Science Fiction in the News:
Science and Technology News

Biggest HiSeas 'Mars Mission' Problem? No Internet
I think sf writers have this covered! (re: Harry Gore Bishop)

Clever Electric Truck Generates More Power Than It Uses
Better than a fictional electrotruck! (re: Poul Anderson)

Eden-ISS, Greenhouse In Antarctica
'With this kind of light we could get the gardens going again." - Barbara Humbly, 1983. (re: Barbara Hambly)

Make Space Tools On The Spot (Like Moties)
'A moment ago it was squeezing silver toothpaste in a ribbon...' - Niven and Pournelle, 1974. (re: Niven and Pournelle)

Will Robots Be Moral If We Raise Them Like Our Children?
'The birth of Machine, my robot child...' - Henry Slesar, 1958. (re: Henry Slesar)

Foldable Galaxy Phones, I Swear They're Coming (Maybe)
Apparently, it is very hard to do. We've been patient, though. (re: Larry Niven)

Bacteria Behave Differently In Space
'The Republic struggled to control its Sours...' - Bruce Sterling, 1985. (re: Bruce Sterling)

Brain Connected To Internet - ‘Brainternet'
Fascinating! or thoughts to that effect. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

Artificial Spider Silk
You can also use it to make a roof - on an asteroid. (re: Robert Heinlein)

MIT Tunes Ions For Frictionless Surface - Superlubricity!
'My telelubricator here neutralizes the interatomic bonds the surface of any solid...' - L. Sprague de Camp, 1940. (re: L. Sprague de Camp)

Seiko Astron Always Knows Your Time Zone
'Harrington glanced at his wrist watch - a bulky affair - and whistled.' - Robert Heinlein, 1940. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Robot Buddhist Priest Chants, Drums
'He crossed the waiting room to the Padre booth...' - Philip K. Dick, 1969. (re: James Blish)

Koniku Kore, Mouse Brain-Based Chip, Detects Explosives
'As a matter of fact, this mouse is going to keep on thinking forever.' - Cordwainer Smith, 1962. (re: Cordwainer Smith)

CNH Industrial Autonomous Tractor Concept Video
'...the tiny red glints of self-guided tractors.' - Larry Niven, 1966. (re: Larry Niven)

Temi Robotic Telepresence Roommate
'Small [telepresence] devices with cameras and sound equipment which could move freely...' - Niven and Pournelle, 1981. (re: Niven and Pournelle)

The Neuroon Open Sleep Tracker For Lucid Dreaming
'Leads trail away from insertion points on her face and wrist... to a lucid dreamer on the bedside shelf.' - Peter Watts, 1999. (re: Peter Watts)

Siri Now Smoother, Perkier (Thanks, Deep Learning!)
'Good morning, Dr. Chandra. This is Hal.' - Arthur C. Clarke (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

China's Drone Fleet Flies In Formation
'Programmed to hang... in a hexagonal grid pattern.' - Neal Stephenson, 1995. (re: Neal Stephenson)

Neuralink, The Latest Elon Musk Passion
'I used my implant to tell MILLIE [a mainframe computer] what we wanted...' - Pournelle and Niven, 1981. (re: Pournelle and Niven)

RFly Drones Rule The Warehouse
'The wasp homed unerringly on the face of the honeycomb...' - James P. Hogan, 1979. (re: James P. Hogan)

Will The FDA Approve This Antiaging Drug?
'So what we're looking for now is... an anti-agathic, an anti-death drug.' - James Blish, 1951. (re: James Blish)

Rule Of Humans By Software Not Transparent
'The Council itself could be overridden by a superior power...' - Arthur C. Clarke, 1956. (re: Miles Breuer)

SpaceX Spacesuit Design Transmitted By Elon Musk
Welcome, SpaceX, to the club of space suit imaginers and makers. (re: Schachner and Zagat)

Will A Steel Umbrella Stop Russia?
'Everyone was aware that the damned platform was wandering around in its own orbit...' - EB White, 1950. (re: EB White)

