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ANNOUNCEMENT/GIVEAWAY: Aliens, Smith and Jones, by Blaine D. Arden

Aliens Smith and Jones - Blaine D. Arden

Blaine D. Arden has a new MM sci fi book out: “It’s not all about serving coffee and typing reports.” Working for a secret organisation specialising in alien cover-ups, Connor Smith is no stranger to the abnormal or dangerous. His love life on the other hand… not so exciting. Until he reluctantly agrees to a blind date and meets the perfect bloke, Jason. Things are finally falling into place for Connor, so of course that’s when he attracts an alien stalker. Noah Jones, ex-alien, has been stranded on Earth and forced to live as a human since 1648. Alone and … Read more

SCIENCE: Dying Brains Silence Themselves in a Spreading Dark Wave

Brain

At the edge of life and death is a spreading dark wave. Scientists spotted it first in rabbits. In a series of papers published throughout the 1940s, Harvard biologist Aristides Leão described finding a sudden silencing of electrical activity in the exposed brains of his unconscious experimental animals after subjecting them to injuries — applying electrical shocks, poking them with glass rods or cutting off the blood in their arteries. The “spreading depression,” as he termed it, began at the injured spot within 5 minutes of the injury, before eclipsing more distant parts of the brain. Seven decades later, a … Read more

For Writers: Death in the Future

death

Every society has its ways of dealing with death. Some enforce long mourning periods in ritual dress. Some cover mirrors. Some hold celebrations of life. And of course there are countless individual variations as well. I once read a great book by a terrible author whose name I won’t share here, where telling the whole truth about a person, both the good and the bad, had become a tradition. It fascinated me – this idea that we do a disservice to people by only saying the good things about them after they have passed. On the practical side, cemeteries take … Read more