vast collections of dark matter. Dark galaxies are thought to form when the density of matter in a galaxy is too low to cre (re: Edmond Hamilton)

Huygens Was Right - Titan Is Wet
Coming down through the clouds, the probe took pictures of what looked like river channels, beaches and islands - and landed in the mud! (re: Various)

Solar Tadpoles Explained By Boffins
Solar "tadpoles" - dark shadows that seem to wiggle down toward the surface of the sun during flares - may have been explained by University of Warwick astrophysicists. (re: Various)

Dyson Intelligent Vacuum Cleaner Is Self-Diagnosing
James Dyson has added a new feature to his vacuum cleaners - they can tell service personnel exactly what the problem is. All you need to do is "phone home" - that is, call the service center. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Demolition Robots Help Destroy Building
Robots suspended from cranes will be used to demolish the structure of one of Madrid's tallest buildings. The building was damaged by fire; the ruined structure is too dangerous to be handled by human workers. (re: Isaac Asimov)

Augmented Reality Cemetery Tour - The Dead Speak
An Augmented Reality tour of Atlanta's Oakland cemetery will let the dead speak to visitors. In a recent trial run, users carried laptops in backpacks and used game controllers to navigate the cemetary. (re: Rudy Rucker)

CSS Skywalker - First Step To SF Orbital Resorts
CSS Skywalker, an orbital hotel designed by Bigelow Aerospace, will consist of a 22x45 foot inflatable space habitat that can be easily configured for its guests. In the configuration shown below, the top level is set aside as a lounge; the middle le (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

America's Army And The Last Starfighter
America's Army, the official U.S. Army game, is an online video game that has registered about 4.7 million users. More than 30,000 people log onto the game's servers every day; thousands more play in unofficial leagues. It claims to present the most (re: Various)

Mouse With Human Brain May Live
Stanford University has given researcher Irving Weissman permission to create a mouse-human hybrid. The intent is to inject human brain cells into the brains of developing mice to see what happens. (re: H.G. Wells)

Rotundus And Rover: Robotic And Fictional Guardians (Updated)
The Rotundus robot is a rather unusual spherical bot that moves using an internal pendulum. The robot was originally designed for planetary exploration at the Ångström Space Technology Center, part of Uppsala University, Sweden. (re: Niven and Pournelle)

RFID Tags Proposed To Halt Blackmarket Cadaver Trade
An investigation into illegal sale and distribution of cadavers and body parts at the University of California, Los Angeles, has lead to recommendations that include implanting cadavers and individual body parts with RFID tags. (re: Larry Niven)

Earth To Mars In A Month With Painted Solar Sail
Gregory Benford, professor of physics at UC Irvine (and noted science fiction author) believes that a spacecraft powered by a special kind of solar sail could reach Mars in just one month. (re: Gregory Benford)

First Star Seen Leaving Our Galaxy
Astronomers have spotted a star moving at faster than the galactic escape velocity. It is leaving our galaxy, never to return. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Drive To Musical Wege House On Musical Road
Wege House is a unique house built along a Lake Michigan beach. The core of the house consists of massive beams forty feet in length. They are the basis for the core musical instruments of the house - two long stringed instruments. When played, the l (re: George RR Martin)

The Origins Of Cyberspace Up For Auction At Christie's
If you happen to be in NYC on February 23rd, you might want to bid on the amazing items in Christie's The Origins of Cyberspace: A Library on the History of Computing, Networking and Telecommunications. (re: William Gibson)

Space Rescue Technology In Fact And Fiction
NASA is preparing a backup shuttle and rescue crew in case shuttle Discovery has problems in May. Rescue flights have been become more of an issue since shuttle Columbia broke up in reentry two years ago. SF writers have been working on this since th (re: Various)

Eunicycle Single-Wheel Gyro-Stabilized Scooter
Dr. Trevor Blackwell has constructed a self-balancing, powered unicycle he calls the Eunicycle. It's pretty close to what Robert Heinlein had in mind in 1940 in The Roads Must Roll. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Water-Repellent 'Bumpy' Glass Mimics Lotus Leaves
The lotus is a good model for a water-repellent surface; they are waxy and covered with tiny bumps that make water roll off. Surfaces like ordinary glass are naturally wettable; when water is poured onto it, its surface tension is reduced so it sprea (re: Frank Herbert)

Asteroid Named After Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, now has an asteroid to call his own. Asteroid Douglasadams was among the 71 newly named celestial objects announced by the International Astronomical Union this past Tuesday. (re: Douglas Adams)

Ion Drive Spacecraft Also Takes Good Pictures
SMART-1, the European Space Agency ship equipped with ion drive propulsion, is now sending back great pictures from the lunar surface. SMART-1 is the first craft to return to the moon in over 5 years. (re: George Lucas)

Throwbot - Pocket-Sized Recon Robot
Redstone Arsenal is developing the Throwbot, a soda can-sized robot to aid soldiers in quickly gathering more information about their immediate environment. (re: Robert Silverberg)

SWORDS - First Robots To Break Asimov's First Law Of Robotics
Next month, the US Army will be putting robot soldiers in the field in Iraq. The SWORDS robots are fully armed, and thus the first to break Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. (re: Isaac Asimov)

Massive Planetoids From Beyond The Solar System
New calculations reveal that large planetoids may have formed hundreds of times farther from the Sun than previously thought. Some may have been captured from other stars. (re: George R.R. Martin)