EVE Artificial Womb For Lambs (For Now)
'In the crimson darkness, stewing warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones...' - Aldous Huxley, 1932. (re: Aldous Huxley)

TIKAD Armed Drone Ready To Fight
'Each a television eye and a sonic stunner...' - Larry Niven, 1972. (re: 309)

Bees Royal Jelly Helps Wounds Heal Faster
'An alien drug... used by an insect race.' - Clifford Simak, 1961. (re: Clifford Simak)

NASA Wants To Make Oxygen On Mars
'They plop down on the Red and if the dust is deep enough ... they burrow in...' - Greg Bear, 2014. (re: Greg Bear)

Hackers Insert Malware Into DNA
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!' - (re: Barbara Hambly)

X2-VelociRoACH Cooperates To Launch Tiny Drones
Little robots cooperating can do big tasks. Eventually. (re: Isaac Asimov)

'Do Not Pay' Chatbots To Replace Law Firm Associates?
'I want my lawyer program.' - David Brin, 1990. (re: David Brin)

MULTI Model Of Star Trek Turbolift
Cool prototype video! (re: Various)

A Look Into The Future Of Spacecraft!
Ever wonder how you look when you enter a new part of a spacecraft? (re: Raymond Z. Gallun)

An 'Ethical Black Box' For Robots?
Explored by science fiction authors. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Dadbot Digital Immortality
'A hardwired ROM cassette replicating a dead man's skills...' - William Gibson, 1984. (re: William Gibson)

Should We Permit Computers To Create Their Own Language?
'Talk Between Robots radio...' - Frederik Pohl, 1954. (re: Frederik Pohl)

Breakthrough Starshot Sprites Yearn For Alpha Centauri
'Whoever launched it fired a laser cannon...' - Niven and Pournelle, 1971. (re: Niven and Pournelle)

Kino Project Roaming Personal Fashion Robots
'Most of the crew have the tiny imp ride on their shoulder...' - Robert Forward, 1985. (re: Robert Forward)

Astronaut Exercise Video, Predicted By SF Writers
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses.' - Murray Leinster, 1953. (re: Murray Leinster)

First Crewless Ship? Umm...
Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (re: Miles J. Breuer)

RFID Chipped Employees Of Three Square Market
'About a third of the people in Manhattan have replaced their Freedom Card with a radio-frequency chip...' - John Twelve Hawks, 2015. (re: John Twelve Hawks)

JAXA's Int-Ball Drone To Follow Astronauts In Space Station
'I want you to build me some of those.' MIT Professor David Miller, 1999. (re: George Lucas)

Amazon Patents Annoying Robot That Follows You
'The... machine, being homotropic, headed toward them, still bleating...' - Philip K. Dick, 1963. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Hand Gestures And Body Poses Control Devices
'He waved his hand... the circuit switched...'- Philip K. Dick, 1955. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Rovable Robots Crawl Across Your Body
'Most of the crew have the tiny imp ride on their shoulder...' - Robert Forward, 1985. (re: Robert Forward)

Sansar Social Virtual Reality Platform In 2017?
'And just as a daydreamer forgets his actual surroundings, and sees other realities...' - Vernor VInge, 1981. (re: Vernor Vinge)

Cellphone Harvests Power From Ambient Radio Signals And Light
A battery-free phone. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Desktopography Makes Virtual Desktops Real
'Ender doodled on his desk, drawing contour maps of mountainous islands and then telling his desk to display them in three dimensions...' - Orson Scott Card, 1985. (re: Orson Scott Card)

LaWS Laser Can Take Out Rogue Drones
Looks like a weapon for the Runaway squad! (re: Michael Crichton)

Moon Express Lunar Robot Mining: Shine On, Harvest Moon
'The bulldozer moved through the lunar strip mine... ' - Pournelle and Niven, 1981. (re: Pournelle and Niven)

