Review of Cosmos Online at Albedo One

My review of Cosmos Magazine, a nifty science magazine published in Australia and edited by Wilson da Silva that I devour every second month when it comes out, is now available online at Albedo One. I've reviewed issue 36. which came out in December last year.


Cosmos is an excellent magazine, one that I eagerly look forward to reading with each new issue, because once done I know my brain will be buzzing with so many new ideas for my own writing, but also because I know I’ve just enjoyed a damn fine read.

James Phelan's Lachlan Fox Series and other 2010 Highlights

I'd have to say my biggest surprise and best read for 2010 was James Phelan's Blood Oil, which I listened to on audio tape from my relocation drive from Adelaide to Sydney earlier this year. I've long been a fan of political thrillers but not many come up to the mark. However, Blood Oil was fantastic, with an indepth commentry on the current issues in Africa and the petrochemical industry, yet written in a simple and elegant style with lots of action and suspense, that literally kept me wanting to read more.

For Christmas my wife bought me another book in the series, Patriot Act, which is just as fun to read. All Phelan's thrillers are connected through the adventures of the main protagonist, Lachlan Fox, an ex-Australian Navy officer turned syndicate journalist. I plan to read more, and feel that they would make a great movie series.

This year I also read Clive Cussler for the first time on a recommendation of a friend, Inca Gold, and really enjoyed that too. I should read more thrillers, if for no other reason than that the writing style is always fluid, suspenseful and draws the reader in. Science fiction writers in comparison often have a boring style. I guess that's one reason why I really like Alastair Reynolds, because his style is very much like that of a thriller writer. It's a style I keep hoping to achieve, and if recent reviews on SF Crowsnest, perhaps I'm achieving that goal.

The Time Traveller's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger was also brilliant, and she too shows what can be achieved in a simple but elegant style of writing.

Favorite movies that I saw this year are Inception followed closely by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. Favorite magazine remains Cosmos and favorite television series is Spooks, with the very excellent Series 8 recently airing in Australia.

Cosmos Magazine 32 and Alien Life

Often I get my inspiration to write science fiction stories from articles I read in popular science publications. Last week I devoured the latest issue of Cosmos Magazine, Issue 32, which is a SETI special with all kinds of cool articles on alien life. Now my head is full of ideas on what to write next.

One article in particular, "Alien Safari" by Lewis Dartnell discussees what extra-terrestial life could be like on other planets. Two examples that he comes up with inspire the imagination: (1) plants that produce hydrogen filled bladders so they can float in the atmosphere to capture sunlight while vines tether them to their roots, and (2) worlds with really heavy gravity, the atmosphere becomes dense enough so that aliens the size of elephants could actually fly. Then Dartnell goes on to suggest that if they have six limbs, they might adopt biplane configured wings.

Of course reading all this, and what I'm learning about extrasolar planets astronomers are finding every day, I'm becoming more and more convinced that Earth-like worlds are pretty rare, especially Earth-like worlds that can remain stable enough for complex life to evolve. Did you know that if Jupiter and Saturn were just a little bit bigger, their gravity would have consumed all the other planets in the solar system by now. But if Jupiter wasn't as big as it is to suck in passing space rocks, Earth would be bombarded by comets and meteorites at such a rate no life could evolve much past the primordial soup phase. Jupiter is just right. Still, I'm thinking life is everywhere in the universe, and probably not to dissimilar to what we have on Earth. On our world it seems to survive everywhere there is liquid water.

As for intelligent life I'm convinced it's out there, but it's likely to be such a rare event that any intelligence life is too far away to contact, in both space and time. I'm suggesting other galaxies, which are millions of light-years away.

Getting back to what I started discussing, Cosmos Magazine, it is also great for its fiction. I can't say I've read all the stories they've published in the magazine or online, but generally I like most that I do read.