Block voting comes to the Retro Hugos

Extremist cabal plots to get second rate novel a Retro Hugo.

From SciAm

What the 1960s Got Right—and Wrong—about Today's Tech

Why is it when I am at cons nobody asks me to be on panels about space colonies, both the real world proposals and how they filtered into SF? Is it because I only just now realized that could be fun (esp if there were True Believers on the panel, and the moderator was not one of them) or because everyone knows there's a risk there would be 20 minutes of me screaming "ROCK HAS ESSENTIALLY NO TENSILE STRENGTH!"?

Innocent question about Heinlein's Green Hills of Earth

(Poem quoted from Atomic Rockets)

Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me
As they rove around the girth
Of our lovely mother planet
Of the cool, green hills of Earth.

We rot in the molds of Venus,
We retch at her tainted breath.
Foul are her flooded jungles,
Crawling with unclean death.

[ --- the harsh bright soil of Luna ---
--- Saturn's rainbow rings ---
--- the frozen night of Titan --- ]

We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
ALL HANDS! STAND BY! FREE FALLING!
And the lights below us fade.

Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps a race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet ---

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.

By contrasting the habitability of Earth with the harsh, inhospitable conditions in space, is Heinlein undermining the crewed space cause?

Stuff like this

would be funnier if the attitude behind it didn't lead to mass murder.

EEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I AM NOW THE LOWEST POSSIBLE LEVEL OF ELECTIONS ONTARIO VOLUNTEER!

Basically, I'm the human analog of those "this way to polling station" signs. Upside, I am at a polling station I've worked before, the one with the low wall of doom.

Knowlton Nash (1927 - 2014)

Knowlton Nash, a decorated Canadian journalist who went from selling newspapers as a boy in Toronto to serving a decade as anchor of CBC's The National, has died at age 86.