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Jason Kahn

Well rounded episode of Beam Me Up this week on episode 287.  I lead of first with a new offering from Symphony of Science called Onward to the Edge, featuring excerpts from speeches made by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, and Carolyn Porco and set to some great music.

Our first fiction offering is a brand new story arc from Jason Kahn and Cyberstudios online.   Jason once again takes us to New Arden and our favorite physic detective Jack Garrett.  This arc is In Plain Sight and episode 1 is “On The Mend”  As you might recall with the last story, A New Beginning, Jack managed to solve the case, but took an amazing amount of damage in doing so.  On the Mend literally picks up where a new beginning ended.  But far from being lauded for his crime solving, it would seem that New Arden has a short memory.

The last story of the afternoon is part 2 of Elliot Bangs excellent story “This Must Be the Place.    With Many Many thanks to the voice work of Andy and Diane Finkle!

Last week we found the main character Loren Wells seems to have secrets to keep.  Foremost of all is every time Andria sees him, he appears to be a different age and sometimes he knows her, but often he has no clue!  In part 2 and the conclusion Andria uncovers what has got to be one of the strangest retirement plans ever!

From the Beam Me Up Blog:

Orion crew capsule is scheduled for a mission in 2014!  NASA  reports that the plan is to send the capsule through two orbits, ending up farther from Earth than any craft intended for human transport has been since 1973. Then, Orion will return for a splash-down in the Pacific.

According to BBC news online the Russian space agency reports that shortly after launch, the Phobos Grunt probe failed to fire its’ mains to launch it towards Mars and is now stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers have two weeks to correct the fault before the probe’s batteries run out.

And something I thought I would never hear – In a paper which will be published this week in Nature, Professors Christian Knigge & Malcolm Coe from the University of Southampton worked with Philipp Podsiadlowski of Oxford University to reveal how they have discovered two distinct populations of neutron stars…  Two?!!!!  I can just handle how weird the universe is just having one type of these monsters!

That and some clever animations on the blog.

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Jason Kahn

This episode for the first week in October 2011, as usual I go in for stories that are seasonal I think you would say.

With that in mind the first story of the evening is the conclusion to The Dark InSpectre written and read by Jason Kahn.  This is episode 17 of Unfinished Business in which our intrepid psychic detective Jack Garrett puts the finishing touches to one of the most horrific murders he has ever seen.

The second story this week is a classic piece from the pages of Analog Magazine call “Am I still Here?” by James R. Hall.  Here, in a tale set into the near future where any and everything can be repaired or replaced in a human body, the question is asked…when do you stop being you and become something or someone else that just thinks it is you?

In news…Earth Sky speaks about water flows on Mars and the makeup of mysterious  rogue waves.  I read the impressions of some NASA astronauts that have taken the ride home in a Soyuz capsule.

From the Blog

Doug Hilton sends us a note on his news short story collection:  How We Play Football in Alabama And Other Short Stories.  Mark Wilson over at About SF writes that The movie Source Code is coming to the small screen as a series.  The giant particle accelerator The Tevatron is shutting down 9/30/11 and a great project becomes victim like SETI, to budget cuts and apathy.

Thats episode 281 of Beam Me Up

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Keith Latch

In Beam Me Up episode 277 we take on Labor Day weekend by doing as little as possible!
This week’s program came out fine though.  I start of with y John Anealio  doing Summer Glau.

Then for our first story which this week is episode 16 of the ongoing saga of the Dark InSpectre series by Jason Kahn.  This week find inspector Garrett following clues and a psychic scream to locations that offer little advantage to our inspector.   We find him in the worst of places, knowing even worse things.  Things that others would kill to prevent from ever seeing the light of day.

The final story is part four and the conclusion to Keith Latch’s ‘The Stars Fell’.  Sophie’s life now  smothering unhappiness.   With the loss of her entire family has taken away her reason for living or any reason TO live.  It had been three weeks since the accident and she had hardly left her bed, but now, something strange had happened, she had been drawn outside by the most unusual occurrence…..  The Stars were Falling……

In blog and other articles….from Earth / Sky a short article on the status of Cern antimatter containment, Dan drops in this month’s sky based occurrences, I read off the things to look for from the third to the tenth of September.

In the blog, Located about an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth is the strangest planet….one made of diamonds!  ISS Crews NASA and Russian mission control are all holding their collective breathes as technicians try to uncover the cause of the Progress supply ship malfunction.  If it can not be uncovered then the ISS will have to be abandoned as there is now no other system ready to lift crew to the station.   In what has to be a WTF moment…. Chinese scientists are studying ways to capture an asteroid and bring it into Earth orbit!  Why?  There’s money in them thar asteroids!  Especially metallic based asteroids.
Xnewsman sends in a link to a you-tube video concerning computer banking as predicted in 1969 and you know, they got a lot right!  Chat-bots are often used as Web chat support agents to help you solve basic problems. When they are interacting with a person, they seem very strange as they converse in an almost lifelike fashion – but you have got to see what happens when two of these things are hooked up to talk to one another!  I play the audio and it is plain rib cracking funny!  And finally – Rover Opportunity, in the seventh year of it’s 90 day mission has arrived at the Martian crater Endeavour to help researchers understand ‘compositional differences’ of the rocks surrounding the crater.   Crater Endeavour is much larger than the last one visited by Opportunity, which was the Victoria crater.

