Gulf Link Spill

I had a great time at ApolloCon yesterday. When I moved to Texas two and a half years (!) ago, I wasn't sure what the sf community would be like down here. But it's turned out to be both active and interesting. I was especially glad to spend time with John DeNardo of SFSignal, and to meet collector Scott Crup, and authors Lou Antonelli and A. Lee Martinez. ApolloCon also has some impressive costuming on display. I'm afraid that I didn't take any pictures, mostly because folks were taking pictures of me and my new tattoo art! It was a big hit. I also bought a couple small art pieces that I really liked.

Anyway, after all that, have some links:

• Because I was at the Con at the time, I missed the live coverage of the Locus Awards. But I was glad to catch up on the ceremony and the commentary via the archived Cover It Live page. Thanks to Cheryl, Kevin, Jonathan, and the Locus folks for setting that up!
• Speaking of Locus, Amelia Beamer's debut novel The Loving Dead will be released soon. If you'd like to take a look at the novel before it's published, catch it here before it goes offline (on July 1st). She's also found a very funny 'promotional video' for beautiful Oakland.
• Futurama's back on TV! Hooray! In honor of the occasion, a 7 minute, 5 season Futurama re-cap [via SFSignal].
• Over at OF Blog the Fallen, Larry has taken Jeff VanderMeer's suggestion about doing a World Cup of fiction seriously, and there's no one better suited to the task. Enjoy this lighthearted but thorough survey of world literature.
• In more sci/tech related news, Bruce Sterling has a bit about what may be the world's first electronic musical instrument. Should be of interest to all those steampunk afficianados out there.
• Looking ahead, Futurismic points out that a lab has developed an AI that can win at Jeopardy. This is a big advance, especially because of how it requires the AI to be able to process relatively natural language.
• And in one of those far-out ideas, there's a legitimate case to be made for using urine to power fuel cells instead of water. The molecular bonds of urea are easier to break than those of water, and it has 4 hydrogen atoms in each molecule vs. only 2 in each molecule of water. Caught this one in the June issue of IEEE Spectrum.