Science Fiction in the News:
Science and Technology News

GestIC Gesture Recognition Controller Uses Electrical Fields
'...now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope.'- Douglas Adams, 1979. (re: Douglas Adams)

World's First 3D Printing 'Photo Booth'
'On the counter-top appeared a three-dimensional replica of Farr.'- Jack Vance, 1954. (re: Jack Vance)

Transparent Solar Cell Film Has Clear Advantages
'It turns sunlight into electricity... you spray it on.'- Larry Niven, 1995. (re: Larry Niven)

Tesla Model S Declared Car Of The Year By Motor Trend
'They can therefore roam over the roads of the entire hemisphere [combining] the sensations of coasting with the interest of seeing the country well.'- John Jacob Astor IV, 1894. (re: John Jacob Astor IV)

Merchants Get Face-Recognition Via The Cloud
'The road you're on, John Anderton, is the one less traveled...'- Steven Spielberg, 2002. (re: Schachner and Zagat)

E-Skin For Robots - And Maybe You
'a creature which could be given the reflexes of an adrenalized cat...' - Roger Zelazny, 1966. (re: Robotics)

Outdoor Testing For Self-Healing Concrete
'I noticed that curious mottled knots were forming, indicating where the room had been strained and healed faultily.'- J.G. Ballard, 1962. (re: J.G. Ballard)

Valerians, Your Heavy Gravity Planet Has Been Found
'...of extraordinary size, strength, and agility because of the enormous gravitation of the planet Valeria'- EE 'Doc' Smith, 1938. (re: EE 'Doc' Smith)

Microsoft Demos Spoken English To Chinese 'Universal Translator'
Researchers at Microsoft Research and the University of Toronto made a breakthrough using a technique called Deep Neural Networks. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

Arthur C. Clarke Describes PC, Internet - In 1974
A remarkable statement about the future. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Neil deGrasse Tyson Finds Krypton! (Video)
Tyson, Superman, Krypton, Action Comics - what's not to like? (re: Various)

No Online Voting Yet (How long Did You Wait In Line?)
'...every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions'- John Brunner, 1975. (re: John Brunner)

bebionic3 Myoelectric Robotic Hand
'At the moment Eldritch made use of the five-finger humanoid manual extremity...'- Philip K. Dick, 1965. (re: Philip K. Dick)

CIROS Robot Makes Your Salad
'Half your time in cooking is wasted reaching around for what you need next.'- Anthony Boucher, 1943. (re: Anthony Boucher)

How To 'Level Up' In Psychotherapy
'THE TIERSIAN THERAPY patients form a small and elite volunteer group...'- Philip Jose Farmer, 1991. (re: Philip Jose Farmer)

Computerized Surveillance Devices Open Their Eyes
'How often... the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.'- George Orwell, 1948. (re: George Orwell)

Ethiopian Children Learn From Diamond Age Primers
'The book spoke in a lovely contralto, with an accent like the very finest Vickys.'- Neal Stephenson, 1995. (re: Neal Stephenson)

Human Teaches Robot Ping Pong, Then Challenges It
'... it was about the size of a rollerskate and it seemed to be considering what to do next.'- Stephen Barr, 1960. (re: Stephen Barr)

Machine-Generated Fiction In Fiction
'Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences...'- Jonathan Swift, 1726 (re: Jonathan Swift)

Hopping Robot Stutter-Jumping Saves Power
'Hoppers are probably the most grotesque forms of transportation ever invented.'- Isaac Asimov, 1954. (re: Isaac Asimov)

SF Unleashes Your Inner Asimov, Reading Or Writing
Were you inspired by science fiction to create something? (re: )

Spraytect Self-Defense iPhone Case
'... the joymaker in his hand hissed and sprayed him with something...'-Frederik Pohl, 1965 (re: Frederik Pohl)

LG 84-inch Ultra HD TV
'But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlor?'- Ray Bradbury, 1953 (re: Ray Bradbury)

RASC-AL Lunar Wheel Design Challenge Is ON!
'...one tanker rolled on the peculiar flex-wheels which had proved one of the best all-purpose ways of getting around on the Moon.'- Arthur C. Clarke, 1968 (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Pet-Proto Robot Video Stops Bad Terminator Dreams
Not quite relentless pursuit. (re: Frederic Pohl)

Europe's Cheops To Look For Habitable Planets
'I was near enough it now to set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching it for a habitable planet.'- Edmond Hamilton, 1936. (re: Edmond Hamilton)

MIT's New Super Slippery Surface
'The water flowed off those walls without binding tension...' - Frank Herbert, 1965. (re: Frank Herbert)