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This week on episode 270 of Beam Me Up episode 14 of Jason Kahn’s Dark Inspectre.  Our intrepid detective is framed for a grisly murder.  Which means he is getting close, but before he can prove his innocence  he might find himself dead instead.

Oddcube joins us once again for his unusual brand of reviews –  This week Dungeon Seige is the unfortunate target of his unusual utterances.

From the blog I review the movie Spirit, the review might be of some use, the movie sure wasn’t.
Scientists build a time cloak?  The 2010 Locus awards are in!  Dawn meets Vesta.  Check out a 360 VR view interactive of the Shuttle flight deck.  astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson  along with Neil Armstrong and John Glenn spank NASA.  First time ever a comet has been photographed plowing into the sun.  And did you know that the Buran was built to drop bombs?!!!

I close with part 2 of Paid by Deanna Knippling.  You will not believe how time is handled in this wildly weird tale.  And the bad guy?  even weirder!

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This Beam Me Up episode is the first in year six – and we start off year six with episode 261, solidly in the weird column!  My pet peeve this week is a theme I have gone to before, and once again I am at that well.  Space Trash.  Would you believe that by 2030 the amount of trash being tracked will triple?!  That by the was is the least of the problems.  Is there a possibility of a new animated Star Trek?  Wonder woman tv series is a no go it seems.  Ron Howard’s Dark Tower project  is crumbling as we speak.   Superman / Batman public enemies was up for reviews this week.   And does anyone remember William  Campbell?  He played the q like creature on the original Star Trek.  Well mr Campbell has beamed out for the last time.

This week’s stories and music?  Well, my opening song is She Dont like Firefly.  Lol she is perfect in every other way, but doesnt like Firefly, so she is gone!   This week is episode 12 for the Dark InSpectre.  I want to thank Cyberwizard productions for their continued excellence in production values.   Our strangest story to date is Health Tip for Traveler.  A does and don’ts  travel brochure of the most unusual type!

Photo is David Goldman

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This week in episode 256 of Beam Me Up I start with a fast paced piece of music from Yu Kobiachi called Fight or Flight.  This is the closing theme music for the anime series Dragonauts which is not really all that bad of a series.  The “Dragons” are alive, but they are almost like living fightercraft with pilots which bond with them.  It gets complicated, but has it’s moments.

From the blog this week, a film that shows some very unusual activity around the April fifth launch of Soyuz.  I am leaning well to the FAKE! side, but it could be something much more dangerous.  If so, then many more launches may have trouble as well…  A rather odd pair of white dwarf stars are doing a very unusual dance around each other and the outcome may be the most unusual of them all!  Javier Bardem is Universal Pictures choice to play gunslinger Roland Deschain in The Dark Tower movie series directed by Ron Howard.  NASA’s Mars Odyssey entered it’s 10th year of continuous operation this week, making it the oldest orbital spacecraft still exploring the red planet, this according to NASA’s website. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab has put together a short animation of the Curiosity Rover leaving Earth and landing on Mars and I have the video on the blog site.  I also put up a video of Martin doing outside test on the jet pack. Branson along with Chris Welsh will helm the Virgin Oceanic vehicle on five separate dives to the deepest points in Earth’s oceans.  Watch the animated video Virgin put together to demonstrate what they hope to acomplish.  Craphound mentioned the Beam Me Up podcast recently. I played Cory’s story Ghosts in My Head on episode 255 and he did the favor of mentioning the fact.  Hey if you haven’t heard the story yet, its the first story I played last week on episode 255.  Virgin put on quite a media blitz for the opening of Virgin America’s new Terminal 2 at the San Francisco International airport. In a short film on the blog site, we see White Knight and Space Ship 2 flying in close formation with the media junket jet that Virgin provided.  I have a short vid from SpaceX with animation showing testing of the New Heavy Lift System they have developed  and this thing is STRONG!  and last but not least, aviation pioneer Burt Rutan is retiring at 67.

The first story I play this week is episode 11 of the Dark InSpectre series by Jason Kahn and thing seem to be getting quite dicey for our favorite mind reading detective…., and I end this weeks program with part one of In Fall by Ted Kosmatka.  A very mysterious tale of two men on a ship on the brink of an endless chasm, on young, the other old and both prisoners of their belief.

Its a fast and entertaining hour.  enjoy!

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Episode 253 was a bit strange today.  But all in all, I think it came out as fun enough!  First, you have to hear this new song I found on youtube from Your Favorite Martian called Club Villain.  What a fun song, and it name drops about any villains you can recall!  Plus it will just keep your feet tappin.

