Dream, Death, and the rest of the Endless are back in Neil Gaiman’s much-anticipated prequel to his classic Vertigo series in The Sandman: Overture #1. But if there’s one reason you need to read it, it’s for J.H. Williams III’s amazing art, which is perfectly suited to Gaiman’s tale. Plus Marvel gets ready for a Cataclysm, Ash of Army of Darkness returns and more, in this week’s comics!
    
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The post Calvin and Hobbes, the documentary appeared first on Chris Blattman.
Sometimes the landscapes we dream up in works of science fiction and fantasy are no match for the real thing. From unusual geological formations to rare and beautiful flora, these natural landscapes seem pulled from another world.
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No opinion should be held with fervour. No one holds with fervour that seven times eight is fifty-six, because it can be known that this is the case. Fervour is only necessary in commending an opinion which is doubtful or demonstrably false.
Atacama's Cloudy Night
Storm clouds do sometimes come to
Chile's Atacama desert, known as the
driest place on Earth.
These washed through the night sky just last month during
the winter season, captured in this panoramic view.
Drifting between are cosmic clouds more welcome by the
region's astronomical residents though,
including dark dust clouds in silhouette against the
crowded starfields and
nebulae of the central Milky Way.
Below and right of center lies the
Large Magellanic Cloud,
appropriately named for its appearance in starry southern skies.
City lights about 200 kilometers distant still glow along the
horizon at the right, while bright star
Canopus
shines above them in the cloudy sky.
Perigee's Full Moon
A big, bright, beautiful Full Moon will rise at sunset on Sunday.
Its exact full phase (June 23, 11:32 UT)
will occur shortly before it
reaches perigee,
the closest point to Earth in the Moon's orbit, and make it the
largest Full Moon of 2013.
But
such circumstances are not very rare.
The full lunar phase falls near the Moon's orbit perigee about every
14 lunar
months.
That means the following Full Perigee Moon will be on August 10,
2014, the 14th Full Moon after June 23.
On May 5, 2012, 14 Full Moons ago,
this
inspired telescopic night skyscape captured the Full Perigee Moon
rising over Cape Sounion,
Greece and the ancient
Temple of Poseidon.
A Solstice Sunset Self Portrait
Today, the
solstice
is at 05:04 Universal
Time, the Sun reaching the northernmost
declination
in its yearly journey through planet
Earth's sky.
A June solstice marks
the astronomical
beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere and winter
in the south.
It also brings the north's longest day, the
longest period
between sunrise and sunset.
This composite image follows the Sun's
path toward the end of the June solstice day of 2012 as it approaches
the western horizon in a colorful, clear sky.
The scene looks north and west along the
Tyrrhenian Sea coast from Santa Severa, Italy.
Appearing in the well-timed sequence, the small figure of the
photographer himself is illuminated against the wall of the
town's medieval castle.
Milky Way Over Crater Lake with Airglow 
Delphinid Meteor Mystery
Over a five hour period last Tuesday morning,
exposures captured
this tantalizing view of meteor
streaks and the Milky Way in dark skies above
Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
During that time, astronomers had hoped
to see an outburst from the
gamma
Delphinid meteor shower
as Earth swept through the dust trail left
by an
unknown comet.
Named for the
shower's radiant point
in the constellation Delphinus,
a brief but strong outburst was reported in bright,
moonlit skies on June 10, 1930.
While no strong Delphinid meteor activity was reported since,
an outburst was tentatively predicted to occur
again in 2013.
But even though Tuesday's skies were dark, the overall
rate of meteors
in this field is low, and only the three lower meteor streaks
seem to point back to the shower's estimated radiant.
Four Planet Sunset
You can see four planets in
this serene sunset image,
created from a series of stacked digital exposures captured
near dusk on May 25.
The composite picture follows the trail of three of them,
Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury (left to right) dropping toward the
western horizon, gathered close in last month's remarkable
triple planetary conjunction.
Similar in brightness to planet Mercury, the star
Elnath (Beta Tauri)
is also tracked across the scene, leaving its dotted trail
still farther to the right.