The Plastic Eaters - Amazon Fungus Lives On Plastic
'the smell of the rotting plastic began to hang permanently in the air...'- Davis/Pedlar, 1971 (re: Michael Crichton)

The Ultimate Wrist Watch Pip-Boy-style
'Mark brushed back ... his upper garment and pressed several buttons on the wide bracelet he wore upon his left wrist... '- Roger Zelazny, 1980. (re: Roger Zelazny)

Boy Banned From School For Bad Genes
'... the Alphas and Betas remained until definitely bottled...'- Aldous Huxley, 1932. (re: Andrew Niccol)

Private Space Flight At 'Inflection Point'
'The travelers could therefore quit their prison at pleasure, as soon as they should reach the moon.'- Jules Verne, 1867. (re: Jules Verne)

Seeing the High Energy Sky
Dramatic videos show how ESA's Integral helps us see the universe in a whole new light. (re: Various)

Measuring Awareness In Comatose Patients
'...he pressed a portable protophason amplifier ... tuned it, listened at the proper frequency for indication of cephalic activity.'-Philip K. Dick, 1969. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Lettuce-Bot Weed-Killing Robot Funded
A new alternative to labor-intensive farming techniques. (re: Michael Crichton)

Could Young Blood Stop Alzheimer's?
'...the blood gets so clogged with the poisons that the scavenging process doesn’t take place properly.'- Robert Heinlein, 1941. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Global Crowd Intelligence Needs Your Help
'... while nobody knows what's going on around here, everybody knows what's going on around here.'- John Brunner, 1975. (re: John Brunner)

Tony Stark's Transparent Phone Possible With Graphene?
A nearly unbreakable smartphone - based on graphene. (re: Various)

NASA's X1 Robotic Exoskeleton For Astronauts
'Earth's scientists solved the problem to some extent by devising rigid metallic clothing...'- Edmond Hamilton, 1932. (re: Edmond Hamilton)

Red Bull Stratos' Freefall From 24 Miles High
'He gasped as the air rushed out into near-vacuum...'- EE 'Doc' Smith, 1934. (re: EE 'Doc' Smith)

3D Printing: The End Of Global Supply Chains?
'Nanofax AG offers a technology that digitally reproduces objects, physically, at a distance.'- William Gibson, 1999. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Calligraphy Robot Preserves An Ancient Skill
'...the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'- Robert Heinlein, 1942 (re: Robert Heinlein)

Who First Suggested Terraforming Venus First?
'In five hundred years, all of Venus might be paradise.'- Poul Anderson, 1955. (re: Poul Anderson)

SpaceX Dragon First Private Craft To Dock With ISS
'Why, the ship wasn't a proper deep-space craft at all.'- Robert Heinlein, 1941. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Smart Bra From First Warning Systems
'...a delicate current is sent ... to an amplifier and a certain sound is made, and the nurse will properly react...'- David H. Keller, 1928. (re: David H. Keller)

'See-Through Prius' Demoed in Japan
You'll think you're driving a glass car! (re: Robert Heinlein)

'Edgy' Grip User Interface For Smartphones
'The congressman took out his pocket computer, nudged the milled edges twice, looked at its face...'- Isaac Asimov, 1958. (re: Isaac Asimov)

The Most Complex Synthetic Biology Circuit
'The earliest biologic strings had been inserted into E. coli bacteria as circular plasmids...'- Greg Bear, 1984. (re: Greg Bear)

Detroit's Urban Agriculture Ordinance
'The survivors tore up the metal plating and sold it... for seed and cattle.'-Isaac Asimov, 1951. (re: Isaac Asimov)

Space Debris Cleanup - Use Harpoons Or Gas Clouds?
'...satellites of all shapes and sizes... had been accumulating in Earth orbit... Now it had to be located, and somehow disposed of.'- Arthur C. Clarke, 1978. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Do Swiss Roboticists Dream Of Electric Sheep?
'He ascended … to the covered pasture whereon his electric sheep grazed.'- Philip K. Dick, 1968. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Robot Fabricates Endless Tools For Itself (Updated)
'It extrudes material like a spider...'- Charles Sheffield, 1979. (re: Charles Sheffield)

Roboroach Slalom Steering Video
'A cable, here, from the controller to the interface plug... wires from that to the brain.'- Thomas A. Easton, 1990. (re: Thomas A. Easton)

Store Extra Energy In Liquid Air
Off-peak energy storage just got another storage option. (re: Various)