Stories are good this week.  I remembered that it had been awhile since we had a Dark  InSpectre story from Jason Kahn so I corrected that error and played episode 10.  Inspector Garrett has to deal with more than just ghosts and corrupt politicians but we begin to see more of Jack’s past.  Something very wrong is buried deep but we are beginning to see that Jack’s interest in the “quad’s” is very very complicated….

Our second story is part four of David Steffen’s “the Utility of Love”  follows Dorothy and The Tin Man as they try to carry out the quest the Wizard set them to.  Author Steffen again uses deft control of his plot to bring us further along the convoluted path using many of the images we thought we knew in truly inventive and striking ways.  The end of the tale is drawing nearer, but that doesn’t mean that there are not many twists still to come.

From the blog  MDA of Canada may start a gas station in space?  No Ordinary family may come to a very ordinary end.  ABC isn’t talking but have they canceled our favorite superpower family?  Corning put together this video called “A Day Made Of Glass,” which is a very inventive short on all the devices that might one day be as common as the cell phone is now.  All these high tech devices have one thing in common, they use lots of glass.  NASA is reporting that Messenger, the first probe ever to orbit the planet Mercury, has made a successful orbital insertion and is now Mercury’s first ever artificial Sat.!   There is no question that last week’s earthquake in Japan did a great deal of damage, however some of effect are not that apparent but I can guarantee that they are every bit as mind bending!  And finally I take a break and watch some American animation.  I do a  review of the animated movie Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.

All in all not a bad episode, even though the start was a bit rough.  Enjoy!

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Beam Me Up episode 248 here we go!  Going to keep it short and sweet this week kiddies, Daddy is running out of steam.  It goes without saying that we almost took off a week the way things were looking!   Anyway, This week I start with Jason Kahn’s excellent serialized novel Dark InSpectre.  Episode number nine on tap today and you won’t be disappointed.    Our last story this week is part one of Nancy Fulda’s excellent  self discovery tale Knowing Neither Kith nor Kin.   It is truly excellent work from an excellent author.

From the blog

The Japanese space agency is going fishing…..oh yeah,  will the shuttles still fly?,  Its been 40 years since Apollo 14 landed and can neutron stars make some really exotic material?  possibly…..

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Beam Me Up episode 245 doesn’t hold back this week.  I open with a new song to the show.  I found a music video of Nico Touches the Wall doing Diver.  This cut has been the opening to Naruto Shippuden’s newest season and has plenty of energy which I thought might go over well.

My first story is another in the series  of Dark InSpectre stories.  Jason Kahn continues to thoroughly entertain with this series.  The final story is part one of Erin Cashier’s heart breaking Chinvat Bridge.  Part one really sets the stage for next week, but I think you will find the imagery and characters totally believable.  Be warned though, part 1 and part 2 do contain some adult language.

And from the Beam Me Up blog at http://beamEup.blogspot.com:  I review the movie Avatar, the Last Air-bender, from director M. Night Shyamalan.  This movie follows the animated series pretty closely which is probably a good thing as there isn’t really much going for it.  Paolo Bacigalupi has added to his haul of awards. Paolo’s YA novel, Ship Breaker, has won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award.  If you thought quantum Entanglement and spook behavior at a distance was mind warping then wait until you read the article about the same effect being used for spooky behavior over time!  Oh yeah, there is something about the quantum math that says quantum tele-portation to the future is possible!  And for some really heated discussion.  One of our article submitters has sent in an article called The 10 Most Technophobic Movies and I want to tell you they are still sending in comments!

Check it out!  It’s all good – Beam Me Up episode 245

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Episode 241 of Beam Me Up on a fine Christmas after noon. Most sane people probably wouldn’t be here in the studios, but you know how dedicated I am! Well decenting voices to the contrary, I think we have a great episode this week!

Two serializations this week! Our first story is Dark InSpectre #7 from writer Jason Kahn. Second is the continuing antic of Parvo future pest – meister of Pest – world in episode 4 of Red Robot from the talented pen of Colin P. Davies and the off the hook production talents of Cyber Wizard production. This story keeps getting better and better each episode.

This week’s blog entries at the Beam Me Up blog at http://wrfrbeameup.blogspot.com do not disappoint either. I review the animated movie Batman: Under the Red Hood which may not match the animation and production values of movies like How to Train Your Dragon but still should be a treat for the Batman fans. The plot fits well into the existing mythology surrounding Batman. Oh I have got to thank Boing Boing for pointing out this next gem. There I found a link to the top 10 most popular posts of the year. Funny research, news articles what have you. The are weird oh so very weird, strange and wildly funny. From an article on the contraceptive qualities of polyester to possibly the strangest case hysteria in a medical clinic.

An article that I didn’t really have time to do anything but mention it, is a post from a new contributor. When Science Fiction Pushes the Boundaries of Science posted by contributing writer: Beatrice Owen.

This is a well thought out piece which deals with science pushing science fiction as well as the reverse. Interesting read.

That and a musical selection in the spirit of the season! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!