Of course, in the foreground are the
still, shallow waters of Alikes salt lake, reflecting the striking colors of
sunset over Kos Island, Greece,
planet Earth.
For now, Jupiter has wandered into the glare of the setting Sun,
but Mercury and Venus remain low in
the west at
twilight.
One of the giants of 20th and 21st century Scottish literature has left the building.
I can't really claim to be a friend; my relationship with Iain was somewhere between one of the faceless hordes seen at SF conventions, and "guy I run into at the pub occasionally". However, I've known Iain and chatted with him at times since, I think, 1989 or 1990 or thereabouts. And, after getting over my initial awe of the giant of letters, subsequently discovered that he was a giant in other ways: big-hearted, kind, affable, humorous, angry at injustice.
There is probably no point in my writing an obituary. The newspapers are all over the generalities (for example, here), and if I had anything more intimate to add I wouldn't care to do so in public, out of respect for his family and friends.
However, I'd like to pause for a moment and reflect on my personal sense of loss. Iain's more conventional literary works were generally delightful, edgy and fully engaged with the world in which he set them: his palpable outrage at inequity and iniquity shone through the page. But in his science fiction he achieved something more: something, I think, that the genre rarely manages to do. He was intensely political, and he infused his science fiction with a conviction that a future was possible in which people could live better — he brought to the task an an angry, compassionate, humane voice that single-handedly drowned out the privileged nerd chorus of the technocrat/libertarian fringe and in doing so managed to write a far-future space operatic universe that sane human beings would actually want to live in (if only it existed).
Last night I was talking to a friend who, with Ken MacLeod, had been invited to visit Iain last week at home. Iain was apparently gravely ill even then, and had to retire after half an hour. Purely selfishly, I hoped he'd hang on longer — long enough for me to tell him I intend to dedicate my next (first) trilogy to him. (I can't hold a candle to his versatility as a writer, but it seems to me that we badly need an SF literature that offers hope for the future, and he has provided a compass for me to set my sails by.)
I've spent about 3 months away from home (Edinburgh) this year, so the last time I saw him was back in December or January, before his diagnosis. Purely by accident, I ran into him in the St James shopping centre (up the road from where I live). He was his usual affable, cheery self: and that is how I intend to remember him.
As Paul McAuley tweeted, a big bright bold boisterous light has gone out.
Quem lembra desse post?
Pois é, nem eu lembrava mais, mas O CARA ESTÁ DE VOLTA!
Huh? Não entendeu nada? Então jogue o joguinho mais difícil do universo clicando aqui.
Pra quem não viu a conferência de uma hora e meia, que tal um resumo de 1 minuto?
Isso era pra ser um videogame? Agora fiquei confuso…
Dica de um leitor chamado Zerando jogos sem morrer HUHEUEHUE
The Waterfall and the World at NightAbove this boreal
landscape, the arc of the Milky Way and
shimmering aurorae flow through the night.
Like an echo, below them lies Iceland's spectacular
Godafoss,
the Waterfall of the Gods.
Shining just below the Milky Way, bright Jupiter is
included
in the panoramic nightscape recorded on March 9.
Faint and diffuse, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) appears immersed
in the auroral glow.
The digital stitch of four frames is a first place winner in the
2013
International Earth and Sky Photo Contest
on Dark Skies Importance organized by
The World at Night.
An evocative record of the beauty of planet Earth's night sky,
all the contest's
winning entries are
featured in this video.
Clouds, Birds, Moon, Venus 
Partial Solar Eclipse with Airplane 
Yuri's PlanetOn another April 12th,
in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin
became the first human
to see planet Earth from space.
Commenting on his view from orbit
he reported, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish.
Everything is seen very clearly".
On yet another April 12th, in 1981 NASA launched the
first space shuttle.
To celebrate in 2013,
consider this
image from the orbiting International
Space Station, a stunning view of the planet at night
from low Earth
orbit.
Constellations of lights
connecting the densely
populated cities along the Atlantic east coast of the United States
are framed by two Russian spacecraft docked at the space station.
Easy to recognize cities include New York City and Long Island
at the right.
From there, track toward the left for Philadelphia, Baltimore,
and then Washington DC near picture center.