Robot Snakes On A Plane!
'in operation it is not unlike the common earthworm.'- Harry Harrison, 1962. (re: Emmett McDowell)

Asteroid Miners Wanted!
'We must dig down, and then doubtless we shall find the metal.'- Garrett P. Serviss, 1898. (re: Garrett P. Serviss)

The Robotic Shopping Cart Of The Future
'...the machine would carry his bag in its soft plastic jaws and follow him as faithfully as a well-trained hound.'- John Brunner, 1975. (re: John Brunner)

Army Seizure Ray Inspired By Pikachu (Updated)
A deliberately-induced epileptic seizure. (re: John Varley)

Self-Driving Cars Ready To Buy In 5 Years Says Sergey Brin
Your autonomous car will drive itself off the lot by 2017! (re: Robert Heinlein)

Beam Yourself To Distant Places
'If he sent out two or three of the small tele-operated devices... Rand could effectively be in several places at once...' - Niven and Pournelle, 1981. (re: Niven and Pournelle)

Seven (Ten!) Inflatable Space Structures From Science Fiction
'In another minute John Endlich and his wife were setting up an airtight tent...' - Raymond Z. Gallun, 1951. (re: Raymond Z. Gallun)

Baxter Robot Learns From Fellow Workers
''My whole idea is to get away from a machine with a set of prearranged instructions...' - Stephen Barr, 1960. (re: Stephen Barr)

Hitachi Quartz Glass Memory Lasts Forever
'The books were crystals with recorded contents.'- Stanislaw Lem, 1961. (re: Stanislaw Lem)

What Price Warp Drive?
'Every atom of ship... was driven around space... by a direct reaction against the space warp itself.' - Jack Williamson, 1936. (re: Jack Williamson)

Arctic Resource Jackpot An Old Wish
By inducing climate change, new resources are revealed. (re: Jules Verne)

Toyota's Human Support Robot - Your Robot Butler
'Her idea of what a butler-valet combo should look like - sort of in the ancient English tradition...' - William Tenn, 1951. (re: William Tenn)

Lunar Supercomputer Complex
'When Mike was installed in Luna, he was pure thinkum, a flexible logic... a HOLMES FOUR.' - Robert Heinlein, 1966 (re: Robert Heinlein)

BIOSwimmer Robotic Tuna To Patrol Homeland
'The Mitsubishi turbot wriggled, as if alive.' - Michael Swanwick, 2002. (re: Michael Swanwick)

Building A Better Space Suit - The Biosuit
'I had stepped outside the car with Lord Kelvin, both of us, of course, wearing our air-tight suits.' - Randall P. Serviss, 1898 (re: Randall P. Serviss)

The Human Brain - Chemically Fixed And Embedded In Plastic
'Burial is barbaric... [a] remnant of the primitive origins of our culture' - Philip K. Dick, 1969. (re: Cordwainer Smith)

Glowing LumiLor-Coated Cycles From Sith CycleWerks
Electroluminescent paint for your motorcycle. (re: Richard Morgan)

Cryonics Movement Loses Founder (Temporarily)
'Pay for suspended animation while medical science caught up with what was wrong with him...' - Robert Heinlein, 1956 (re: Larry Niven)

DARPA Seeks Science-Fictional Materials
'A metal that was apparently as light as cork and stronger than steel...' - Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1929. (re: Edgar Rice Burroughs)

Winbot Scrubs Your Windows
'There were the window cleaners... who were apparently polishing their way...' - Arthur C. Clarke, 1972 (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

DARPA LS3 Robot Pack Animal Video
'He admired the fast-plodding, articulated legs...' - Anthony Boucher, 1951. (re: Anthony Boucher)

Microsoft Patents Immersive Display
'Almost every home had its dimensino room...' - Clifford Simak, 1961. (re: Clifford Simak)

'Spray-On Skin' Heals Leg Ulcers
'...she helped the doctor spray on surrogate skin.' - Robert Heinlein, 1951 (re: Robert Heinlein)

Ten SF Houses Of The Future
Ten science fiction classics from ten science fiction authors. (re: Various)

Read My Lips - Computer Interprets Human Emotion
Soon, the emotion chip. (re: Various)

NASA's Robotic Rover Drivers
'Helmuth, after all, was not on Jupiter - though that was becoming harder and harder for him to bear in mind.' (re: James Blish)

Needle Beam Propagates Without Spreading
'Direct needlecast from here into a shielded stack...' (re: Richard Morgan)

Harvey The Agricultural Robot
Introducing the Harvest Vehicle HV-100. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Cheetah Robot Passes 28 MPH (Video)
'The legs are long, curled way up to deliver power, like a cheetah's...' (re: William Gibson)