Liquid Body Armor For TALOS Exoskeleton
'... instantly became rigid all over when something struck it...' - Larry Niven, 1966. (re: Larry Niven)

Hyperloop One Video Shows It Works!
'Complete evacuation of the interior of the tubes [and] a wave that provides the new propulsive energy for the cars...' Hard Vincent, 1929. (re: Harl Vincent)

Chairless Chair Exoskeleton By Sapetti
'Earth's scientists... devised rigid metallic clothing...' - Edmond Hamilton, 1932. (re: Edmond Hamilton)

Publishing Technologies In Science Fiction
In response to a reader question, a set of links related to publishing technologies in science fiction (re: Various)

Russia Working On Military Exoskeletons
'...you look like a big steel gorilla...' - Robert Heinlein, 1959. (re: Robert Heinlein)

3D Printed Bionic Chinese Skin
Designer skin for everyone! (re: Philip K. Dick)

Flexup Tire Design Good For Tumblebugs
'Each spoke telescopes into five sections.'- Neal Stephenson, 1992. (re: Neal Stephenson)

3D Printed Graphene Aerogel - So Light!
'... light as cork and stronger than steel...' - Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1929. (re: Edgar Rice Burroughs)

Asteroid Deflection With DART
'This obelisk is one huge deflector mechanism...' Gene Roddenberry, 1968. (re: Miles Breuer)

Translate One2One From IBM's Watson Your Communication Solution
'It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix...' - Douglas Adams, 1979. (re: Douglas Adams)

News Now Philip K. Dick's Bailiwick
'A vast complex electronic organism... responsible to no one...' - Philip K. Dick, 1963. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Autonomous BADGER Robot Drilling Machine
'The compacted matter... makes a better tunnel lining than concrete, don't you think?' - Paul Ernst, 1936. (re: Paul Ernst)

TALOS Exoskeleton Development Proceeding
'Suited up, you look like a big steel gorilla...' - Robert Heinlein, 1959. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Autonomous Robots Navigate Like Rats
'Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted.' - Ray Bradbury, 1950. (re: Ray Bradbury)

SINTEF Robot Cleans Solar Panels
'The window cleaners, with large padded feet...' - Arthur C. Clarke, 1972. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Pangorin Restaurant Service Robots
What'll you have? Jawa juice? (re: George Lucas)

Drug Creates Real Melanin Tan
I've used them all my life... (re: Larry Niven)

Medical Drones Hover Like Angels Near You
'The death-reversal equipment is on its way...'- Frederk Pohl, 1965. (re: Frederik Pohl)

SkEye Amazing Israeli Gigapixel Drone
'An eye that could not only see, but fly...' - Manly Wade Wellman, 1938. (re: Manly Wade Wellman)

How Rude! DARPA Wants Robots To Behave More Like Threepio
'Do I know protocol? Why, it's my primary function.' - George Lucas, 1976. (re: George Lucas)

'Liquid Light' Flows Around Corners
Light as a superfluid. (re: George Lucas)

Unrolling The Filmy Materials Of Space Tech
'When unfolded and unrolled... it became a tough, gleaming film.' - Jack Vance, 1962. (re: Jack Vance)

Buddy Companion Robot Your Bulbous Friend
'Nanny was built in the shape of a sphere, a large metal sphere, flattened on the bottom...' - Philip K. Dick, 1955. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Poli-X1 Prototype Bee Pollinator
Always buzz, buzz, buzz, eh Mr. Drone? (re: Raymond Z. Gallun)

Bake in Space Bake-Off... In Space!
'A joyous condition commenced for the cook in the electric kitchen...' - Otto Willi Gail, 1929. (re: Otto Willi Gail)

DeepMind AI Baffled By Homer Simpson, Needs Human Help
'Whenever a robot finds something it can't identify straight off...' - Harry Harrison, 1956. (re: Harry Harrison)

Does Earth's Middle Mantle Hold Oceans Of Water?
Al Gore, you have no idea. (re: Stephen Baxter)

