John Shirley is the author of numerous novels and books of stories, including the novels Cellars, Wetbones, City Come A-Walkin’ , Eclipse, A Splendid Chaos, the collection Black Butterflies (which won the Bram Stoker award and which was chosen by PW as one of the best books of that year), and the collection Really Really Really Really Weird Stories from Nightshade.

Today I pester science blogger Jennifer S Griffin on biological and molecular kinds of things.

MT How do you feel about the way science is portrayed in science fiction?

JG There is a very wide range of science fiction, and some of it is brilliant and fascinating.

For my take I first have to state that I see the trend of increasingly autonomous weapons as nigh unstoppable. So I’m not going to whinge about should we or shouldn’t we as that is tantamount to pissing in the wind. However what does concern me is oversight.

We’ve resolved not to make a meal out of links posts. There’s other guys doing a great job and we doubt we could do better. However I do spend a lot of time on author’s blogs and thought it might be an idea to specialize and do the odd links posts highlighting my favourite posts there. So here goes:

Just in case anyone suspected that we took this blog too seriously I’m running a whimsical Brain Parade featuring bloggers. Today’s question is:

We give you a coupon redeemable for any spacecraft depicted in a science fiction story (insurance not included). Which ship do you trade it in for and what do you do with it?

Today we take a different tack and interview an editor rather than a writer on the subject of science fiction. John has his fingers in a lot of different pies, he’s assistant editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Robert Peckyno has been a lecturer for the “Introduction to Space Studies” course at the University of North Dakota as well as the webmaster for Volcano World for the past four years. He is currently leaving UND to begin PhD work at Oregon State focusing on Martian volcanism and geomorphology.

As promised I’m following up on reader feedback from our Brain Parade on Underrated Science Fiction writers (link). One of our readers nominated Susan, I’d credit him here with a link but he commented anymonously. Susan was gracious enough to submit to a few pesky questions about her work

I’m a bit of a naysayer on this topic. I do agree that the internet lets us all connect to each other in wonderful new ways. However to me that’s beside the point, technology (or more specificaly the way our society uses technology) has alienating effects as well that are worth paying attention to.

I’m responding to this article (link) in Seed titled Discovery for the Sake of Discovery (cheers to Double A for the spottage)

The author makes comparison’s between science and religion which I think are totally naff and I’m going to tell you why.