Rat Dreams Manipulated By Scientists
'Render freed his arm and lifted off his crown of Medusa-hair leads and microminiature circuitry...' (re: Roger Zelazny)

Syrians Ask For Help From Mars
'...enormous figures, drawn in characters of reflecting luminosity...' (re: Jules Verne)

Pre-Bionic Eye Implants Down Under
The Six Million Dollar Man is coming! (re: Various)

Noodle-Shaving Robot Army Invades China
'One of these gorgeous eating places where we were served entirely by mechanical apparatus...' (re: Anthony Boucher)

SketRobo Robot Sketches Anything!
Robots can draw now. (re: Various)

How Smart Should Artificial Intelligences Get?
'...The real smart ones are as smart as the Turing heat lets them get...' (re: William Gibson)

Kinect@home Needs Your Help Identifying Objects
'... whenever a robot finds something it can't identify straight off... it puts whatever it is in the hopper outside your window.' (re: Amitav Ghosh)

RoboDoc Friendly Robot Pulse-Taker
A child-friendly Photoplethysmograph. (re: Michael Crichton)

Arizona Solar Updraft Tower By 2015
'And eventually, an hour later, it reached its glorious one thousand feet of height.' (re: Leigh and Walt Richmond)

Hover Bike Like Star Wars Landspeeder - With Video!
This could be the speeder you're looking for. (re: George Lucas)

Honda's Miimo Robotic Lawn Mower On Sale
'The mower reached the edge of the lawn, clucked to itself like a contented hen...' (re: Clifford Simak)

Cyborg Tissues Combine Transistors and Cells
'Nat Flieger reflexively poured water into a cup and fed the living protoplasm incorporated into the Ampek F-a2 recording system...' (re: Philip K. Dick)

Glove Tricorder Improves Physical Exams (Updated!)
It allows for data from the physical exam to be a component of automated diagnosis. (re: Various)

Google Self-Driving Car Now Commuter-Ready
'The car slid up the ramp... then joined the high-speed northbound stream. Mary Risling settled back for a little nap...' (re: Robert Heinlein)

DARPA M3 Soft Camo Robots
'Monique's tissues had at least three other basic attractor modes... [like] the spread-out "puddle" shape...' (re: Rudy Rucker)

Palm Scanners - Quick Lunch Or Mark Of The Beast
'Bad cootie factor with those palm-scan things.' (re: William Gibson)

The Library Of The Future
'A Filer is an amazingly intelligent robot and there aren't many being manufactured.' (re: Stanton Coblentz)

Mini Ion Thrusters To Push Tiny Satellites
Perfect for pushing your cubesat around. (re: Murray Leinster)

Double Robotics iPad-Based Telepresence Robot
'Rand could effectively be in several places at once...' (re: Niven and Pournelle)

Trinity Chapel Offers Giving Kiosk
'A holy blue light filled the interior of the machine...' (re: Roger Zelazny)

DNA As An Archival Storage System
Four grams of DNA theoretically could store the digital data humankind creates in one year. Library of Congress, take note. (re: Barbara Hambly)

Meshworm Inches Toward You (Thanks, Harry Harrison)
'...in operation it is not unlike the common earthworm.' (re: Harry Harrison)

I Want A Curiosity Rover Sky Crane!
'The observation vehicle was of that peculiar variety used in conveying a large number of people across rough terrain.' (re: Jack Vance)

Podtime Sleeping Pod Like Niven's Napcap
'The lid lifted and she crawled inside... The inside received her as a womb.' (re: Niven/Barnes)

CompanionAble Project's Companion Robot Hector
'Beside her moved a gleaming robant...' (re: Philip K. Dick)

Artificial Jellyfish Swims On Its Own
'It was a chemotactic artificial jellyfish designed to slither into undersea vents...' (re: Rucker/Sterling)

Cocoagraph Edible Photos Like Spatial-Postal Cards
'Before Bill's startled gaze... the card was starting to swell.' (re: Harry Harrison)

USC's Project Holodeck
Soon, a hologrid with omnidirectional holographic diodes! (re: Gene Roddenberry)

Galaxy Beam Smartphone Projector
"Ifness drew from his pocket a tube of dull black metal an inch in diameter, four inches long." (re: Jack Vance)

iWalk BiOM Power Foot
Walk naturally, bionic men. (re: Martin Caidin)

3D Printed Exoskeleton Uplifts Little Girl
This remarkable story shows that 3D printer technology is just getting started. (re: Fritz Leiber)