Deep Learning Creates New Faces
'a million and a half physiognomic fraction-representations of various people...' - Philip K. Dick, 1977. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Vaccine Blocks Heroin High
'You're biochemically incapable of getting off...' - William Gibson, 1985. (re: William Gibson)

Design Your Own Robot (Carefully)
'I didn't realize it, but I was patiently building the most dangerous thing in creation...' - Maurice Hugi, 1941. (re: Maurice Hugi)

Worms Eat Plastic Now
'Slowly and inexorably, the rate of dissolution increased...' - Davis/Pedlar, 1971. (re: Michael Crichton)

The Largest Virtual Universe!
'...a machine able literally to contain the Universe Itself .' - Stanislaw Lem, 1965. (re: Stanislaw Lem)

Cyborg DragonflEye At Your Command
'The dragonfly responded like a toy airplane, taking off and heading east...' (re: John Twelve Hawks)

The Ring Clock IS Heinlein's Finger Watch
'Crayn glanced at his finger watch...' - HB Fyfe, 1951. (re: HB Fyfe)

Xiaoice AI Now A Poet
'How can you compete with an IBM heavy-duty logomatic analogue?'- JG Ballard, 1971. (re: JG Ballard)

Dubai Mall Hires Robocop
'This was as close as a robot could get to a cop in uniform, without being a joke.' - Harry Harrison, 1958. (re: Harry Harrison)

Ambrosia Start-Up Offers New Blood For Old 'Caper'
'It consists largely in replacing the entire blood tissue in an old person with new, young blood...' - Robert Heinlein, 1941. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Prodrone Dual Arm Drone PD6B-AW-ARM As Predicted In 1960
'The ultimate horror for our paranoid culture; vicious unseen mechanical entities that flit at the edges of our vision...' - Philip K. Dick, 1960. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Artificial Intelligence Software Predicts Lifespan
'The doctor... went behind his apparatus... exposed dials came to life and a low humming came from the machine...' - Robert Heinlein, 1939. (re: Robert Heinlein)

BlessU-2 Robot Priest Celebrates 500th Reformation Anniversary
'at last the robot cardinal is to be elected Pope.' - Robert Silverberg, (re: Robert Silverberg)

Free-Floating Planet Capture Not Rare, Says Paper
'planets which had been pulled from their pathways ages ago by a passing star...' - Balmer and Wylie, 1932. (re: Balmer and Wylie)

Tiny Tertill Autonomous Weeding Robot
'And it's only programmed to look for things smaller than an inch." - Michael Crichton, 1985. (re: Michael Crichton)

Used Dragon Cargo Spacecraft Will Fly Again
'the overstrained meters made the smaller craft skittish as a young horse...' - Robert Heinlein (re: Robert Heinlein)

Spider Flyer Walker Space Suit For Mars Astronauts
'The eight thin metallic legs were pointed downwards...' - Charles Sheffield, 1979. (re: Charles Sheffield)

Anti AI AI Wearable Detects Artificial Voices
Combats another wearable, the voice-changing bowtie. (re: Various)

Drones Will Transform Cities
Where we're going, we don't use roads. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Orbital Space Tourism For $1M
'Big cigar. Narrows at the ends.' - William Gibson, 1984. (re: William Gibson)

Prynt Pocket Prints AR Pix Right In Your Hand
A printer for the palm of your hand. (re: John Brunner)

3D Printed Stretchable Skin For Robots AND You!
'Three rows of four colored dots appeared on the heel of my left hand...' - John Varley, 1992. (re: Greg Bear)

Bat Bot Robotic Flapping-Wing Drone
'The dark birdforms dotted the mountaintops like statues of prehistoric beasts, wings outspread...' - Roger Zelazny, 1980. (re: Roger Zelazny)

NASA's Astronaut Rescue Ball
'Ball and closely-prisoned man plummeted downward..' - Doc Smith, 1934. (re: Doc Smith)

