Hiking on Pluto: The travel blog with a twist.
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Cixin Liu: The Wandering Earth
In 2008, The Three-Body Problem was a global literary sensation, and now that the adaptation is on Netflix, it’s got all the hype. Whether you like the series or not, and have contemplated to read the by now 4-body tetralogy, starting with a shorter piece of Liu’s work may be a good idea. The Wandering…
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Robert Merle: The Virility Factor
Literary-prize winning French authors are not afraid of writing speculative fiction. Long before “The Anomaly”, renowned French author Robert Merle had already published several works that could be categorised either as soft SF or speculative fiction, including post-apocalyptic “Malevil,” ethology SF “The Day of the Dolphin,” and dystopian feminist “The Virility Factor.” Categories, as often,…
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The best SF for free
Good science fiction is not expensive to buy, but the freedom from payment (and freedom from vexing paying platforms and credit cards) means more appetite for trying new authors, new genres. Buying a book feels like commitment: jumping headlong into a free story online is a carefree fling. And reading for free doesn’t need to…
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12 unglamorous facts they don’t tell you about glamorous expat life
I’ve spent the last 12 years living as an expat in 3 very different countries on 2 continents, and I still don’t have my sights on returning to my home country. Good advice on handling homesickness, diversity and cultural shock; the spiritual rewards of personal growth, life-altering encounters and loyalty miles – I’ve heard it…
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8 things I would have never understood without living in Bangladesh
I lived 3 years in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Throughout that time, in my good moments as well as in my bad moments, I was always learning. Much of what I learnt has only grown sharper since I left. Here’s a list of the 8 most interesting things I would have never discovered without…
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Could a nearby supernova extinguish life on Earth?
We’ve explored what would happen if our Sun went supernova [link]. Spoiler: while it would be lethal enough to necessitate evacuation to Pluto or beyond, it’s not the biggest headache for humankind today. But what if another star, not very far from our Solar System, exploded? We’ve seen that a supernova explosion could pose a…
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What would happen if the Sun went supernova?
If the thought of our Sun going supernova ever occurred to me, I always assumed that Earth, from crust to the last inhabitant, would be instantly terminated. We’d see a gigantic fireball on the sky, and before we could say “supernova!”, we’d turn into hot vapour. Not long ago I read a short story that…
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Herve Le Tellier: The Anomaly
The Anomaly is a good reminder how artificial genre divisions are. It ticks all the boxes for a thriller: it is a dark, high stakes, suspenseful plot-driven story. It has tonnes of the common tropes: mysterious turbulence, arrogant Pentagon general, inexplicable stranger, nerdish math prodigy, prim FBI agent, double life contract killer. It is a…
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The 10 best exoplanets for setting up home
We went hiking in the Solar System [link], but what lies beyond? It’s hard to imagine now, but before the 1990s astronomers were not even certain that any other star hosted planets: discovering the first exoplanets in 1992 and 1994 made headlines, and they all got individual names (Poltergeist, Phobetor and Draugr, a variety of…
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Rosa Montero: Bruna Husky Series
Titles in the series: Tears in Rain, Weight of the Heart, Los Tiempos del Odio Recently struggling to create lists of outstanding female SF authors and great non-English SF, having Rosa Montero on my radar has been a piece of good fortune on both counts. Montero, a Spanish mainstream author whose SF books are limited…