Author: publius

Fools! I will destroy you all!!

ASFO 2025–08–16

Quoting myself? A bad habit, but sometimes I say what I mean best. “It’s good to grow some of your own food, but it is both morally and practically obligatory to get most of your Calories from industrial agriculture, because it uses two orders of magnitude less labour per Calorie. Anything else is headed back to serfdom, because Marx was quite right (and you won’t hear me say that often) that the mode of production strongly determines the form of social organization. Leave pastoral fantasies to the Far Right.”

Supplementary Show

2025–08–18 A conversation with smj in the hours immediately following the Worldcon, partaking somewhat of the character of an after–action report.

ASFO 2025–08–09

A minute of silence, please, for the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. I spend some time, at the end of the half–hour, speculating on why otherwise intelligent and good–natured people believe and spread false statements about civil nuclear energy, and so far as I can tell, much of it comes back to The Bomb. In the middle, I explain more about my plans for the Worldcon ; somewhat unfairly use SDFer tyn, host of the excellent aNONradio show The Third Ear, to make a point about reading comprehension (the paper referred to can be found here) ; and question whether wasps qualify as radiation workers within the intent of the law.

Rocket to the Morgue

by Anthony Boucher

This murder–mystery novel is notorious as a roman a clef, that is, many of its characters are thinly–veiled portraits of real people — more particularly, well–known science–fiction writers in the Los Angeles area in the period immediately before the Second World War. (In fact, the action takes place just one month before Pearl Harbor.) The venerable LASFS itself appears in the guise of the “Mañana Literary Society”. We are, however, at a loss to know why nobody ever returned the favour by writing stories of the adventures of Dr Derringer, the fictional–within–the–fiction character so crucial to the plot.

  • 2025–08–05 Foreword by F Paul Wilson, and sections 1—6 of The First Day : Thursday, October 30, 1941
  • 2025–08–08 Section 7 of The First Day ; The Second Day : Friday, October 31, 1941 through section 5, in which we discover that Dr Derringer himself appears to be engaged in trying to murder the literary heir of his author!
  • 2025–08–12 Recorded aboard a train, with train noises in the background, The Second Day beginning at section 6 ; The Third Day : Saturday, November 1, 1941 in which the locked–room mystery is set up, up to section 4, in which a police sergeant is embarrassed by a combination of back–seats and nuns
  • 2025–08–15 Another train recording, and sent out on the wrong date by my error — beginning at section 5 of The Third Day, through the first section of Interlude : Sunday, November 2 to Thursday, November 6, 1941
  • 2025–08–19 The third train recording, and second mis–dated recording, beginning at Interlude, section 2
  • 2025–08–26 The Ninth Day : Friday, November 7, 1941
  • 2025–08–29 Commencement of The Last Day : Saturday, November 8, 1941
  • 2025–09–02 Conclusion of The Last Day
  • 2025–09–05 Afterword : Saturday, December 6, 1941 and Author’s Afterword (December 12, 1951)

ASFO 2025–08–02

Questionable announcements abound in the field of nuclear energy, for instance from southwest Africa and the northwest USA, but you can trust the announcements I have about my future plans. Also, those in the space movement who started the year with high hopes are having to face facts ; and a brief consideration of just what it would mean for government to be “run like a business”, something many people in the USA have said that they want.

ASFO 2025–07–26

Back in Texas, working on blast №3, getting (or trying to get) other things done, considering a last–minute attempt at attending this year’s World Science Fiction Convention… Also speculation that politicians want to ban drugs because they compete with ideologies as intoxicants.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2025–07–29 From Nuclear Energy Today and Tomorrow, a collection of lectures given at the 12th International Science School for High School Students at the University of Sydney (Australia) in 1969, Science and Society by Dr David Z Robinson, Vice–President of Academic Affairs, New York University.
  • 2025–08–01 The companion lecture to the previous, Society and Science, which describes among other things the political process which led to the location of what became Fermilab.
A ring-shaped particle accelerator built in a craggy desert landscape
In 1948, 110 feet (33 meters) was considered a very large diameter for a ring–shaped particle accelerator. The diameter of the Large Hadron Collider is more than 250 times that.

ASFO 2025–07–19

Once again the double standard, as no calls are heard in Italy to abolish motor cars or their fuel, after an explosion in Rome which certainly harmed more people in that country than Chernobyl did. Unwanted travel forced upon me (at considerable expense) by short–sighted legislators and other foolish people. A couple of anniversaries — hail to the glorious 20th of July!

Supplementary Show

2025–07–25 From the group of Nuclear Power Exhibition materials I acquired, A Review of Nuclear Power in the United Kingdom, adapted from a lecture delivered by Francis Tombs, chairman of the Electricity Council, to the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Technician Engineers, 31 October 1977.

ASFO 2025–07–05

Burn, baby, burn! Germany continues to exhibit climate leadership with less public transportation, more cars, and more gas–burning power stations. Where is the gas to come from? Who cares, as long as a return to nuclear is off the table? Also! The Vera Rubin Telescope, the Faraday Prize, the Non–Proliferation Treaty…

ASFO 2025–06–21

Solstice! And a lovely sunny one here in Munich, just as it ought to be. That sunniness, however, doesn’t make paving over vast tracts of land with photovoltaics any more appealing. I suggest that the European Union could be quite a bit more ambitious with their targets for nuclear energy production, and explain things I’ve been doing to get ready for Archipelacon. Owing to some technical problem, while live listeners heard the whole show, the archive cuts off during my discussion of a so–called granola advertising “100% real food ingredients and no grain fillers”, which I would say makes it more like a trail mix — containing, of course, no peanuts.