ERNIE The Robot Pharmacist - More Accurate Than Humans
A robot pharmacist named ERNIE dispenses more than 90 percent of Evergreen Hospital Medical Center's drugs. ERNIE has packaged nearly 400,000 doses in the past nine months and works twenty-four hours per day. (re: Larry Niven)

Sega idog Robot Puppy (Update)
Sega unleashed its newest creation in Tokyo; a robotic dog called idog that can compose, play and dance to music. (re: Ray Bradbury)

Speegle Serves Up Verbal Search Results
Let Speegle read your search results in a restful voice. (re: Harlan Ellison)

Toshiba Ubiquitous Viewer Lets Phones Control PCs
Toshiba says it has developed software to let users control computers in their homes or offices from their mobile phones. (re: William Gibson)

Hit Song Science (HSS): Finetune Your Tracks
A computer program called Hit Song Science (HSS) from Polyphonic HMI, is being used to predict success or failure for music. And it is being used by musicians around the world to "finetune" the music to which every one of us listens. (re: William Gibson)

Technovelgy Top Stories For 2004
This past year, Technovelgy reported on hundreds of stories about real-life events that were presaged by science fiction stories. The following ten stories showed the most remarkable correspondence between sf and reality in 2004. (re: Various)

Electrical Barrier To Keep Asian Carp Out Of Great Lakes
A permanent electrical barrier will go into use in February to protect the Great Lakes from Asian carp that are moving up the Mississippi river. (re: Roger Zelazny)

Mac Mini and KITT The Knight Rider
the 6.5"x2" Apple Mac Mini is just the right size to fit into a car stereo single-DIN compartment. Let the Mac Mini custom auto conversions begin! (re: Neal Stephenson)

Saudi Arabian Mobile Phones
The Islamic Saudi Mobile Phone has a number of unusual, built-in features to serve the religious needs of its intended audience - faithful Muslims. It will provide Qibla direction as well as prayer times in over 5,000 cities worldwide. (re: Roger Zelazny)

Tweel - (Almost) A Smart Wheel
Michelin is introducing the Tweel - a combination of wheel and tire that could offer a number of benefits to owners of wheeled vehicles. Unlike most Michelin tires sold in the past century, the Tweel is unique - it does not use air to cushion the rid (re: Neal Stephenson)

Niven's 'Black Power' Now Available In Infrared
A team lead by University of Toronto scientist Ted Sargent has created a sprayable plastic composite that could harvest as much as thirty percent of the solar power that strikes a surface. (re: Larry Niven)

A Sleeping Bag That Walks
Japanese mail-order magazine Tsuhan Seikatsu offers a new kind of sleeping bag experience for you jaded hikers and backpackers - the Arukeru Nebukuro, literally 'the sleeping bag you can walk in.' (re: Clifford Simak)

Magnetic Fields Found To Shape Planetary Nebulae
A team of German astronomers have detected magnetic fields in the central stars of four planetary nebulae. Astronomer and sf writer Fred Hoyle wrote about this fifty years ago. (re: Fred Hoyle)

Green Comet Machholz - Hopefully, Without Cometeers
In his 1936 classic The Cometeers, science fiction Grandmaster Jack Williamson writes of a sinister green comet; now you can look up and see one. (re: Jack Williamson)

Shuffle Master Bets On RFID Poker Chips
Casinos have sought in vain to accurately track table game bets and rate a player's wagering tendencies - until now. Shuffle Master has acquired two RFID patents that will allow them to track every chip on the table. (re: Bruce Sterling)

Ticketed Passengers Only Aboard Soyuz ('TANSTAAFL' Says Roskosmos)
Russia's space agency Roskosmos announced that it would stop giving free rides to US astronauts beginning in 2006. US space shuttles have been grounded since February of 2003, when the shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry. (re: Isaac Asimov)

Biojewelry Bone Ring To Go With Your Jeweleye
Looking for an accessory for your Jeweleye eyeball jewelry? Here it is! (re: Frank Herbert)

Bring On The Hush-A-Phone!
We've all read about the studies being conducted on the airlines, that perhaps one day soon we will all be forced to sit cheek-by-jowl with people who will conduct loud conversations on their cell phones. Isn't there some way to fend off this disaste (re: Robert Heinlein)

The Loneliest Whale and Ray Bradbury
In 1989, a very unusual set of whale calls were noticed in the North Pacific basin; the calls have been consistently recorded since 1992. (re: Ray Bradbury)

Gated Communities Flourish - Offline and Online
Gated communities are gaining popularity - online and off. (re: Neal Stephenson)

Heliodisplay - Futuristic Display Technology
Films like Star Wars show how images projected into the air might be used. The Heliodisplay from IO2Technology projects images - both still pictures and video - into mid-air. It works with most video sources. It is also interactive, forming a floatin (re: George Lucas)

Shadow Sculptures Of Shiego Fukuda
Sculptor Shiego Fukuda created an apparently abstract three-dimensional object - However, the image that Fukuda wants you to see is the shadow of the sculpture - a motorcycle that can be seen when a light is passed through. (re: Jack Vance)

Robots and Emotion: Tetchy the Turtle Meets HAL-9000
In 2001: A Space Odyssey and in I, Robot, robots had the ability to understand human emotion. Affective Media, based in Scotland, is working on it now. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Finally, Good Graphics For SF E-Paper
Science fiction writers have been talking about the virtues of electronic paper for decades; finally, mobilepc magazine has given us the graphics we've been waiting for in their "Wonders That Will Be" issue. (re: Neal Stephenson)