ARM Wants To Build Brain Chips
'Slivers of microsoft, angular fragments of colored silicon...' - William Gibson, 1984. (re: William Gibson)

Sky Fence - A Drone-Proof Shield Created Over Prison
'There’s still a protective field over the whole thing. It volatilizes anything that tries to get through.' - Robert Silverberg, 1969. (re: Robert Silverberg)

Geoengineering The Atmosphere For Climate Change
'...a uniform temperature for each degree of latitude the year round.' - John Jacob Astor IV, 1894. (re: John Jacob Astor IV)

Archinaut Orbiting Robotic Factory
'Mass-produced only in the orbiting factories...'- Arthur C. Clarke, 1978. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

Cryonic Preservation - The Last Perk You'll Ever Need
'Is there not also a law providing for voluntary suspension of animation?' - Edward Page Mitchell, 1879. (re: Edward Page Mitchell)

Computers Understand Humans By Watching And Modeling Them
Soon, your computer will be watching you... and judging you. (re: Anthony Boucher)

NASA Asks For Moon To Earth Delivery Ideas
'Authority's 3-g catapult was almost one hundred kilometers long...' - Robert Heinlein, 1966. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Musk Tunnels Wisely Restrict Drivers
Too many robots. (re: Schachner and Zagat)

Robot Swarms Controlled With Augmented Reality
'You're not thinking in enough dimensions...' - Daniel Suarez, 2009. (re: Daniel Suarez)

MIT's C-LEARN Helps Robots Transfer Learning To Other Robots
'Talk Between Robots radio...' - Frederik Pohl, 1954. (re: Frederik Pohl)

Mini-Brains In A Dish
'Cultured brains on a slab.' - Peter Watts, 1999. (re: Peter Watts)

Rapid Automated Search For Habitable Planets Needed
'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)

WatchSense Perfect For Fat-Fingered Smartwatch Owners
'Now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components...' - Douglas Adams, 1979. (re: Douglas Adams)

Digital Construction Platform Robot 3D Prints A Building
'It extrudes material like a spider.' - Charles Sheffield, 1979. (re: Charles Sheffield)

Bionic Eye-Hand Combo Robot Grasps Objects On Its Own
'The crawling, exploring object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand, a self-contained robot...' - Philip K. Dick, 1955. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Earth's 7,000 Languages Soon Machine Translatable
Bet this method would work with Gorns. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

FarmBot, Your Personal Robotic Farmer
'A robot farmer was plowing...' - Philip K. Dick, 1954. (re: Philip K. Dick)

NASA's Prototype Lunar Greenhouse For Mars And Moon
'In contrast to the airless desolation outside, the interior of this five-acre greenhouse was the one most desirable place to be.' - Raymond Z. Gallun, 1951. (re: Raymond Z. Gallun)

Fukushima Plant Needs Radiation-Proof Scorpion Robots
'...with lead-bodied, radio-remote controlled androids, it's easier.' - Mari Wolf, 1952. (re: Mari Wolf)

NASA's Meteorite-Resistant Fabric Perfect For Space Armor
'The men who labored so feverishly there, were clad in heavy space armor...' - Raymond Z. Gallun, 1932. (re: Raymond Z. Gallun)

How Deep Learning And AI Will Affect Health Care
'A sort of satchel with an orifice in the top from which two metallic tentacles protruded slightly.' - Gordon R. Dickson, 1965. (re: Gordon R. Dickson)

Amazing Tesla Autopilot Video
'As the beautiful old car cruised in almost perfect silence under the guidance of its automatic controls...' - Arthur C. Clarke, 1976. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

3D Print Moon Dust Bricks
More fun with simulated lunar regolith. (re: John W. Campbell)

Cattle Avoidance Feature In Indian Autonomous Cars
'The driver went about the business of gently slipping the teflon-coated metal scoop beneath the first animal...' - Allan Dean Foster, 2006. (re: Allan Dean Foster)

