Blindsight by Peter Watts

Illustration: Thomas Pringle

I've just finished reading the excellent hard SF novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. It's basically a first-contact story between an alien entity and a crew of freaks. The crew is composed by a linguist with multiple personalities, a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultra-sounds, a pacifist warrior whose career-defining moment was an act of treason, a synthesist (an informational topologist with half his mind gone) and a vampire to command them all.

The book has been released under a Creative Commons license and is available to download as a PDF file here. I'm going to buy that book for sure, it's probably the best hard SF novel I have read in a long time.

www.rifters.com

Dis(10)pütes

Here's a very good d-beat band from Quebec City. Their brutal songs mainly talk about our good 'ol industrial chickens. The band members are from such bands as Electrocutionerdz, Traumatism, Mesrine, Fistfuck, Dahmer, Victims Of Corruption, Nourriture, The Toilet, Dis-Eased, Anomalies, to name a few...

dis10putes.bandcamp.com

Back to the future: 1985 BBS post on Engadget.com

I'm crazy for gadgets and can't spend a day without having a look at Engadget.com. They write great articles about upcoming gadgets. It's always well written, often with a tongue-in-the-cheek attitude. They won't miss an occasion to make fun of ridiculous gadget. I've stumbled on the 1985 page, when they were posting on BBS. It's always funny to look back at what we saw as the future... Windows 1.0, a killer app !!! For a bit of nostalgia, click here.

Amon Tobin - Foley Room out in March

There's already advance copies circulating around in the series of tubes that is internet, but the official release of the new album by Amon Tobin is due in March. The album Foley Room will be released with a short DVD documenting the recording process. I can't wait to buy the album !

The X-Dump Electronica Collective

It seems that I'm a lot into 8-bit music these times (a longer post about that to come). I discovered an interesting net label that distributes it's music freely in MP3 and OGG formats. The X-Dump Electronica Collective is composed of 8-bit /electronica / techno / IDM / pop / electro / ambiant artists.
Here's some videos of the artists on the label:

Psilodump

Dorothy's Magic Bag



Lithis



Paza Rahm



Matophonia



The Korvstoppers



Din Stalker



Bethy Ethodd

Anode