Armageddon in 3D

Kow Yokoyama, a Japanese designer and model maker, created a series of powered-armor fighting suit models back in the early 80s.  Entitled SF3D, the back story involves the return of space colonists to an Earth recovering from nuclear war and features the New German forces versus the Australian forces.  Fred, over at Texas Best Grok, brought my attention to an illustrated article that had appeared in Galaxy magazine in 1968 and featured powered armor fighting suits.  The resemblance between Kow’s imaginings and  some of the ‘68 visions is remarkable.

The model kits, originally produced by Nitto of Japan, are once again being produced under the new name of Ma.k. 25.  If you’re interested in more, pay a visit to the (un)official site here. 

Today has been chockfull

of armageddon news.

After cometary impacts, biological disasters are among the most common causes given for the fall of mankind. 

Our ability to create life is reportedly one step closer according to an article in the NY Times here.

This is my favorite part: 

“But there are concerns that synthetic biology could be used to make pathogens, or that errors by well-intended scientists could produce organisms that run amok.”

That’s the well-intended scientists.  They never even mentioned the evil ones.

NE asteroid may be visible to amateur astronomers

Nancy Atkinson at Universe Today reports that 2007 TU24 a pockmarked rock 150 to 160 meters in diameter may approach Earth closely enough to be visible to amateur astronomers.

This is right up my apocalyptic alley.  Nancy warns the alarmists not to get all bent out of shape, this thing isn’t going to come anywhere close to hitting us.  But I’ll bet we see a rescheduling of asteroid & comet impact movies on cable…

The Big Idea

I’ve got another blog on an entirely different subject which has been getting decent and growing traffic.  This one, although still new, is dead as a doornail.  So, I started doing a little research and found some good, if obvious, advice.

One bit of obviousness is “post every day, two or three times a day and never, ever stop”. Well, lord knows I’ve got enough to say about everything, so that shouldn’t be too big a problem.  I’m starting that now.

Another bit was ‘pick a subject you know and like’.  Again, obvious, but true nonetheless.  Well, SF is something I know and like.  But there’s 50 gazillion SF oriented blogs, many of them with built-in name recognition, so I need to be a little more focused than the entirety of an as yet undefined genre.

In thinking about what ‘kind’ of science fiction I enjoy the most (on a visual scale the differences between enjoy the most and and simply enjoy is measured in nanometers), I’d have to come down on the side of dystopian futures.  You know, the world is falling apart, or has fallen apart, either from ecological disaster, alien invasion, runaway technology, disease, famine, pestilence or war.  Or, the survivors are barely eeking out a living in the ruins or hiding in the walls of a conquering alien species.

Just off the top of my head, examples of this you may recognize:  The Sheep Look Up by Brunner, Armageddon 2419 by Nowlan, Farnham’s Freehold by Heinlein, Alas, Babylon by Frank, The Postman by Brin, etc., etc. Not to mention numerous short stories that have mostly been passed over for decades (Tumithak of the Corridors by Tanner, for one).

So I like apocolyptic, armageddon-inspired, dystopian science fiction.  I can’t be the only one judging by the number of successful novels and movies that have shared these themes.

I’ll be sharing more thoughts on this subject.  At least three times a day…