Project KOVR Fashion Protection From Infosphere
'... the entire shroudlike membrane took on whatever physical characteristics were projected at any nanosecond.' - Philip K. Dick, 1977. (re: Philip K. Dick)

Twist Bioscience High Density Digital Data On DNA
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!' - Barbara Humbly, 1982. (re: Barbara Hambly)

'We're Not Creating A Terminator' Say Russians About Gun-Wielding Robot Fedor
Nobody is thinking about the Terminator. Westworld, maybe. (re: Michael Crichton)

Vantablack Now IMMEASURABLY Black
'a black coating now that’s ninety-nine percent absorptive...' - Doc Smith, 1934. (re: Doc Smith)

Mercedes-Benz Autonomous Taxi Fleet In 3 Years
'... the taxi utilized sophisticated electronic sensors to perceive its surroundings.' - Allan Dean Foster, 2006. (re: Alan Dean Foster)

Is 'The Pulsar Positioning System' Evidence For SETI?
'For a hyperspace jump, you need at least four beacons for an accurate fix.' - Harry Harrison, 1959. (re: Harry Harrison)

Someday, You Might Like VR Enough To Move In
'That barrier was going to melt away someday soon. The transhumanists had promised...' - Stephen Baxter, 2008. (re: Stephen Baxter)

Humans Use Mental Power For Turtle Slavery
Now we need to start looking for animals with fingers... (re: Robert Silverberg)

Solar-Powered Moisture Vaporator
'The atmosphere yielded its moisture with reluctance.' - George Lucas, 1976. (re: George Lucas)

DxtER! Tricorder Prize Won By Final Frontier Medical Devices
We've been waiting a long time for this, Star Trek fans. (re: Gene Roddenberry)

President Trump's Wall As Otra Nation Hyperloop
'...an hollow tube must be constructed the whole distance... as to admit a four wheeled carriage...'- George Medhurst, 1812. (re: Harl Vincent)

Pickup Lines From Artificial Intelligences
'They hate us, you know... The humans. They'll stop at nothing.' - Steven Spielberg, 2001. (re: Steven Spielberg)

Pooper Scooper Drone Robot Watchdog 1
'Robots pick up the garbage and junk...' - Harry Harrison, 1956. (re: Harry Harrison)

Cassie Robot Brings AT-ST Walker To Life
There's even a log test! (re: George Lucas)

Hundreds Of Robot Lawnmowers Invade Texas Town
'The mower reached the edge of the lawn, clucked to itself...' - Clifford Simak, 1944. (re: Clifford Simak)

Smartflower Solar Panel Unfolds In Video
'...the slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector.' - David Brin, 1990. (re: David Brin)

3D Printed Prosthetic Coral
Be sure to read The Diamond Age - still worth it. (re: Neal Stephenson)

Chowbotics Salad Robot, Sally
'... gorgeous eating places where we were served entirely by mechanical apparatus.' - Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1912. (re: Edgar Rice Burroughs)

Flying In An Ironman Suit
Just ask WWTSD? That's 'What Would Tony Stark Do...' (re: Various)

Are Observed Radio Bursts An Alien Propulsion Technology?
'These cones were driven through space by light pressure, the possibilities of which force they had long utilized.' - Edmond Hamilton, 1929. (re: Edmond Hamilton)

Caltech's ET Laboratory Looks For New Earths
'...set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'- Edmond Hamilton, 1936. (re: Edmond Hamilton)

Wink To Magnify View
Hopefully upgrade will be less than six million dollar man paid. (re: Various)

Shh! USAF's Secret X-37B Space Plane Breaks Record
'More airplane than spaceship...' - Robert Heinlein, 1951. (re: Robert Heinlein)

Artificially Intelligent Poster - Advert That Writes Itself
Oh great, AI now takes over the ad biz. (re: Philip K. Dick)

3D Print Tiny Bio-Bots
'... biological robots were not living creatures.' - Arthur C. Clarke, 1972. (re: Arthur C. Clarke)

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