Japan's Android Robot Restaurant
Giant fembots wait to entertain you. (re: George Lucas)

'Invisible' Bicycle Helmet
Would go well with your airbag jacket. (re: Neal Stephenson)

Laser Lofts UAV for Two Day Flight
Based on an idea from a physicist and science fiction writer in the 1960's. (re: Niven/Pournelle)

Hacker Creates Augmented Reality Anime Girlfriend
'She is Tei Toei. She is ... a congeries of software agents.' (re: Robert Heinlein)

These Robot Legs Are Made For, Well, Walking
Even replicates human neural networks. (re: James Cameron)

Mahoro Two-Armed Lab Robot
'...He realized that the moving thing inside was - of course - a robot.' (re: James Blish)

PredPol Crime-Prediction A Hit In L.A.
'All day long the idiots babbled...' (re: Philip K. Dick)

What Camouflage Pattern Is Best?
If you can't see it, you're making progress. (re: George R.R. Martin)

Festo ExoHand Fine Motor Skill Robotic Hand
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him - all three pairs... came to life.' (re: Robert Heinlein)

Google's Compute Engine Is Sfnally Large
'...Twenty-five thousand electronic brains were set up in intricate series.' (re: AE van Vogt)

Ford Smart Car Stops Your Texting
'Okay,' he said, feeling humiliated. Maybe the car was right... (re: Philip K. Dick)

Gideon eBibles And Frank Herbert's OC Bible
The Gideons are surprising liberal in their approach, btw. (re: Frank Herbert)

Google Wallet Like Pohl's Joymaker Credit Card
You must know the institutional designation and account spectrum ... (re: Frederik Pohl)

Google's Voice Recognition Sweet In Jelly Bean
'...Translating most normal variations of voice, idiom, accent... into the mathematical expressions on which the computers operate.' (re: Frederik Pohl)

Google Glass: The Next Big Platform?
Will you be buying these in 2014? (re: Charles Stross)

Spray-On Lithium Ion Battery
'...the five-year battery-plate contained within the back cover of the mag.' (re: Philip K. Dick)

Hydrolemic Systems Prepares For Water Shortages
'...Living on reclaimed moisture from his own breath and body.' (re: Frank Herbert)

Inject Oxygen Into The Bloodstream Like Star Trek Triox
Dr. McCoy had this in his medical bag. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

'Mind Uploading' Issue Now Downloadable
'The estimated duration of this model is five hundred thousand years...' (re: Richard Morgan)

Penguin E-Books For Libraries
Read about it on your iPad. (re: Stanislaw Lem)

Space Command Is In Your Hands
A most congenial project for Technovelgy readers. (re: Various)

Archeo-Robot Scans Ancient Roman Sewers
Great video of the 'cloaca maxima'. (re: Ridley Scott)

Eole Water Turbine Like Star Wars Vaporator
'The atmosphere yielded its moisture with reluctance.' (re: George Lucas)

BioTac Robot's Finger More Sensitive Than Yours
'We have at last found a way to link computer circuitry with synthetic flesh...' (re: Ray Cumings)

$99 Lidar Plus UAV Equals Prometheus Mapping Device
Sounds like a fun way to map indoor spaces. (re: Ridley Scott)

China Carries Out Automated Space Docking
China's space capabilities continue to evolve. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

'Arc Reactor'-Inspired Energy Source
Tony Stark would just build one! (re: Stan Lee)

Eyedox Genetic Test To Exclude Color Blind
Imagine a future in which employment is restricted based on genetic testing. (re: Andrew Niccol)

NASA Plans Autonomous Robots To Explore Planets
First step toward... Imperial Probe Droids? (re: George Lucas)

Robots Learn Language Via Random Syllabic Babble
'...let them teach themselves by trial and error.' (re: Stephen Barr)

Elvis And Jimi To Return Hologramatically?
The Return of the King. (re: Various)

Real-Time Avatars Mirror Your Expression
'These people are pieces of software called avatars.' (re: Neal Stephenson)

Self-Healing Materials - Microencapsulated or Microvascular
'An inter-skin layer of gum that could seal the punctures...' (re: Raymond Z. Gallun)

Together Anywhere, Together Anytime
The telephote! Here is another great triumph of modern science. (re: Jules Verne)

Joggobot Shadows Your Steps
Like stick-tights. (re: Various)

Artificial Noses For Disease Diagnostics
'...Set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the hound...' (re: Ray Bradbury)

Transcontinental Flight By Solar-Powered Plane
'...Placed in the wings of a plane to generate power from the light falling on that surface...' (re: John W. Campbell)

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