Space Navigation Console

25 April 2019

Teenagers from Outer Space - Movie Night

Tonight! Beware of those Teenagers from Outer Space. They'll strip the flesh from your bones! Hide! Get behind that sofa!


03 April 2019

Watch The Signs! Watch The Signs!

"A book of pub signs? That's nice. A well illustrated book of pub-signs linked by Mythology, Fantasy and SF, by a poet who knows his genres and history. That's petty damn COOL!  Nice cover too!”   Smuzz - Science fiction book and magazine illustrator.http://www.smuzz.org.uk/
That's the verdict on my cover work for the new book by Arthur Chappell. It's called "Watch The Signs! Watch The Signs!" and you can get a copy over at Shoreline of Infinity.

Arthur has spent many years collecting images of pub signs inspired by science fiction and fantasy and the best of these are presented in this lovely book. If you like pubs and you like sci fi, this one is definitely for you and it has a brilliant cover.

01 April 2019

Book Of The Month - Rossum's Universal Robots

It's the first Monday in April and we're starting a new feature here on the Space Pilot Blog. Each month, on the first Monday, I'll post an eBook here that we can all read together over the following weeks. It will be a public domain story that you can share with your friends and be an early example of a popular Science Fiction trope.
Over the Summer, I'll post a few lunar voyages as we commemorate 50 years since the first people walked on the Moon, but this month we have the first ever story about robots.
"Rossum's Universal Robots" is a play by Karel Ĉapek, which was written in 1921. So, be warned, that there are attitudes that were common in that era between the world wars that are unacceptable now. The description of Mr Busman jars with my sensibilities every time I see it. However, this story is an important part of science fiction history, and it addresses a number of social issues of its day through the science fiction concept of a company that makes artificial people.
Click on this link to download an ePub version of the book.
 If you don't have a reader for ePub files, never fear. Linux users probably have FBReader in their distribution but you can also get it here, where it is available for just about every computer system, phone and other device too. Also, there is an Adobe reader for Windows, Mac, IOS devices and Android called Digital Editions that you can get here. iPad users can read the file in iBooks.
I hope enough readers will visit this post and read the book, so that our comments feed can help us explore this area of science fiction. So don't be shy. Share this with your friends and make some comments below. And maybe I'll post some illustrations there too.

The Book of the Month comes to you with the invaluable assistance of  Project Gutenberg. You can read the eBook with FBReader on just about anything.