Light Reading for a Sunday Afternoon, Vol. III

Here are some recent news pieces worth reading:

• “Space Exploration Going Slowly Than Imagined, But Still Going,” by Christopher Gibbons, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Jan. 26, 2008. Lamenting the state of the human space flight program, an aging Baby Boomer has been looking through his old science fiction books and magazines.

• “Female Figure on Mars Just a Rock,” by Benjamin Radford, Space.com, Jan. 24, 2008. Recently released photos from NASA’s rover Spirit have renewed a Cydonia-type debate about the possibility of life on Mars.

• “The Whole Creature Heaved and Pulsated,” by Dave Itzkoff, Paper Cuts: a Blog about Books, Jan. 24, 2008. In discussing the Hollywood movie Cloverfield, The New York Times columnist Itzkoff recalls H. G. Wells’ description of the invading Martians in his classic book The War of the Worlds (1898).

• “The Dark Side of Space Disaster Theories,” by James Oberg, The Space Review, Jan. 21, 2008. A refutation of the argument in Dark Mission, by Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara (2007), which sees the failure of NASA's Mars Observer probe in 1993 as an attempt to hide the existence of a Martian civilization.

• “Martian Panic is Recreated in North,” The Journal, Jan. 17, 2008. Orson Welles’ famous radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) on October 30, 1938 will be recreated at AV Festival 08, the United Kingdom’s largest celebration of electronic and digital arts.