More sci fi comedy! And TASAT is go! Plus many other sci-fi related sites and resources!

For your weekend pleasure, I've posted the third installment of THE ANCIENT ONES - my SF comedy novel... that also delivers some unexpected twists on hoary sci-fi tropes. I don't see any comments under the prior postings, so I assume they were... fun? That some of the puns knocked you unconscious?

Your wit is welcome.

Okay, back to the world and varied ways to save it!

Far more important than any of the news below, is my annual suggestion for Seasonal Giving -- how your philanthropy dollars can be targeted in ways that help to achieve the world you want. If you have a dozen things you feel should be done, there’s an NGO trying for each of them. Please read. 

Save the world, your way.

== And now something for you... ==

...Well, for the prosperous sci fi aficionado. After 44 years, there is a hardcover of my first novel Sundiver. It's a lovely, collectible edition (numbered and signed) with a gorgeous new cover and interiors by Jim Burns. From Phantasia Press. (Not cheap. But wow does Phantasia do good work!)

Are you more rich in nerdy sci fi knowledge, instead? 

Well again, The TASAT project -- There's A Story About That! -- is doing great! A special service I've tried to bring into the world for almost 20 years. And now, thanks top master programmer Todd Zimmerman, it lives!

Come by TASAT.org and see how there's a small but real chance that nerdy SciFi readers like you might one day save the world!

Or like Ray Bradbury's chillingly prescient time paradox story "The Sound of Thunder."

Addendum -- other science fiction resources:

And now a year-ed gift for the nerdiest. A passel of web resources all about science fiction!

Here is a list of useful online science fiction resources, including databases, encyclopedias, as well as discussion forums and question and answer sites... 

Science Fiction Academia

Science Fiction Research Association -
“The oldest professional association dedicated to scholarly inquiry into Science Fiction and the Fantastic across all media.”

SFE: SF Encyclopedia -  
“Our aim is to provide a comprehensive, scholarly, and critical guide to science fiction in all its forms.”

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database -
“A freely available online resource designed to help students and researchers locate secondary sources for the study of the science fiction and fantasy and associated genres.”

J Wayne and Elsie M Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction   -
“A safe space for inquiry into, education about, and celebration of the genre.”

Science Fiction Databases

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database - 
“A community effort to catalog works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.”

Science Fiction – TV Tropes -
A section of the famous TV Tropes site, focused on popular themes in science fiction.

Inventions and Ideas from Science Fiction Books and Movies at Technovelgy.com -
"Explore the inventions, technology and ideas of science fiction writers at Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)"

Science Fiction Forums

Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange -  
“A question and answer site for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts.”

r/scifiwriting -
A subreddit for writers of science fiction.

r/AskScienceFiction -
"It's like Ask Science, but all questions and answers are written with answers gleaned from the universe itself."

Worldbuilding Stack Exchange -
“A question and answer site for writers/artists using science, geography and culture to construct imaginary worlds and settings.”

And yes, I'll repeat that I am continuing each week, more or less, posting chapters of my sci fi comedy novel THE ANCIENT ONES. Hey, can you really turn down free yucks?

== Defy The Beast! == 

The world is worth loving and saving. We do that by proselytizing what can truly save it...

...belief that we have a future.

Your nerdy love of sci fi could save the world! Announcing… TASAT

Here’s a Major Announcement of a project that's been in my thoughts for a long time. A way that you -- yes you -- can be part of an action team of science fiction readers who might someday use your powers of SF'nal story memory to help save the world!

Bear with me while I explain. 

Fretting about potential threats to civilization, members of the Protector Caste (intel agencies and all that) keep inviting authors of “hard” or realistic science fiction to offer big perspectives, or terrifying possibilities. “You sci fi guys think up the scariest things,” one official lauded. The same can be said for tech innovators and visionaries seeking insights into where we're heading. 

Yet, there's a frustration. When pondering some real or hypothetical scenario, I often think: hasn't some earlier author considered this, amid the vast number of past tales?

== A solution? TASAT (There’s a Story about That!) ==

Consider the vast library of science fictional thought-experiments published since Mary Shelley first wrote about how the creation of new kinds of life might be mishandled—a warning with new variants in Planet of the Apes, Jurassic Park, I Robot, and Ex Machina. 

Some are “self-preventing prophecies” like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Soylent Green, Dr. Strangelove or Silent Spring. Other SF projections come true.

Alas, for every SF thought experiment that achieves renown, hundreds molder in back issues of Astounding or Galaxy, or some novel only recalled by a few dozen fans out there—tales about how the world might veer in unexpected directions. Shouldn’t those concepts be available, as a background library of worked-out scenarios, in case we ever face some sudden choice?

== Activate group memory! ==

Imagine some government or NGO must respond quickly to a First Contact situation, as in the film Arrival. In a hurry, they gather “experts” who leap to premature conclusions.

So they call on the TASAT hub—part of sci-fi fandom’s collectively sagacious Group Mind— to cite and provide stories published across the last century. Short tales, novels, movies, think-pieces and art that offer unusual scenarios, potential mistakes, or surprise twists, helping our leaders or emissaries to perceive a wider picture. 

Or take the developer of an augmented reality app, a spacecraft designer, or a company revolutionizing communication technology. Might even some outlandish tale help to inform the next wave of science fact? 

You can be part of this informal network. The only qualification? Having read a lot of stories! Watched a lot of flicks. Played bunches of realistic games. There may come a time when you — by pointing to some obscure tale — could help to save the world!

== Examples! ==

Suppose a company has developed a new bacterium that pulls Nitrogen out of the air faster and better than anything known, creating massively cheap fertilizer? What could go wrong? A TASAT alert on this prospect would likely cause someone to cite Hal Clement's novel The Nitrogen Fix, along with a warning to be careful.

Take the "Flynn Effect" ...where the last three generations of children in the West have had successively higher average IQ. Suppose it accelerates, suddenly and rapidly. While some might ponder the "Children of the Damned" flicks, or cite Poul Anderson's novel Brain Wave. Others might suggest Thomas Disch's Camp Concentration, wherein IQ-rise is triggered by a venereal disease. No one suggestion need ever be right! It could be enough that such examples cause the responsible parties to widen their horizons, and not leap to the first, logical theory.

Then there's the almost infinite supply of alien First Contact tales, with some even portraying a TASAT-like process. Take the Niven and Pournelle opus Footfall, in which the government wisely establishes both optimistic and pessimistic committees.  Another of you (under comments, below) cited Gordon Dickinson's "The Alien Way," in which the protagonist digs through library stacks to find a half-remembered scientific article about bear behavior that will help him to understand the instinctive underpinnings of  an alien race.

If ever we find ourselves in a possible contact situation, our very survival might depend on having available a wide variety of scenarios, suggesting: what's "obvious" ain't necessarily so.

== Sign up! ==

So browse the TASAT Site! Join the community to get TASAT alerts. Even pose one, now and then! 

This is not just another sci fi discussion/argument site, but a place to cite actual, accessible stories, perhaps even pertinent to hurried decision makers.

(Did I mention the TASAT Facebook site, as well?)

Harness your nerdiness for the good of civilization!

TASAT is affiliated with the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the University of California, San Diego.  

So sign up for TASAT! Be part of the nerdy community that might save us all, someday, by chiming up with an obscure link, saying: 

"There's a Story About That!"

====

====